Legends of the Superheroes!
Ah, that incredible year 1979. It was a wondrous year - for me, anyway - and it certainly got off to some kind of start on January 18th and again a week later on January 25th. This Batman '66 fan (and no, we didn't call it that back then but it's a really convenient identifier now) was glued to the tiny black and white 13 inch TV I'd inherited when my older brother moved out - because NBC was airing the first part of a two part special trying to cash in on the success of The Incredible Hulk over on CBS.
The Legends of the Superheroes brought back Adam West and Burt Ward as Batman and Robin, and scored Frank Gorshin as the Riddler. There are several other heroes as can be seen in the picture above - but no one too famous is among those actors. But on the bad guy side hanging out with Gorshin you have actors like Charlie Callas, Howard Morris, and Jeff Altman.
The show aired in two hour long segments. The first was called "The Challenge" and was a story based episode pitting the heroes against the villains. Unfortunately, even at that tender age I could see that these shows went beyond the original Batman series's camp into just plain childishness. This wasn't made any better the next week when that episode was called "The Roast" and was indeed a super goofy takeoff of the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts that had been hugely popular on NBC a few years earlier. I kept that second hour on my TV, but I think I only sporadically paid attention to it while I sent my Star Wars guys on a new adventure.
By the way - feeling that way about the shows during their initial airing did not prevent me from having Warner Archive whip me up a DVD of the two shows when they became available. I haven't watched them yet - I wonder how I'll feel about them now?
Until next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!
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