Captain's Library: THE DETECTIVES "Informers"

While Batman was a comic character played by Adam West on TV from 1966 to 1968...

...Adam West himself had already appeared in comic books five years earlier!

His character, Detective Sgt Steve Nelson was added to the cast for the third and final season of the police procedural The Detectives, which already featured a pair of actors who would go on to other genre shows during the 1960s...Mark Goddard on Lost in Space and Tige Andrews on The Mod Squad!

A strip based on The Detectives had several appearances in Dell's Four Color Comics anthology as tryouts for an ongoing run, but the show's cancellation ended those plans after only three issues.

West's character, Steve Nelson, appears in only one story out of the six which were published.
Written by Eric Freiwald & Robert Schaefer and illustrated by Nat Edison, this never-reprinted tale from Dell's Four Color #1219 renders Adam West with rather prominent arched eyebrows and light brown (almost sandy) hair!

BTW, if you want to see Adam West in action as Steve Nelson, sadly, you're out of luck.
The Detectives has never been issued on video, not even in the VHS days and is not currently running on any channel in the US!
I found a single episode from the third season on YouTube.
It's in four parts, and the video will guide you to the other three parts...

The series is available on a German DVD set, but it's dubbed in German and has no English subtitles!
Besides the three comic issues, there was a single novel by Norman Daniels (who did a lot of movie and TV adaptations)

R.I.P.

Adam West

1928-2017

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(no cover image available, but it is the actual 1962 paperback book, not a reprint or e-book)

The Detectives

by

Norman Daniels

Happy 50th Anniversary, Caped Crusader (and Boy Wonder)!

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the debut of the now-legendary Batman tv series!

Here's a treat for the pop-art graphics aficionados among you...

The iconic 1966 LIFE magazine cover featuring Adam West...

...and the pic it was flopped and cropped from!

Captain's Library GREEN HORNET "Ring of Terror" Conclusion

When Last We Left MeTV's other Dynamic Duo...

Newspaper publisher Britt Reid discovers an old friend and her scientist father are being forced by gangsters to manufacture a drug that renders people susceptible to orders to perform illegal acts, then forget they did them!

In his alter ego of The Green Hornet, the masked man and his partner, Kato, break into the home of the scientist and his daughter, now serving as the criminals' base of operations!

What The Hornet doesn't know is that Reid's friend has been drugged, armed, and ordered to kill Reid himself!

Written by Paul S Newman (not the actor) and illustrated by Dan Spiegle, this tale followed the format of the first few episodes (playing up the "masked detective" angle, and downplaying the fight sequences) perfectly.

When polls showed that the audience wanted more action, additional fights were written in, playing up Bruce Lee's martial arts skills.

This proved invaluable when, after Lee died in 1973, a pair of compilation films were released during the Kung Fu craze of the mid-1970s, as seen in these trailers for the films...

But, because the show only ran one season of 26 episodes, its rarely shown in syndicated reruns, where long-running shows could be aired Monday through Friday without repeating for months.

As a result, most fans under 40 only knew the tv version of The Green Hornet and Kato via their guest appearance on Batman!

Click on pic to really ENLARGE!

(You can read about that now-legendary meeting HERE)

Fans have long clamored for a sequel of some kind.

Almost 50 years later, the tv versions of the characters meet once more...in a new comic mini-series!

...which is currently in comic shops and available as a digital download on Comixology!

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