Comic Collector Says BATMAN TV Show Has Had “Terrible Effect”

Here’s a short article that ran in the Stanford Summer Weekly on July 31, 1966, just six months after the BATMAN TV series starring Adam West had begun broadcasting. At this point, the entire nation had been swept up in a wave of “Batmania” that had made the show a cultural phenomenon. But some viewers, such as college student Jack Marchese, the comic book reader surveyed in this article, weren’t as pleased with the series as most of America was. This is reflective of the feelings of most comic book readers of the era, who felt that the show made a mockery of the thing that they loved, and turned them into the butt of the joke–which to a certain degree is absolutely correct.

The article’s author, Steve Gruber, has clearly never heard of Marvel Comics before–he misspells the company’s name “Marval” on multiple occasions.