Animated Batman in the Seventies
Saturday Morning Cartoon Incarnations of The Dark Knight
Nov 16, 2008
Created in 1939 by Bob Kane, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics Magazine, issue 27, National Publications answer to the success of Superman in Action Comics a year earlier. By 1940 the character was so popular that he had his own title, Batman. While the character has had continuous success in the pages of comic books and graphic novels ever since, Batman has also appeared in virtually every other popular media form.
A Confusing Tangle
In 1968, Filmation managed to secure the animation rights to the Batman character and produced 34 individual stories as part of The Batman/Superman Hour. Half the stories were 13 minutes long, divided into two parts, while the other seventeen stories were single 6 and 1/2 minute segments. Voice actor Olan Soule played Batman and Casey Kasem of America's Top Forty fame played Robin. The show ran until 1969.
Over the next decade, Soule, Kasem and actors Adam West and Burt Ward, who had originally played the Dynamic Duo in the live action Batman show, would voice the characters in different shows and different combinations leaving fans questioning the accuracy of favourite childhood memories of Saturday mornings.
Repackaged
In 1969, the Batman portions of The Batman/Superman Hour were repackaged as Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder and aired in a half hour format. In 1972, Soule and Kasem voiced Batman and Robin in two Scooby-Doo Movies, The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair and The Caped Crusader Capers.
Super Friends
In 1973, sixteen episodes of the Super Friends were produced. Once again, Olan Soule and Casey Kasem voiced the Dynamic Duo and they would do so for most of the various versions of the show that aired once the show came back to the airwaves in 1977.
Concurrent and Confusing
The New Adventures of Batman was produced in 1977 by Filmation, the company that had originally brought an animated Batman to television in 1968. This show only ran for 16 episodes, but was repackaged repeatedly over the next half decade with other Filmation shows like Tarzan and the Super 7. The series is best remembered for the return of Adam West and Burt Ward to the roles of Batman and Robin and the inclusion of the mischievous Bat-Mite.
The fact that Hanna-Barbera was concurrently producing the All New Super Friends Hour with Soule and Kasem as Batman and Robin made the return of West and Ward to the roles of the Dynamic Duo confusing to young fans. That the sixteen episodes were aired nearly continuously in repeats over the next several years while Hanna-Barbera continued to produce new versions of the Super Friends cartoons just added to the confusion.
Olan Soule and Casey Kasem continued to provide the voices of Batman and Robin until the final season of the Super Friends, renamed The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians. In this last season, Adam West reprized his role as Batman, but Burt Ward did not appear, so in this single instance Casey Kasem played Robin to Adam West's Batman.
A Dark Knight Free Decade
After the demise of the Super Friends show in 1986, Batman would disappear from television until his triumphant return in 1992 in Batman - The Animated Series.
