The story is actually split into two hour-long segments. It was not until I walked past a TV playing the Legends Of The Superheroes at a Boston comic book convention that the awful truth finally dawned on me. My memory was so choppy that I figured the program never aired or I fell asleep before it started or some such thing. So great was my excitement that for years I imagined that I had dreamed the odd opening sequence in which the heroes assemble to their own unique introduction… because that was all that I remembered. As I tried to communicate early on… my vision of reality was tremendously skewed, my fantasies at an all time high and the arrival of an impossible dream come true nigh. Therefore, in my young mind, the comic books depicted fictionalized adventures while the actual heroes fought crime on screen every afternoon. I took to Green Lantern, the Flash and Hawkman as they were visually intriguing yet I never imagined I would see them on screen alongside Batman!Īdding to the mystique of the TV superhero, I actually met Adam West in costume at the World of Wheels and was convinced (as no doubt was he) that he WAS BATMAN. At the time, Justice League of America #200 (to date the finest comic ever published in my opinion) was a well read document and it introduced me to the new and old members of that time-honored crew. Part of the appeal for Legends of the Superheroes lay in the bizarre selection of characters. I clipped out the ad and stared at it every day until the fateful evening when it finally aired. A newspaper ad displayed the heroes in grainy black and white but to my eyes it was a magnificent display of herculean power.
The Christopher Reeves Superman movie was a major hit in my household, Super Friends was in heavy rotation on Saturday mornings and I enjoyed an ample diet of the aforementioned Batman TV program as well as the occasional cartoon. In any case, when a special two hour program aired on TV in January of 1979, I went through the roof. In fact, there is probably some comic out there where superheroes interact with folklore heroes as well as honored champions of historical importance and if so… that messed me up. In my mind Benjamin Franklin, Johnny Appleseed and Hawkman were all equally important.
I was convinced that the superheroes that I adored were godlike creatures worthy of recognition just as much as folklore and historical figures of note. I was upset when anyone laughed at the 1966 Batman TV show as I was certain my hero would never be anything to laugh at. I had a very skewed perception of reality as a kid… I mean REALLY skewed.
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