That’s Not A Collectible, That’s a Paycheck

The last few years of Ray Bradbury’s life coincided with the first years of this blog, which is how I learned there was a corner of the publishing industry that thrived on mining his files to find material he’d written for Hollywood that had never been produced, or was drafted for some other purpose and never reached the public, that could be turned into a profitable small press project. New Bradbury material was always in demand.

Harlan Ellison is another writer with deep files who’s kept that Midas touch. The latest example is Ellison’s contribution to DC Comics’ Batman ’66 project based on an unproduced outline for the Adam West Batman series. Ellison’s episode would have introduced Two-Face.

Alex Ross cover for he Two-Face issue of Batman '66

Alex Ross cover for he Two-Face issue of Batman ’66

Len Wein told ComicsAlliance how the project came together:

ComicsAlliance: …Did you work from a full script, a pitch that never got used for the series…

Len Wein: It is an adaptation of a lost outline. Harlan Ellison – the legendary Harlan Ellison, I should say – had done an outline for this show back in the ’60s, which for reasons not important here, never got produced, and he’d put it in a drawer and forgotten about it.

So, several months ago he was cleaning out his files and went, “Oh my god, this old thing… Hey wait, DC’s doing a book on this [Batman ’66], maybe I can sell them the outline!” And he called up and said, “I’ve got this outline for an episode, are you guys interested?” and they all went, “Sure, yeah, uh-huh!” because, after all, it’s Harlan. So he sold them the outline, and called me up – Harlan’s my oldest friend, we’ve been buddies for forty-odd years – and he told me what I just told you, and said that now they needed to get somebody to script it. And I said, “I’m available!” So he said great, he called DC, they called me up and said, “you wanna do this?” and I said, “you bet.”

And then my dear old friend [José Luis] Garcia-López, one of the great artists in the history of the biz, got involved as penciller. And it started to snowball from there, it became this A-List thing. Joe Prado called up and said, “I hear there’s a Garcia-López job that needs inking” and we went, “sure, it’s yours.” Alex Sinclair called up and said, “I hear there’s this special thing going on that needs coloring.” And then Alex Ross calls up and goes, “You mind if I paint a cover for this?” And it just became this insane project.

See the complete interview here.

6 thoughts on “That’s Not A Collectible, That’s a Paycheck

  1. Based on the 1966 Batman TV series? That would explain the lavender bat-costume and why Robin looks like Burt Ward. Now why would anyone be interested in an unpublished script of that old chestnut — the very definition of “camp” — when Batman today is a very serious matter? It can only be the Ellison name on it.

  2. Taral, the Batman show which premiered on Jan. 12, ’66, is undergoing a resurgence in popularity. The entire series has been released as a box set in blue-ray, and DC is currently publishing a comic specifically of the Adam West / Burt Ward versions of the characters.

    The Grim Avenger of the Night was extraordinary in 1985, but some people have grown tired of the morose, grim avenger and want to return to when comics were fun to read, and to have a Batman comic which caters to the market at which kids begin to read comic books, a market which gave super-hero comics their highest circulations.

    I once mentioned to Peter David that if all the little kids wearing Batman costumes on Hallowe’en knew and understood how and why he became Batman, they would be clinging to their parents’ legs, crying in grief and fear. He replied that he had never considered that, and the image of the children’s reaction was disturbing, or something to that effect.

  3. Taral, the Batman show which premiered on Jan. 12, ’66, is undergoing a resurgence in popularity. The entire series has been released as a box set in blue-ray, and DC is currently publishing a comic specifically of the Adam West / Burt Ward versions of the characters.

    The Grim Avenger of the Night was extraordinary in 1985, but some people have grown tired of the morose, grim avenger and want to return to when comics were fun to read, and to have a Batman comic which caters to the market for the age at which kids begin to read comic books, a market which gave super-hero comics their highest circulations.

    I once mentioned to Peter David that if all the little kids wearing Batman costumes on Hallowe’en knew and understood how and why he became Batman, they would be clinging to their parents’ legs, crying in grief and fear. He replied that he had never considered that, and the image of the children’s reaction was disturbing, or something to that effect.

    You have to remember that if the Golden Age of Science Fiction is 12, the Golden Age of Comic Books is between 5 and 8. To this day, people are coming up to Stan Lee at comics conventions and thanking him for, literally, teaching them how to read, specifically mentioning Spider-Man.

    I’ve been reading /s/e/q/u/e/n/t/ia/l/ /a/r/t/ comic books for 55 years, and that never would have happened if all I could have found were The Dark Knight version of The Batman and the Man of Steel version of Superman.

  4. The old TV Batman has been in and out of “print” for as long as I can remember, but it always seemed to appeal to aging guys like me, who saw it when they were 12 or 14. I have a hard time imagining it being popular with a similar age group today, since the show wasn’t really written for kids, but for older teens who thought it was funny because it was so square. (Which seems to have been the intention.) While the current Dark Knight may be a lot too grim for small children, I don’t think small children read that many comics any more. It’s still the province of the 16 to 21 crowd, who buy every issue of X-Men and Guardians, and are not old enough to care about Adam West. But I don’t think we need any fancy reasons why DC would be trying to revive the old TV show in some way or other. Comics companies routinely recycle old properties in the constant effort to squeeze a few more dimes out of the market. I was just a little surprised anyone thought there was a dime left in this.

  5. An ex-girlfriend of mine’s father played one of Burgess Meredith’s henchmen, Shark, in the TV series. It will always hold a special place for me. 🙂

  6. I seem to recall that the character of Aunt Harriet was added to the series to keep it from being too much of a Boy’s Club, so the Wertham factor still stung after all those years. She was added to the comic book, and when the show ended, killed off.

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