Adam West
It appears some television viewers prefer “Batman”, shown March 17, 1966, over the Gemini 8 coverage. The ABC-TV network, which airs the show on Wednesday nights, reported 1,000 telephone calls protesting the interruption of the show for reports on the space flight. Adam West portrays the hero in the series. (AP Photo)

Legendary Batman and nerdlebrity royalty Adam West has died at age 88.

I’m heartbroken to know that we’ll never hear his amazing voice again or hear his good natured anecdotes, but he had a good life.

A journeyman actor before and after, West will forever be known as the star of the zany 1966 Batman TV show, a role he inhabited with genre defining deadpan humor. genre defining deadpan humor. 

“The tone of our first show, by Lorenzo Semple Jr., was one of absurdity and tongue in cheek to the point that I found it irresistible,” West said. “I think they recognized that in me from what they’d seen me do before. I understood the material and brought something to it.

“You can’t play Batman in a serious, square-jawed, straight-ahead way without giving the audience the sense that there’s something behind that mask waiting to get out, that he’s a little crazed, he’s strange.”

Wset was one of the first celebs to embrace the comic-con circuit and was a welcomed much loved presence at cons for years.

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6 COMMENTS

  1. “the wackiest Batman of them all”

    I dunno. George Clooney might have outdone West for wackiness and high camp.

    West was MY Batman when I was a kid. The weekly cliffhangers, when the show aired twice a week, generated plenty of playground debate. The show worked on two levels: as a satirical comedy for adults, and an exciting adventure show for children.

    As for West’s deadpan, ultra-earnest delivery, Grant Morrison put it best: The Playboy sophisticates might have laughed, but every kid knew that was how a superhero would talk.

  3. His Batman was definitely quirky…and done in a style that I felt I quickly “outgrew,” but as a person West seems like he was truly a class-act human being. I suspect the world has lost a greater hero than it knows.

  4. We will get to hear him one more time. There is a Bat-man vs Two-Face animated movie will Shatner as Two-face coming.

  5. West had a good supporting role in the 1994 satire, THE NEW AGE. See it if you can find it. The role proved he could have had a career as a character actor, if personal appearances for Bat-fans hadn’t been so lucrative.

  6. He was an awesome bad guy in an episode of The Big Valley. He murdered women and burned them with a cigar. Super creepy. I will miss him at conventions. He was always nice to me when I saw him.

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