Batman '66 Meets the Green Hornet!

[Sawyer]

http://www.newsarama.com/20529-kevin-smith-toplines-batman-66-meets-the-green-hornet-crossover.html

KEVIN SMITH Toplines BATMAN '66 MEETS THE GREEN HORNET Crossover
by Lucas Siegel, Site Editor
Date: 11 March 2014 Time: 09:45 AM ET

Kevin Smith is going back to Batman, though this time with a little more flare. In a cross-company team-up, DC Comics and Dynamite Entertainment are putting Batman ‘66 and Green Hornet into a digital-first comic together, written by Kevin Smith & radio personality Ralph Garman.

The series, appropriately named, appropriately named Batman ’66 Meets the Green Hornet, will launch May 21, 2014 on DC Digital sites, and will go to print on June 4. The series will continue to debut on digital-first biweekly for the 12-part series.

Kevin Smith, an outspoken Batman fan (he even runs a podcast called “Fatman on Batman”) told USA Today writing this series is “like getting to be 5 years old again and tell stories that you would have made up while watching the show as a kid. To be able to do it, man, it really does bring it full circle in a bucket-list kind of fashion."

Smith has written both Batman and Green Hornet before, adapting his own big-screen treatment for the latter for Dynamite, and writing two grim and violent Batman mini-series for DC. This series, however, is built around the tone of the ‘60s Batman TV show, and in fact acts as a sequel to a 1967 live-action crossover. They will face the now “General” Gumm, the same villain they faced together on TV (though with a promotion). The series will be drawn by Ty Templeton.

"I have been preparing for this particular gig my entire life," Garman told USA Today. The writer has a “massive” collection of Batman merchandise and says he “never strayed far from this [version of the] character” despite the many reinterpretations. He likes that this version of the Batman family is more kid-friendly, as well.

"This is a straightforward hero who does the right thing because it's the right thing to do, and Robin always learns an important lesson,” Garman said.

Smith is already lobbying for the comic based on a TV show to then transform into an animated movie, with most of the original cast (who are still alive) performing their own voices. “Adam still sounds like Adam. Hopefully that's somewhere in the cards down the road, if the comic book connects the way we think it will."