Questions that
keep me awake nights: Is Batgirl the daughter of Gotham City's police
commissioner or the niece of Bruce Wayne's faithful butler, Alfred? Wasn't
Alfred killed off at one time, then resurrected as a villain? Wasn't
he responsible for the mysterious disappearance of Dick Grayson's sweet old
Aunt Harriet?I'll tell you something: If the scriptwriters at Warners and the people at DC Comics don't start working together, I'm not going to get any sleep!
Two '40s serials are comical when you view them today. Batman's costume looks more like a Halloween devil. The cowl is so ill-fitting that Lewis Wilson (in the first serial) and Robert Lowery (in the second serial) have to tilt their heads back to see through the eye slits. And what do we see in the Batcave? Bats! No wonder Robert Lowery became angry when I questioned him about his Batman. Holy temper tantrums! "That serial ruined my career!" he yelled.
I made a fast exit from the Paramount lot where he was working to visit Adam West over at 20th Century Fox. ABC Television had just acquired the rights to Batman and had big plans for a series and a movie. Adam kept Batman alive until Frank Miller's Dark Knight established a new flight plan for a Warner's epic starring Michael Keaton.
Now we're on the edge of our Batseats hoping a "prequel" will show Christian Bale at a really awesome looking computer. If Martha Stewart needs five MacIntosh desktops, two Mac powerbook laptops, an IBM ThinkPad, and a 3Com Palm Pilot to do her work, then the World's Greatest Detective needs to be plugged in.
Until then, check out "Batman: Dead End," director Sandy Collora's eight minute adventure. It's terrific.