THE CHEETAH CAPER: The Perfect Intersection of BATMAN ’66 and the Comics
BATMAN ’66 WEEK: A Big Little Book with a big impact… — Welcome to BATMAN ’66 WEEK, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the beloved TV show starring Adam West! All week, we’ll be presenting daily tributes and features, leading up to Jan. 12 — the premiere date itself — when we’ll roll out a brand-new TOP 13 BATMAN ’66 EPISODE COUNTDOWN, voted upon by a panel of the most knowledgeable Bat-experts around. Click here for the COMPLETE INDEX. — Dan — I don’t know how old I was, I just know I was young. Very young. I do know I was at a Howard Johnson’s and I saw it through the glass of the restaurant’s gift counter, on the bottom shelf: Batman: The Cheetah Caper, a Whitman Big Little Book with an enticing cover showing the Dynamic Duo wrangling a cobra, in front of a stylized, mid-century Gotham City backdrop. I begged for it from my Mom and Dad but I don’t think I had to work too hard because as we pulled out of the parking lot onto the Route 35 circle in Neptune, N.J., heading back to our house in Ocean Township, I had it in my hands, sitting in the dark in the back seat. That I can’t place the timing (1971, when I was 4, maybe?) in all likelihood means The Cheetah Caper was my first Batman book, predating any comic that came into my possession — my gateway into a storytelling world beyond the Batman TV show. I was obsessed with the show, which was already a syndication hit: It ran on Channel 11 (WPIX) in New York and I never missed an episode. I don’t remember the first time I saw it; it was just always there. (If I have a pre-Batman memory, it’s sitting in my crib with a Woody Woodpecker ukelele, watching bits of dust dance in the sunlight shining through my bedroom window, wondering when someone was going to come and rescue me from my boredom.) First published in 1969 as a hardcover, The Cheetah Caper, as it turned out, was the perfect distillation of the show and comics themselves. The story is simple: Batman and Robin are in the hunt for a supervillain called the Cheetah, whose skin is covered in spots and wears a black-tan-and-blue, feline-themed outfit, whiskers and all. He’s the fastest man on Earth thanks...
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