BATS-MAN

BATMAN
1966-1968 ABC
The Batman TV series was considered a big sensation when it first came out. Up to that point, there had been no representation of anything comic-book-like on television. Few TV shows other than sitcoms and cartoons were in color. Batman in the comics was more like the night vigilante he would become again in the movies a few decades later, but this basically was an adaptation of superheroes as a whole. Before heroic fantasy had any presence in film outside low-budget pictures in drive-ins and Saturday matinees, this was considered the last word on superheroes (still is as far as I'm concerned). Writers would call it camp, the closest definition I guess is “so bad it's good” before there were hundreds of things that could be called that.


BATS-MAN
MAD #105, September 1966
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Mort Drucker

There was always a narrator to establish the locations and situations of the show.

Bruce Wayne (Adam West) asks his butler Alfred (Alan Napier) about Dick and then hears him in the Bat-Cave. He slides down the Bat-Pole (here it's a slide) to get there and turns into Batman when he does it.

Jill St. John was an actress on one of the early Batmans.

Dick Grayson/Robin (Burt Ward) always made “holy____” exclamations.

The Kinsey Report was one of the first mainstream reports about sexuality in the fifties and sixties.

Don Ameche's most famous role had been The Story of Alexander Graham Bell so a running joke was that he was the inventor of the telephone. Talk show host Jack Paar left his show when he wasn't allowed to use a joke with the initials W.C. (water closet).

When the bomb Robin planted doesn't work, he comes up with another scheme.

The words of the narrator often came up on screen.

Alfred uses the razor while Batman gets a call from the Commissioner and ends up getting killed instead.

In this parody they don't use any of the villains made famous on the show.

The criminal that captures Batman is really Robin in disguise. This makes no sense and it's not supposed to. Batman is confused.

Robin did it because he's sick of being made a fool of. Batman tells him there's nothing wrong with being a clown since that's what makes them such a hit.


BATZMAN MEETS THE GREEN HORNED BEE
Cracked #73, November 1968
a: Marie & John Severin

Cracked did a crossover with The Green Hornet, a show on TV by the same producers of Batman that aired during the same era.

Be forewarned. There will be Asian stereotypes coming up in this portrayal of Green Hornet's chauffeur Kato (Bruce Lee).

Batman settles their feud by challenging Green Hornet to a battle of the toys.

For breaking into a toy store, they're arrested, and it turns out neither them nor the Green Hornet are number one.


BATTYMAN
Cracked #234, March 1988
w: Charles Hall
a: Rick Altergott

Done two decades later when the conventions of the show were more well-known.

It may be bordering on conflict of interest to include people I know in this project, but like I said on another post, strips by them are few and far between when I have a 25-year statute of limitations. And if I excluded people I know, people may say “but why didn't you include this comic or that comic?”. Besides, what is it to “know” someone, anyway? Someone I see every day? Every few years? Do I have to have been to their house? Does it mean someone I've corresponded with? That I've worked with? That I run into at conventions? That I see at parties? I met Jack Davis once, I can't say I knew him. I had Harvey Kurtzman for a teacher and went to his funeral, but I don/t think he counts. I know Rick through his wife. Lots of cartoonist couples out there. But I digress. Here's this.

Bruce and Dick try to keep their secret identities from Bruce's Aunt Harriet (Madge Blake). They get a tip from Alfred, their butler who knows their identities, about a call on the Bat phone.

It's a call from Commissioner Gordon (Neil Hamilton) and Chief O'Hara (Stafford Repp). They have a tip that The Joker (Cesar Romero), The Riddler (Frank Gorshin), Penguin (Burgess Meredith), and Catwoman (Julie Newmar) are about to hatch a plot against Gotham City.

They parody how the show would often use odd camera angles.

They often had cameos by celebrities when they climbed buildings.
The criminal plan is to flatten them in a giant comic book and they're using Catwoman as bait.

It's kind of hard to read that last panel. It says, “Is this the end of Adam Wurst and Burp Ward as Battyman and Rabid? Looks that way, if the movie producers have their way! Congratulations, you wont be able to find out by simply tuning in... SAME BATTY-TIME! SAME BATTY-CHANNEL!” parodying the cliffhanger announcements they would have at the end of part one of a two-part show (see video clip below).

This was part of TV Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor in Sick #51, March 1967, drawn by Angelo Torres.

Then circling back again to MAD, here's a parody from the version when it only existed as a comic
BAT BOY AND RUBIN
MAD #8, December-January 1954
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Wallace Wood

When they parodied Superman a few issues earlier, there was confusion from readers about whether what they printed was the real thing. These disclaimers put everything to rest.

Fleagle Gang was what Kurtzman called Al Williamson, Frank Frazetta, and other younger artists that were always hanging around the EC offices.

UPDATE:
This Sergio Aragones piece from MAD #106, October 1966, isn't exactly a parody, but was obviously done to cash in on the TV show.

From If Different Personalities Played Tarzan in Cracked #60, May 1967.

Part 2 of earlier 80s parody of 1966 show (see above) from Cracked #257 in October 1990. The first part was done three years earlier but the second part was made to cash in on the movie.

In the sequels to the 1989 movie, were Robin Williams originally considered for the Riddler, Michael Jackson for Robin, and Cher for the Catwoman? (Jerry Hall, who was in the first one, was married to Mick Jagger.)