Adam West has passed away, and while it's another grim reminder of the remorseless march of time, he certainly lived a full life.
Like Roger Moore, he became typecast, but what a great role to be stuck with. His was the arguably the most entertaining and enjoyable Batman ever to don the cape.
Sure, it was campy, but I have to respect how West could sit there in that silly outfit and maintain absolute seriousness while being suspended over a pot of dry ice or whatever other bizarre contraption he confronted. That takes a lot of skill.
The Baby Boomers ate it up and younger folk like me loved watching the re-runs.
Of course like everything else, the Boomers had to ruin it by deciding that superheroes weren't silly kid stuff but Stories of Deep Meaning.
Thus we have the current endless crop of comic-book adaptations, each vying to be the most serious, joyless, violent and explosion-packed version yet put on film.
When I was a kid, I liked comic books, but I was never that into it. By the time I was a teenager, I'd moved on to more serious reading and I thought the people obsessing with "graphic novels" were a little odd in the head. I have since confirmed that belief.
Let's face it: superheroes are lousy literary characters. They don't really have a past, they have an "origin story." There's no overarching life story, just a series of endlessly repeated episodes, which often include repeated deaths and resurrections.
They aren't even characters, they're just properties to be exploited.
Just when the "definitive" version moves through the screen, a new one rolls down the assembly line. It's just boring now.
Back in the 60s, though, no one took comic books seriously. They were goofy kid stuff, and making a live-action show required a well-developed sense of humor.
Adam West got the joke and shared it with us in a way no one else could. Rest in Peace.
Chateau Lloyd 
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