When I was a kid, Adam West and Burt Ward were the first super-heroes I remember following on TV. Less wooden than the Super-Friends, beset by better villains than Marvel’s 1970s live-action TV offerings, and a few years ahead of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, syndicated reruns of the 1966-1968 Batman TV show were a staple of my afternoon viewing.

When I was a teenager, that same show was my mortal enemy. In my mind, West and Ward were the reason no one took comic books seriously. Their stilted earnestness, their cheesy opponents, those cameras tilted as if they were filming on a wildly rocking yacht, those silly fight scenes that made Captain Kirk look like Bruce Lee…ugh. The show’s widespread popularity with the general viewing public distorted its opinion of super-heroes and prevented them from being treated as Serious Literature. Between Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Tim Burton’s dark, madcap reboot, that problem eventually sorted itself. In a way. Sort of. At the very least, they opened a dialog that taught the uninformed masses that Batman hadn’t looked or acted like Adam West for a very long time. As of 1989, I deemed this good.

Now that I’m over twice that age and a little more difficult to entertain, the DC Universe has become a frequent antagonist. I didn’t need the September 2011 “New 52” reboot that tossed out the timeline previously in place since 1986 (plus numerous course corrections, major and minor). I’m a little weary of the trend to keep pushing mainstream super-heroes closer and closer toward R-rated “edginess”. I’m no longer interested in following major-event crossovers that require me to triple my comics budget for months at a time. I wish Our Heroes were still allowed to have a sense of humor. And I miss the days when super-heroes were happy in their work at least a few times per year. If one of them should be caught having something resembling fun, surely this would signal the comics endtimes and DC would have to reboot their entire publishing line again.

I’m not sure when I turned into that old man. Oh, wait, yes I am — it was that halcyon era when I sampled over twenty of the New 52 launch titles, hoped for the best, then spent these last two years rejecting them one by one. At this point I’m collecting only three DC Universe books, and two of those are ending soon. Congrats to Charles Soule and Kano, whose refreshing take on Swamp Thing will be my sole monthly DCU contact point come September.

Wait!

What’s this?

A new Batman title not set in the DC Universe? Guaranteed crossover-proof? Not one single scene composed like a Saw homage? And it dares to be funny? Can this be?

Behold the comic that should not exist: Batman ’66. From the mind of writer Jeff Parker (purveyor of whimsy in past works such as Agents of Atlas and the criminally underrated Marvel Adventures Spider-Man) and the pop-art styling of Jonathan Case (whom I last saw drawing The Guild) comes DC Comics’ very first intentional continuation of the Adam West/Burt Ward incarnation of the Dynamic Duo, in all-new stories teeming with classic heroic action and covered in eye-gouging Ben-Day dots. All the elements my stuffy teenage self would’ve hated are here:

* The classic costumes, complete with Robin’s tiny green shorts and Batman’s eyebrows on his mask!
* Batman’s stern, off-topic lectures to Robin! (I can even hear the voices of West and Ward in my head!)
* The special guest villains! (The Riddler and Catwoman were both executed in respectively solid shades of Gorshin and Newmar.)
* The iconic sound effects!
* Amazing Bat-gadgets! (Prepare to be dazzled by the Bat-3-Dimensional Modeler! Oooh, futuristic.)
* The running gag in which Batman and Robin Bat-walk up a wall, and someone famous opens a window for a cameo!
* Robin beginning his sentences with “Gosh!”

To be fair, a few parts are disconcerting. Since Parker and Case aren’t constrained by a 1960s TV budget, it’s weird imagining West and Gorshin performing death-defying aerial stunts atop a biplane that would be expensive to film and probably kill them both in the process. Alfred seems sprier than any previous version ever, and Aunt Harriet is 100% off-model. (I’m guessing legal issues?)

Overall, though, Batman ’66 seems just the cure for my too-old-for-the-new-DC blues. My teenage self would throw a tantrum if he caught me enjoying this, but he needs to understand that super-heroes and I are in very different places now, compared to where we were three decades ago. I have other sources to fulfill my Serious Literature needs. I’m secure enough in my hobby that I no longer consider this version of Batman a base effrontery to my reading preferences. Given that DC is publishing nothing else like it at the moment, its unique audacity stands out from an otherwise sullen, monotonous crowd.

Ironically, the Batman ’66 nostalgia-fest is one of DC’s online-first titles, available in the comics equivalent of an ebook format through ComiXology or at DC’s own online store. For fussy paper collectors like me, DC is also releasing hard-copy versions to comic shops everywhere after the fact. The first issue, which collects the first three digital installments, has been in stores since July 17th. Be sure to tell all your really old friends and acquaintances so we can band together and make this an astounding bestseller.

(Wouldn’t it be fun to see the looks on the faces of DC Editorial if this began outselling New 52 titles? I can dream.)