Saturday, June 10, 2017

Adam West passes away at 88

Adam West as The Gray Ghost
Just heard the sad news (leukemia) a couple hours ago and I wanted to get a posting up this weekend with a little bit of my thoughts on West's career. As a kid I kinda used to like the original Batman TV show because like Spiderman on The Electric company it was one of the very few live action outlets available for some of my favorite comic book characters. As I got older I won't lie I did develop a certain degree of disdain for the show because of it's campyness although I certainly never felt that way for West himself who by all accounts has always been a stand up guy in his personal life.
I'm really glad that over the years he managed to in part rejuvenate his show biz career despite his type casting handicap with voice acting work on The Simpsons and The Family Guy. As some of you may remember he was also the voice actor in The Grey Ghost episode of the Batman animated series. That series brought a lot of critical acclaim and respect to the super hero genre and that episode in particular was certainly one of the best if not the best episode of the series. Ironically, West plays an out of work actor who can't couldn't find new acting gigs due to a type casting handicap but would go on to help Batman solve a series of crimes carried out by some psychotic fan boy using sophisticated remote controlled toys.

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Ya know I have to admit even though I came to grow weary of the original Batman TV show I always maintained my fondness for the classic Batmobile from that series (I dug the Batboat to). I used to have the original die cast ones from Corgi but at least I still have a couple packaged ones from a Hotwheels release some 8 or 9 years ago which I saw in a Dollar store of all places. Looking back I should have picked up more of them. As a crime fighter you probably don't want to drive around seated in an open canopy (not much protection from gun fire) but that's ok it was such a cool design I still love it till this day.

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NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER. WE DO NOT SUBMIT.
Just something I cooked up in photoshop this morning that would have been cool if it really had happened.

10 comments:

  1. Yeah I saw this earlier today. So fucking sad. First James Bond, now Batman, WTF 2017!? Stop killing off my childhood heroes!!!!!

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  2. BTW, nice photoshop job. I could see this happening, that or a team-up w/ Xena. Just saying...

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    1. never was into Xena even though Lucy Lawless was pretty hot. that show was a bit too campy for my taste. along with a kinda of a Captain America The First Avenger vibe it also had a little bit of that Zack Snyder slow mo action going on so for me it's Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman with Leonidas and his 300. and yes, Wonder Woman does kill ...albeit with a little less blood and gore.

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  3. All our heroes are fading away.

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    1. yep, so far it's been a really shit year for celebrity deaths from the sci-fi comic book genre. there's been Miguel Ferrer, Gordon Henley, Richard Hatch, Bill Paxton, Roger Moore and now Adam West.

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  4. May he rest in peace. Don't really recall much of that show, the music theme and the funny comic book style sound effects come to mind.
    Flawless photoshop work there Alex, although if we stick to Greek mythology Amazons fought against Greek heroes usually.

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  5. looks like i'll have to do a little research on where the Amazons fit into classic Greek mythology exactly. however, i still like the idea of Wonder Woman having fought by the side of Leonidas and his 300 perhaps in some sort of time travel or parallel universe story line.

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  6. In brief, Hercules fought them during his labours, Achilles during the Trojan war, but the most famous incident in Greek myths is when Theseus king of Athens eloped with the Amazon queen prompting an Amazon invasion in Athens and a great battle. The Amazon queen had come to love Theseus and married him also giving birth to a son named Hippolytos, when the time of battle came she fought alongside Theseus against her fellow Amazons and helped the Athenians win although she was killed as well. There's a fantastic novel by American writer Steven Press field called " last of the Amazons" if you want to have an entertaining read about it.

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    1. interesting, thanks for that. although i still want to do some more in depth research on Amazons in Greek mythology. ya know when it came to foreign history Greece was always my absolute favorite and i also loved those early Hollywood movies that were based on Greek mythology like Jason and The Argonauts and Clash of The Titans even though they had that bad stop motion model animation. later in college i was able to take an actual Greek Mythology class i really liked how the behavior of the gods were basically a reflection of the human condition. so glad i was able to visit Greece it's self at some point in my life time.

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