Bam! Kapow! Zowie! Television’s original Batman and Robin – Adam West and Burt Ward – will be special guests at this year’s annual Comic-Con convention.
The pair are best known as the dynamic duo in the iconic 1960s TV series.
They will be joined at the convention by Julie Newmar, one of two actresses who played the iconic Catwoman in the TV series.
The trio will attend the convention – an annual four-and-a-half day cyclone of TV show and movie launches held annually in San Diego – to launch the 1960s Batman series on DVD.
Despite the series’ popularity, its release on DVD, Blu-ray and DigitalHD has been delayed for many years by legal red tape over rights concerning music and the show’s many celebrity guest stars.
There were also unresolved disputes between William Dozier’s Greenway Productions, which made the series, 20th Century Fox, which owned it, and the ABC network, which aired it.
In addition to West and Ward, the series starred Alan Napier as Alfred Pennyworth, Batman’s loyal butler, and in its final season, Yvonne Craig as Batgirl.
But the show’s guest stars were its biggest draw: Frank Gorshin (later John Astin) as Riddler, Burgess Meredith as Penguin, Cesar Romero as the Joker and Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt as Catwoman. (Lee Meriwether also played Catwoman, but in a spin-off film.)
The series also featured film icons of the era, including Victor Buono as King Tut, Joan Collins as Siren, Vincent Price as Egghead, Carolyn Jones as Marsha, Queen of Diamonds, Milton Berle as Louie the Lilac, Tallulah Bankhead as Black Widow, Liberace as Chandell, Shelley Winters as Ma Parker and others.
The US ABC network produced 120 episodes over three seasons between 1966 and 1968, and despite the campness of the show, and the very serious iterations of Batman which followed in cinemas, it remains enormously popular.
Comic-Con was launched 1970 as a comic book convention but in the past three decades has become a major cultural event, and a major date in the Hollywood calendar to launch upcoming TV series, films and DVDs.
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– Sydney Morning Herald
