Farewell to a dark knight

My life-long love affair with the flying black rodent-man

I fully expect that in the skilful hands of director/writer Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight Rises, the final film of the Batman trilogy, will rake in hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. A whole generation of fans have heard Christian Bale channel his best night-after-a-bender gravelly voice and exclaim that he's Batman. He's not.


Don't misunderstand me, the three films are beautiful, dark visions of a character I love. But that's not MY Batman.


Growing up in Alberta during the 1970s there were two Batmen for me (not quite sure what the proper way to write about multiples of Batman, but let's go with it).


My first Batman was personified in eye-popping colour by Adam West and punctuated with a "Thwapp!" and an "Awk!". Despite over-the-top acting and cardboard sets that would make your eyes bleed, the half hour psychedelic trip into a living, breathing comic book was a revelation for an impressionable young boy.

While I may not have watched the show during its original run (at four-years-old, I was probably involved in very important things that four-year-olds do), I never missed an episode of the reruns that graced my family's TV set every afternoon in the early 1970s. I'm not quite sure my younger sister shared the same enthusiasm for the show, but watching the show was one of those things we frequently did together after school.


Adam West has deliciously campy in his role as the not-so-dark-knight Looking back on the list of famous folks appearing in the show I'm truly amazed by the names I now recognize, only a few were familiar to a pre-teen boy. This was a cast of characters that included Cesar Romero, Julie Newmar, Eartha Kitt, Yvonne Craig, Milton Berle, Eli Wallach, John Astin, Otto Preminger and Vincent Price (my all-time favourite).


My "other" Batman at the time, was a lot darker and a whole lot stranger. My first exposure to "comic book Batman" was the Neal Adams, Dennis O'Neil version, I couldn't have asked for a better introduction to the man in black.

Any "old school" comic book nerd already knows that Adams and O'Neil are legends. These were two extremely talented creators who helped define the writing and artistic style of modern-day comics.


Adams, a talented artist with a distinctive style, tackled the Ben Casey comic strip, Jerry Lewis comic book and the X-Men before getting his shot at Batman.


O'Neil, who cut his teeth writing for Marvel Comics on Doctor Strange, the Rawhide Kid and Daredevil, joined DC Comics in the late 1960s in an editorial capacity. He soon found himself writing again thanks to editor Julius Schwartz.


Individually, Adams and O'Neil put out some terrific work, but when they were paired up to create a version of Batman that was unlike anything seen on daytime television, their work was exceptional.


While the pair would later go on to create a notable Green Lantern/Green Arrow mini-series that dealt with racism and drug addiction (themes not even hinted at in comics published in the 1970s), my memories focus on their version of the Dark Knight.


My "comic book Batman" was grittier, darker and completely removed from the Adam West Batman. Murder, mayhem, Man-Bat and Ra's al Ghul all came to life under the direction of Adams and O'Neil.


This Batman was a lot closer to the current day movie Batman.


Other than a movie-serial produced by Columbia Pictures in the 1940s, there was never any proper big screen adaptation of Bob Kane's iconic hero until 1989.


I'm one of those die hard fans who was quietly optimistic about what the ever-odd Tim Burton would be bringing to the character. I wasn't overly disappointed ... Michael Keaton put on a decent performance in the black tights (not a fan of Jack Nicholson's Joker, but c'est la vie). However, Val Kilmer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Carey and a Day-Glo George Clooney pretty much made me lose any faith I had in a big-screen Batman franchise.


Were my expectations too high? Perhaps...Yes, yes they were. Each incarnation of Batman had to compete with my fond childhood memories of an Adams/O'Neil Batman. You could say I matured beyond the nippled, wink-at-the-audience Batman brought forth by director Joel Schumacher (I wince just writing his name).


While the movies gradually became cringe-worthy and tarnished my dark knight, the vision of my childhood hero fared better between the covers of comics and graphic novels.

The Robin-killing "A Death in the Family" storyline, Brian Bolland and Alan Moore's "The Killing Joke", Frank Miller's "Dark Knight Returns"...too many to even list. Gotham was destroyed and pieced back together and so was Batman. There was no way about it, Batman was a brooding, dark hero who just wanted to be left alone as he fought his figurative and literal demons. It was dark, but oh my it was good.


Fast forward to 2005. The anticipation this fanboy had sitting in the movie theatre waiting for the title sequence of Batman Begins to unfurl on the big screen was almost palpable. I wasn't disappointed, this is the Batman I wanted to see. This was the Batman that pre-teen comic book nerd wanted to see.


The love affair with this on-screen Batman continued with The Dark Knight Returns. Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson and Heath Leger brought the pulp to life.


After the final film in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy unspools and the lights come up, where does it go from here? I'm cautiously excited to find out what direction DC Comics will take with the character on-screen. Will a Justice League movie be the catalyst that brings Batman back? Who knows, and honestly who cares. I'll leave that speculation to the movie bloggers.


No movie, animated series or comic book reincarnation can ever change the fond memories of the Batman I grew up with. For this Adam West/Neal Adams loving Batmaniac, Nolan's film trilogy was a worthy feast. My belly is full, my Dark Knight hunger has been sated, for now.