THE BATMAN ’66 MOVIE AT 60: The Flick’s Groovy Novelization Is Anything But a Bomb
PLUS: A 60th ANNIVERSARY INSIDE LOOK at its sister book — BATMAN VS. 3 VILLAINS OF DOOM… — The Adam West Batman theatrical movie was released 60 years ago, on July 30, 1966! For this 60th anniversary, we’re doing something slightly different: a review of the novelization, as well as its sister paperback — both the first books of their kind! Jim Beard’s got it all below, but we also have a few faves from the vault to offer too. The links are at the bottom of the post. Dig it! — Dan — By JIM BEARD Leave it to the 1966 Batman theatrical film (and the TV series) to make pop culture history, but then to have said history obscured and even buried over the decades. That year saw the release of two paperback tie-in books, both of which were the first of their kind, but forgotten today in the heady deluge of Bat-product. That’s sad because Batman vs. 3 Villains of Doom and Batman vs. The Fearsome Foursome stand as publications that led the charge toward bigger and better things for the Caped Crusader. Both books were written by Winston Lyon and released in April and August of 1966, respectively. Ostensibly, 3 Villains of Doom seemed to support both the newly minted TV series as well as the then-upcoming summer movie release, and The Fearsome Foursome was absolutely connected to the film, being a novelization of Lorenzo Semple’s screenplay. The two today are odd side-hustles of the greater Batman ’66 saga, but also significant in more ways than one. I want to correct or perhaps clarify something I said about Batman vs. 3 Villains of Doom in a past 13th Dimension article. There I noted that the novel “aligns itself far more with the comic book characters than the television versions of same.” Upon my re-read of the book for this article, I realized it is a far more balanced proposition between those two foundations. Published, as I said, in April of ’66, the book is arguably the very first original Batman prose novel — if World Distributors of England hadn’t already published the first installment of their Batman World Adventure Library before then. I’m afraid I just don’t know, due to little exact release info on the British offerings, so let’s just say for certain that...
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