Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. The second to last episode of Superman & Lois season 1 aired last night and it was insane! I'll talk about that more next week when I review the season following the season finale. Marvel's What If...? begins today and I'm watching the first episode with my sister on Disney+ tonight though I'm not as excited about that show as I am about the season 2 premiere of Star Trek: Lower Decks, which airs on CTV Sci-Fi Channel tomorrow night. So lots of cool stuff coming up. Today though I'm here to talk about a one-shot comic from 2014, with a cover date of January, 2015. So let's get into Batman '66: The Lost Episode!
The 1966 Batman TV series is one of my favourite shows of all time. In fact it's in my top 3 favourite shows with Star Trek: The Next Generation beating it, and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers right behind it. So when DC Comics announced in 2013 that they were going to be publishing a monthly, ongoing, comic book series based on the TV series, I got excited. Especially since, even though it was a digital comic first, they were still going to publish physical copies of the series, combining a few chapters of the digital comic into the standard single issue comic book format. Unfortunately I was only able to get the first issue when it came out in 2014 and then came a period where I just wasn't able to get to the comic book store often enough to pick up other issues. Though I did manage to pick up issue #7 though I didn't keep it as this was just before the Great Media Purges of 2015 and 2016 and I was fine with just having the first issue.
This issue is actually based on a story treatment written by Science Fiction author, Harlan Ellison, who is well known among Trekkies as the writer of the TOS episode, "The City on the Edge of Forever". The original treatment is replicated in the back of the issue, and it's dated 1965. So it was meant to be written for the show's first season which began in January, 1966. The episode would've introduced Two-Face into the TV show, and both the network and the studio greenlit the story to be developed into a script for production. However, for whatever reason it never got made. There doesn't seem to be an actual reason why it wasn't produced, but that happens on every show. There are always episodes that, for whatever reason, never get produced, even though the network and studio okays the script or story treatment. My theory is that William Dozier, the producer of Batman, was hesitant to put Two-Face in the show because the comics hadn't used him since the early '60s and even then had only used him sparingly since the '40s due to the lighter tone the comics that DC published during the Silver Age (1950s to 1970s) had and Two-Face was a darker character. And that's why the treatment was never produced.
As a story it's actually pretty good. Two-Face doesn't feel out of place in the world of the show like I thought he would when I first saw the solicitations for this issue back in 2014. In fact he actually fits in quite nicely despite being a more tragic figure than any of the other versions of the Batman characters that appear in the show, such as Batman and Robin themselves. What's cool is that the late Len Wein wrote this comic book adaptation only three years before he passed away.
The only thing that's odd to me about this issue is the narration. It's a mix of Dozier's narration from the TV show and the comic book narration from the 1960s. Which is interesting, but I almost prefer it if it was just one or the other. I can pretend I hear Dozier's voice as I read the narration, particularly when it says "Meanwhile in Stately Wayne Manor..." or something along those lines.
Something that I'm confused about is how Batman and Robin got to the auction house before Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara. When the Commissioner asks Batman, he simply states that it was just a matter of preplanning and preparation and knowledge of the traffic light schedule for Gotham City. However, just to make sure I went back and looked at the artwork to see if Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson were in the background anywhere but there doesn't to be any panels where they show up. So I guess it's a mystery as to how Batman and Robin got there so quickly. It doesn't ruin the story by any means, it's just weird that we don't know how Batman and Robin got there so quickly.
The artwork is pretty good. It's a mix of the designs from the show itself, and designs based on the designs in the comics at the time. For example, the Batcave has the atomic pile, but is also much larger and includes the trophy room set up to how it was in the comics at the time the TV show was starting.The artists on the book are Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Joe Prado. I'm not familiar with Prado's work, aside from a couple of issues of the 52 series which ran for a year following Infinite Crisis in the late 2000s. Garcia Lopez however was the penciler and inker on many DC Comics publications in the '70s, '80s, and '90s, including many Batman titles, like the comic book adaptation of Batman Returns. So I'm a little more familiar with his work than I am with Prado's.
Overall this was a great issue. I hadn't planned on reviewing this issue this week, but as soon as Brad dropped it off on Saturday just before lunch and I saw it, I decided that I needed to review it this week. If you can find it, it's worth picking up.
That's it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of the first episode of Marvel's What If...? which I'm watching sometime after dinner with my sister. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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