TO THE BATPOLES #190: Batman refs: “Mighty Mouse” & “The Simpsons”

General goings on in the 1966 Batman World

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bat-rss
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TO THE BATPOLES #190: Batman refs: “Mighty Mouse” & “The Simpsons”

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The cultural impact of Batman '66 was felt for decades after, and still reverberates. This time we discuss a couple more late-20th-century cartoons that showed evidence of that impact: Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, which in 1987 gave us Night of the Bat-Bat, featuring Bat-Bat, a hero with the powers of a bat and a penchant for corny one-liners; and numerous episodes of The Simpsons, including 1992's Mr. Plow, in which Adam West makes a couple of heavily-Bat-referencing appearances; and 1995's Radioactive Man, which gives us the "campy '70s version" of that hero. Holy stand-in!

We also touch on the passing of a committed Bat-fan and regular correspondent to our show, High C.

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"I'm half-demented with whimsical outrage!"
-- The Joker, in a line cut from "The Joker's Epitaph"
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BATWINGED HORNET
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Re: TO THE BATPOLES #190: Batman refs: “Mighty Mouse” & “The Simpsons”

Post by BATWINGED HORNET »

Admittedly, I did not watch any Mighty Mouse cartoon produced after the original Terrytoons shorts...well, I caught ONE episode of 1980's The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle, and instantly regretted it, to the degree that I was not going to watch another Mighty Mouse series, so for this discussion, I'm going in "clean" so to speak. *shrugs*

You wondered if any of the writers on Mighty Mouse might have viewed the '66 series as just one of many Batman versions (possibly leading to the choice to satirize that version?), but there's little doubt Doug Menoch had a more fixed idea of Batman in mind, since he spent a combined 11 years writing for both Batman and Detective Comics (one run from 1983-86, the other after the cartoon, from 1992-'98), so you had at least one writer who would not necessarily have the Dozier series be the 1st version to come to mind when developing a Bat-satire.

About the idea that networks prevented animators from using sight gags (and abstract backgrounds)...I'd have to disagree in the broader examination of TV cartoons, since there were plenty in Al Brodax's Popeye the Sailor cartoon (1960-63), and while that was syndicated, character oddities in the background & gag newspaper headlines, were a feature of the series, which made an otherwise poor cartoon seem bizarre from time to time.

Tim, you questioned why The Simpsons episode used a tilt to a Dutch angle on West, but that was not meant to be a direct play on the '66 series' take on villains, but I always took it to mean West is acting like he's getting lost in his past and/out of his mind (I think Paul refers to a similar observation in the Wikipedia entry), while going on about his Batman, hence the reason Homer steers Bart & Lisa away, while warning them not to make eye contact. That Dutch angle was more in line with its use to imply insanity and/or a bizarre situation in everything from Hitchcock films, to episodes of The Twilight Zone.
Beneath Wayne Manor
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