One Perfect Moment: The Riddler

[goggle_kid]

One page from 1989's Secret Origins special.

Comments

[jlroberson]

Well, here, see for yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/user/michelle66#grid/user/CB37CABDFE32E53A

http://www.youtube.com/user/michelle66#grid/user/CB37CABDFE32E53A

There's a lot more but you can find it from those. Do not assume the rest is as good as the first half of the first ones.

I won't deny there's fun to them, but I also find them a lot more annoying than I did even when I was a kid. But I was born in 1969. When I saw the reruns, at the same time I'm reading Neal Adams and Jim Aparo Batman stories, and if not that, the earliest ones, a lot of Jerry Robinson and Jack Burnley that you'd see in those great tabloid reprints. These shows never stood a chance. My first Batman was obviously something a kid could read, because I did. But I liked the intense detective, not this fat buffoon and his boy without pants. I'm sorry, the costumes, they just look completely stupid. I couldn't even get further than that.(I had a similar reaction to the JSA on Smallville)

The best critique of the show and how it cynically used the appearance of "camp" and "pop" as a marketing tool for something they basically just weren't competent to make as something more straightforward action-adventure was in MAD's parody of the show, and in fact I have scans and may post some. "Camp" I mean here in the marketing sense, the same way crap was resold to us with the magic word "irony" throughout the 90s. Well--hipsters; and today.

An interesting point there: I had not before seen the first episodes, in which the Riddler sets Batman up in such a way as he can sue him. No, seriously, that's the first story, and I have to say, I liked it. But at first it's actually as serious as such a thing could have been. Gorshin's a riot, but his character needs that and Gorshin IS the Riddler like Ledger was the Joker. He's actually a little more dangerous-seeming than he is funny, exactly. (And he enjoys everything he says and does so much) In fact, he's the only one of the villains on the story who's actually scary. More than the Joker. I wonder if anyone else has pointed this out.

The show was going to be like you see it at the start. You'll see they even mention, twice, his PARENTS ARE DEAD! Which they never do again. The moment it turns to "camp" is the club scene. The Batusi, in the very first episode. The story goes that West in the costume made it impossible for them to do other than go "ironic."

[psychopathicus_rex]

Alas, I fear dial-up has sabotaged any possibilities of watching TV over the 'net - the shortest one of those clips would take me well over an hour to load. It's possible that we may be upgrading soon, so I'll keep those links in mind, but until and unless that happens? No es bueno.