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The protectors of Gotham City

© Jeff Sparkman

As much as it may have saddened viewers, Filmation tinkered with the Superman/Aquaman show by removing the King of the Seven Seas and replacing him with some heroes with very little appeal or exposure.

Batman and Robin.

OK, I'm just kidding. Batman and Robin were still extremely popular, thanks to the TV show starring Adam West and Burt Ward as the Dynamic Duo.

Henceforth, in 1968, viewers were treated to the "Batman/Superman Hour." Yep -- the guy moves in and takes over the title of the show. Performing the voices of our heroes in these animated shorts were Olan Soule and Casey Kasem, who would return to these characters in the Superfriends shows.

While the Batman shorts relied a little heavily on puns, it was much less campy than its live-action counterpart. Batman and Robin faced such villains as the Joker, Penguin, Riddler, Catwoman and "the cool, cruel, Mr. Freeze."

As a bonus, Batgirl (voiced by Jane Webb) would show up every now and then to help out.

While the designs for Batman and Robin were pretty good, I always had a problem with Batman's colors. Keep in mind that this could be because I'm mildly colorblind. The gray they used for Batman's costume looked a little too blue for my tastes, causing a lack of contrast.

But then, who really watched cartoons to critique color schemes? No, we want excitement.

On the whole, the episodes were pretty well-paced, keeping the excitement going along at a nice clip. Sure, Gotham City seemed filled with buildings that looked almost exactly the same, but we knew what was going on after only the first few seconds, even before we found out the name of the episode.

This show got around the issue of violence in an interesting way. During the fights scenes, they would cut to a flash frame or two and then we'd see the villain flying into the wall. Thankfully, no POWs, BIFFs or ZOWIEs were used.

I swear, if I ever read a news story about Batman or comic books in general that didn't use a variation of that theme, I'd be amazed.

Anyway, back to the show. While the stories were good (objectively, many were less dumb than the Superfriends), none were striking enough to be permanently embedded in my brain. In fact, I have very few memories of the show that come to mind. It was just a nice little cartoon that didn't try too hard.

Filmation would return to these characters a few years later with "The New Adventures of Batman and Robin."