Eventually Batgirl, Batwoman and the like were canned (along with the extra-dimensional being Bat-Mite and pet Ace The Bat-Hound) as the Golden Age came to a close and new DC editor Julie Schwartz sought to throw out all of those silly concepts, as he heralded the ever-so-slightly more serious Silver Age. Whose works had a spanner thrown right in thanks to Adam West. The sixties Batman series is a fantastically campy, pop-art-inspired piece of lunacy. There are those on-screen comic-style sound effects. Batman has a special go-go dance. The Bat-Shark Repellent. It's a very silly show, and it ended up being a big influence on the comics of the time, in more ways than one. Schwartz was asked to come up with a new female character in order to get more women to watch the TV show, with executive producer William Dozier suggested that the new character would be the daughter of Gotham City's Police Commissioner James Gordon, and that she would adopt the identity of Batgirl. And thus, Barbara Gordon was born.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
