I was eight months old on January 12th, 1966. I didn’t watch the premiere of Batman that chilly evening—we lived in Toledo, Ohio—but somehow, I “saw” it, and it set the course for my life from that moment on.
There’s no doubt in my mind my father had the show on that Wednesday night. He was a Batman fan as a kid, growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, and I can’t imagine him not tuning it in in 1966. There were two other kids in the house then, my older brother and sister, four and five years old respectively, and while they weren’t necessarily devotees of comic books and the like, it’s also hard to imagine kids that age not watching Batman.
Me? I was probably sleeping at 7:30 pm, or at least burping and rolling over. Who knows? Maybe I was in the living room when “Batman IN COLOR” flashed on the screen. I’d like to think I was. How else would I have become such a fan myself of the Caped Crusader?
Well, for one thing, there was a lot of Bat-stuff around the house back when I was growing up. There were a few comics leftover from my father’s childhood, as well as a few then-current “New Look” Bat-books; there were a puzzle, a card game, coloring books, a Switch-N-Go set, and a Magic Magnetic Gotham City, just to name a few things. Add to all that the DNA I inherited and, well, any wonder I am how I am?