10 Terrible Mistakes That Almost Ruined Batman For Everyone

3. Camp

Sometimes it feels like people never learn, and that counts doubly for people in charge of beloved products. Rather than recognising what works and what is beloved by fans, the perpetual quest for innovation inevitably brings change, and petty often, those changes spell disaster.

DC are particularly guilty of this: even after Julius Schwartz saved Batman, be bringing darkness and focus, the initial success of the 1966 TV adaptation starring Adam West meant DC leant on him to change the tone of the comics to fit the show. That inevitably meant more camp.

But the TV show didn't last, and the camp wore thin quite quickly before the show was cancelled in 1968, leaving the comics with a tone that wasn't popular, and which was some distance from the successful model brought in by Schwartz. Thankfully, Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams swooped back in to distance Batman from the camp, and to return the character to the darker origins that Bob Kane had built.

But if it wasn't for that redemption, it's hard to see a camp Batman enduring for much longer than the Adam West show, even with the nostalgic revival of kitsch and camp more recently.