PAUL KUPPERBERG | 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture

Jan09

PAUL KUPPERBERG: How ADAM WEST Made BATMAN Work

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Jan 9, 2026

PAUL KUPPERBERG: How ADAM WEST Made BATMAN Work

BATMAN ’66 WEEK! — 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 — UPDATED 1/9/26: The late Adam West was, of course, central to the Batman TV show. Perfect time to reprint this piece from his birthday — Sept. 19 — in 2022. Dig it. — Dan — By PAUL KUPPERBERG “And you, sir, are no Adam West!” I know where I was at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 1966. I was planted on the floor in front of our big console television set, tuned to ABC-TV, Channel 7 in New York, eyes glued to the screen for the premiere of Batman, starring Adam West. I had been reading comic books for what felt like my entire life by then (I was two days shy of being exactly 10 and one-half years old). I devoured the four-color adventures of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of their superpowered colleagues. And, as much as I loved The Adventures of Superman, it had been a staple of my after-school TV viewing for years by then and even 104 episodes don’t go very far on a rotating daily syndicated basis. But Batman was something new and different. Batman was bold, bright, and, for its time, totally insane. Superman battled generic gangsters in suits and ties, a few packing death-rays, maybe the occasional robot or two, but the Man of Steel’s “thrill-packed episodes” looked a little lame next to the supervillain-packed Batman. Even the 1950s color episodes of Superman looked faded and washed out next to the vividly four-colored Caped Crusader. And Batman had Adam West. And Adam West was the key to making Batman work. Because in a world inhabited by freaky, crazy foes like the Joker, Catwoman, Egghead and Louie the Lilac, not to mention a simpering, ineffectual police commissioner and his perpetually angry but otherwise useless second-in-command, and a home life that featured a dotty old aunt and a put-upon but game-for-anything butler, the man at the center of it all had to be anything but freaky...

Jan02

PAUL KUPPERBERG: My 13 Favorite DON HECK Covers

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Jan 2, 2026

PAUL KUPPERBERG: My 13 Favorite DON HECK Covers

A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE to a comics workhorse… By PAUL KUPPERBERG For every comic book Mount Rushmore, there’s a face just out of frame, quietly doing the heavy lifting while flashier names soak up the spotlight. In Marvel Comics’ formative years, that face belonged to Don Heck (January 2, 1929 – February 23, 1995), to my mind the most overlooked of the original Marvel artists working alongside Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. Heck got his start working in the production department at Harvey Comics before following fellow employee Allen Hardy over to newly formed publisher Comic Media, where he produced his first work for comics, the cover and an 8-page story for War Fury #1 (September 1952). He freelanced for a variety of publishers, including Quality and Hillman, before arriving at Marvel (then Atlas) in 1954 and he would stay through the company’s explosive Silver Age growth, proving his versatility by working across an impressive range of genres. Don drew everything the company put in front of him: crime stories with hard, unsentimental edges; war tales that emphasized mood and human cost over spectacle; Westerns populated by weary lawmen and moral gray areas; and romance comics that required a deft touch with facial expression and body language. While Kirby thundered and Ditko brooded, Heck’s work was clean and clear — with distinctive characters, storytelling with expressive figures, and an intuitive sense of pacing. And while it was Jack Kirby who drew the cover to Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963) and designed the gray armor that introduced Iron Man to the world, it was Don who “created the look of the characters, like Tony Stark and his secretary Pepper Potts,” according to the artist in Les Daniels’ Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics (Abrams, 1991). I liked Don Heck’s work in those early Marvel years. He wasn’t explosive like Kirby or idiosyncratic like Ditko, but his style was distinctive and solid, and he finally cemented his place in the Marvel Universe when he took over as penciller on The Avengers, beginning with the ninth issue (October 1964). He was all over that universe across the 1960s: In addition to Iron Man and The Avengers, he did the Ant-Man strip in Tales to Astonish; The X-Men, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Captain Marvel, as well as an endless stream...

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