MORRISON MONDAYS! — UPDATED 7/20/26: It’s THE BEST OF MORRISON MONDAYS! Bill is on a brief respite (he’ll be back in early August), so we’re reprinting this fave from May 26, 2025. Dig it! — Dan — By BILL MORRISON May 26 marks the 76th anniversary of the release of Batman and Robin, the 1949 Columbia Pictures movie serial starring Robert Lowery as Bruce Wayne/Batman, and Johnny Duncan as Dick Grayson/Robin! And in honor of this classic in the genre of stingy budget chapter plays, I’m paying homage to the movie poster for this early screen adventure of the Dynamic Duo! In a previous life, before The Simpsons came along and changed the course of my career, I was a movie poster artist, and I have always been obsessed and fascinated by film advertising. I have a closet full of cardboard tubes stuffed with movie posters, but a particular one in my collection that’s framed and hanging in my studio is an original one-sheet from the Batman and Robin serial. And as much as I love it, the artwork by illustrator and comic strip artist Glenn Cravath looks rushed. But don’t get me wrong, I think the hurried nature of the art is a big part of its kitschy charm. Many film posters produced back in the mid-20th century were painted in hours instead of days, and with very little reference material, by in-house studio artists. But if you look at the posters that Columbia produced for the Atom Man vs. Superman serial just a year later, you’ll see that the quality of the art is much better than the Batman and Robin poster. The depiction of Superman has an appealing hybrid illustration/comic book style, and it’s apparent that the artist was not as rushed and was using comic book imagery as reference, even down to the Wayne Boring-style head and bunched up trunks. There’s also an earlier tie-in poster for 1948’s Superman movie serial starring Kirk Alyn that features just an out-and-out comic book drawing of the Man of Steel. That got me thinking, and I decided for my tribute to the 1949 Batman and Robin serial, I would create an alternate poster with a “What if?” element. What if, instead of tasking one of Columbia’s regular artists with creating the poster, they instead hired one of the then-current...