In the first in a weeklong series looking at different aspects of the Batman 66 series, John is joined by Dan Greenfield of the 13th Dimension website to discuss the various villains that have appeared on the show.  The two offered their thoughts on three villains each, for good or for bad.

Stay tuned to the rest of the week as we cover:

Bat-Gadgets

Bat-Traps

Bat-Moments

Episodes for a Batman Marathon

Dan Greenfield is the editor and co-creator of 13thDimension.com, a website devoted primarily to comics and pop culture, past and present. To him, the basic food groups are Batman, Planet of the Apes, Star Trek (the Original Series), James Bond, the Beatles and the Stones. But if he had to he'd be able to subsist on Batman alone. Channel 11 in New York was his favorite syndicated channel as a kid -- you can guess why -- followed closely by Channel 5. Channel 9 didn't really enter into it unless he was home sick and there wasn't much else on. He's married to his remarkably patient wife Wendy and his best sidekick is his son, Sam. They have two cats,Lex and Zod.

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Aired October 26/27, 1966

When is a Batman episode not really a Batman episode?  No, this isn't a Riddler episode.  Bruce & Dick and Batman & Robin are barely seen in the first part of this two-parter featuring Liberace as the Great Chandell.  What brought that about?  How well did Liberace fair with the Dynamic Duo?  And was there really a plot in all this anyway?

Chandell, with the aid of the Doe, Rae, and MiMi, attempts to get hold of the Wayne fortune by seducing Aunt Harriet and plotting the deaths of Bruce & Dick.  Can he accomplish this and rid himself of his twin brother's blackmail attempt?  (Yeah, sounds like a plot to us.)

Joining John to discuss Liberace's performance both musically and thespian-wise is Mission Log: A Roddenberry Star Trek Podcast co-host John Champion.

Get your copy of Gotham City 14 Miles through our Amazon store.  In doing so, you not only get a great collection of essays on the 60's Batman series, but you support The Batcave Podcast as well.  Thank you.

Comment on the episode here or write thebatcavepodcast@gmail.com. 

John Champion is co-producer and co-host of Mission Log: A Roddenberry Star Trek Podcast as well as co-producer and co-host of the long-running "DVD Geeks" podcast and its predecessor, the "DVD Geeks" TV show. He also produced the unabashedly geeky web-series "Bif! Bam! Pow! Wow!", numerous corporate and commercial videos and a number of DVD special features and behind-the-scenes featurettes. A lifelong science fiction enthusiast, John has moderated panels and hosted special events at fan conventions. In 2006, he started on a long series of video interviews and has produced segments featuring dozens of the creators and talent behind "Star Trek."

Thanks so much for listening to the podcast this past year.  We finally have a promo!  If you are a podcaster, please take a moment to consider running the promo.  If you do, please let me know and send along your promo so I can reciprocate.  Thanks again, citizens!

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Aired October 19/20, 1966

Vincent Price makes an eggs-cellent debut as Egghead. Egghead wants to take over Gotham City and has an eggs-acting plan to make it happen. He kidnaps the descendants of the three founding fathers of Gotham City, which includes Bruce Wayne, in order to make sure they can't deliver on their payment for the lease to the Last of the Mohicans. As an added bonus, he plans to eggs-stract the identity of Batman from one of them. Can he succeed in eggs-ecuting this plan?

Joining John to eggs-amine this episode is writer, teacher, and media eggs-pert, Dr. Arnold T. Blumberg. Together they not only discuss what was fun about the episode, but they look at the social commentary on racial tolerance that is worked into it as well.

Get your copy of Gotham City 14 Miles through our Amazon store.  In doing so, you not only get a great collection of essays on the 60's Batman series, but you support The Batcave Podcast as well.  Thank you.

Comment on the episode here or write thebatcavepodcast@gmail.com. 

Dr. Arnold T. Blumberg is an author, editor, book designer, and educator. He is the co-author of the Howe’s Transcendental Toybox series of Doctor Who merchandise guides from Telos Publishing, the designer of other Telos books including The Target Book, the author of “Stolen Days” in Short Trips: How the Doctor Changed My Life and “Mardi Gras Massacre” in Short Trips: Indefinable Magic, and the Doctor Who DVD reviewer for IGN.com. He co-wrote an exhaustive guide to zombie cinema, Zombiemania, contributed to Time, Unincorporated 3 for Mad Norwegian, and is launching his own small press, ATB Publishing, with the forthcoming Red White and Who: The Story of Doctor Who in America and Outside In: 160 New Perspectives on 160 Classic Doctor Who Stories from 160 Writers. He teaches courses in zombies in popular media and science fiction media at the University of Baltimore and a course in comic book literature at the University of Maryland. He also has a book on sword and sorcery movies in the works with co-author Scott Alan Woodard. You can find him online at atbpublishing.com.

John attended DragonCon 2014 in Atalanta, Georgia and participated in a number of panels.  One of them was for the 75th anniversary of Batman.  The panel was large and there are a lot of voices that you'll hear, but the content is worth it.

Panelists include:

Mike Gordon - writer, publisher, co-host of Earthstation One Podcast

Michael Bailey - podcaster, host of Bailey's Batman Podcast

Will Price - fan

Michael Falkner - podcaster, The Weekly Podioplex, The Chronic Rift

Geena Phillips - blogger, reviewer of the 66 Batman series

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Aired October 12/13, 1966

The Clock King plans a well timed crime spree that could go off without a hitch except for two things - Batman and Robin.  

Joining John to time out the beats of this story is author, musician, and podcaster Keith R.A. DeCandido.

Get your copy of Gotham City 14 Miles through our Amazon store.  In doing so, you not only get a great collection of essays on the 60's Batman series, but you support The Batcave Podcast as well.  Thank you.

Comment on the episode here or write thebatcavepodcast@gmail.com. 

Keith R.A. DeCandido is a writer, editor, musician, podcaster, curator, voice actor, and probably some other stuff, too, but he can't remember due to lack of sleep. In 2009, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, which means he never needs to achieve anything ever again.

He has written tie-in fiction in prose and comics form for more than twenty different universes ranging from TV shows (Star Trek,Farscape, Supernatural, Leverage, and many more) to movies (Cars, Serenity, Resident Evil, Kung Fu Panda), to games (World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons, StarCraft, Command and Conquer) to comic books (Spider-Man, X-Men, Hulk, Silver Surfer). He is the author of the acclaimed Precinct series of fantasy police procedurals including Dragon Precinct, Unicorn Precinct, and Goblin Precinct, with 2013 seeing the release of Gryphon Precinct and Tales from Dragon Precinct, as well as a comic book and audios of all four novels.

Other recent work includes writing the monthly Farscape comic book with series creator Rockne S. O'Bannon; the SCPD novel The Case of the Claw, a novel about cops in a city filled with superheroes; the Leverage novel The Zoo Job; the comic book miniseries The Fallen; the short-story collection Ragnarok and Roll: Tales of Cassie Zukav, Weirdness Magnet, urban fantasy stories taking place in Key West; and short stories in the anthologies Apocalypse 13, Bad-Ass Faeries: It's Elemental, Defending the Future: Best Laid Plans, Liar Liar, More Tales of Zorro, Star Trek: Seven Deadly Sins, and Tales from the House Band Vols. 1 & 2. He has also contributed to several shard worlds: Steven Savile's Viral (the novella -30-), Aaron Rosenberg & David Niall Wilson's The Scattered Earth (the novel Guilt in Innocence), and Jonathan Maberry's V-Wars (the story "The Ballad of Big Charlie").

Keith is also a longtime editor. He was the supervising editor of the Marvel novels published by Penguin Putnam from 1994-2000 and the monthly series of Star Trek eBook originals published by Simon & Schuster from 2000-2008. His anthology credits range from Imaginings and Liar Liar to the Doctor Who: Short Trips anthology The Quality of Leadership to the Star Trek anthologies New Frontier: No Limits, Tales from the Captain's Table, and Tales of the Dominion War. Currently he edits for clients both personal and corporate via KRADitorial.

Keith is a musician, once the percussionist for the Don't Quit Your Day Job Players (musical guests of Dragon*Con in 1998), currently the percussionist of sometime D*C filk guests the Boogie Knights. His work can be heard on the DQYDJP CDs TKB and Blues Spoken Here and the BK CDs Many a Sleepless Knight and Wasted Days, Wasted Knights.

Of late, Keith has become a serious podcaster -- he's part of the staff of The Chronic Rift, a pop-culture podcast, and has his own 'cast, Dead Kitchen Radio. He also provides voices for the audio dramas The Dome, Gypsy Cove, and the Parsec Award-winning HG World.

On top of all this, Keith is a black belt in Kenshikai karate and a devoted fan of the New York Yankees (in fact, he co-edited the 2013 Yankees Annual for Lindy's Magazines). He lives in New York City with a couple of humans and several animals. Find out less as his cheerfully retro web site of DeCandido.net, which provides links to his Facebook page, his Twitter feed, his blog, his podcasts, and many and varied other things that probably sound cooler than they actually are.

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Aired October 5/6, 1966

Ma Parker has made a name for herself throughout the United States as one of the most difficult to capture criminals. When she sets her sights on Gotham City, it doesn't take the Dynamic Duo long to round her and her "boys" up, depositing them in Gotham State Penitentiary. In fact, it seems a little too easy. What is her grand scheme and will Batman figure it out?

Joining John to talk about mother of all villains is HG World's Jay Smith.

Get your copy of Gotham City 14 Miles through our Amazon store.  In doing so, you not only get a great collection of essays on the 60's Batman series, but you support The Batcave Podcast as well.  Thank you.

Comment on the episode here or write thebatcavepodcast@gmail.com. 

Jay Smith is the creator and executive producer for the Parsec Award-winning audio drama series HG World.  Since 2009, Jay and his company of players and producers have been telling the story of survivors in the middle of a global zombie uprising.  Now in its third season, this "satellite" production has featured dozens of actors across four continents making it a production truly on a global scale.  Since its debut, episodes of HG World and its spin-off series, the Parsec finalist The Diary of Jill Woodbine and The Googies have been downloaded close to a million times.

Inspired by the golden age of radio, Hidden Harbor Mysteries presents a story inspired by stylish pulp era radio adventures like The Shadow, Sam Spade, The Green Hornet, and I Love a Mystery. Performed by a stellar cast, Hidden Harbor hopes to integrate classic radio storytelling with some modern twists.  Jay draws from the work of Orson Welles, Arch Obelor and looks to modern audio dramatists like Douglas Adams and Dirk Maggs as inspiration to create a rich, realistic world of survival horror laced with dark comedy and compelling human drama.

Jay holds a BA in Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University and is working on his Master of Fine Arts from Seton Hill University’s innovative Writing Popular Fiction program.  He attends and speaks at various science fiction and literary conventions about podcasting, writing, audio drama, and zombies.  HG World can be heard by subscribing through iTunes or visiting the show web site www.goodmorningsurvivors.com.

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Aired September 28/29, 1966

King Tut returns to Gotham City with what appears to be his usual bag of tricks as the Sphinx returns as well with new proclamations. But there's more to his scheme this time around. He has a plan to subjugate the entire population of Gotham. Can Batman and Robin thwart him?

Joining John to talk about King Tut's less than stellar return in author Julio Angel Ortiz.

Get your copy of Gotham City 14 Miles through our Amazon store.  In doing so, you not only get a great collection of essays on the 60's Batman series, but you support The Batcave Podcast as well.  Thank you.

Comment on the episode here or write thebatcavepodcast@gmail.com. 

A native of Toledo, Ohio, Julio Angel Ortiz is a writer in both print and electronic media. Julio has had an audio drama released for the original sci-fi series The Dome with another to be produced shortly and short stories published in collections by Obverse Books featuring Iris Wildthyme and Señor 105. He also has several eBooks available for Kindle via his Vox Camera imprint. When not banging his head against his notebook in order to string words together, Julio works in Information Technology during the day and is also active blogging, posting on Twitter, and working at his photography.

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The Minstrel, a new villain, has appeared in Gotham City and he's holding the Gotham City Stock Exchange hostage with his extortion demands.  The Caped Crusaders are on the case, but it turns out that the Minstrel is Batman's intellectual equal when it comes to technology.  Can Batman outwit the Minstrel with the aid of his latest Bat-device, the Bat-Drone?'

Joining John to talk about The Minstrel and the lost potential in what should have been a recurring villain is Gotham City 14 Miles editor, Jim Beard.

Get your copy of Gotham City 14 Miles through our Amazon store.  In doing so, you not only get a great collection of essays on the 60's Batman series, but you support The Batcave Podcast as well.  Thank you.

Comment on the episode here or write thebatcavepodcast@gmail.com. Take a moment to rate the episode by using our star system at the bottom of this entry.

A native of Toledo, Ohio, Jim Beard was introduced to comic books at an early age by his father, who passed on to him a love for the medium and the pulp characters who preceded it. After decades of reading, collecting and dissecting comics, Jim became a published writer when he sold a story to DC Comics in 2002. Since that time he's written official Star Wars and Ghostbusters comic stories and contributed articles and essays to several volumes of comic book history.

His prose work includes GOTHAM CITY 14 MILES, a book of essays on the 1966 Batman TV series; SGT. JANUS, SPIRIT-BREAKER, a collection of pulp ghost stories featuring an Edwardian occult detective; MONSTER EARTH, a giant monster anthology; and CAPTAIN ACTION: RIDDLE OF THE GLOWING MEN, the first pulp prose novel based on the classic 1960s action figure.

Currently, Jim provides regular content for Marvel.com, the official Marvel Comics website, and is a regular columnist for Toledo Free Press.

Websites:

http://www.facebook.com/thebeardjimbeard

http://www.sgtjanus.blogspot.com

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"Hot off the Griddle/The Cat and the Fiddle" Aired September 14/15, 1966 The Catwoman returns to Gotham City with another cat-themed caper. But what do a pair of rare Stradivarius violins have to do with this all? Will it get to hot for the Dynamic Duo to handle?

Joining John to talk about the return of Julie Newmar as The Catwoman is author Robert Greenberger.

Comment on the episode here or write thebatcavepodcast@gmail.com

Robert Greenberger (born July 24, 1958) is a writer and editor.

Greenberger was born in Brooklyn in New York City, the son of Edwin L. Greenberger and Joan Greenberger. A lifelong fan of comic books, comic strips, science fiction and Star Trek, he drifted towards writing and editing, encouraged by his father and inspired by Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent.

While at SUNY-Binghamton, Greenberger wrote and edited for the college newspaper, Pipe Dream, moving from general assignment writer to Arts Editor, Managing Editor and ultimately Editor-in-Chief.  He served an internship at Gannett’s Binghamton Sun-Bulletin as a feature writer and reviewer.

Upon graduation, he worked for Starlog Press as Managing Editor ofFangoria.  He was also an Associate Editor for Starlog and while there, created Comics Scene, the first nationally distributed magazine to focus on comic books, comic strips and animation.  The magazine lasted 11 issues before its first cancellation at which time Greenberger went to work on their sports magazines.

In 1984, he joined DC Comics as an Assistant Editor, working with Len Wein and Marv Wolfman on DC’s Golden Anniversary projects Who’s Who andCrisis on Infinite Earths.  He went on to act as assistant editor to numerous titles for each editor until he was promoted to editor.  During his tenure, his titles included Star Trek, Suicide Squad, Warlord, Doom Patrol, Lois Lane, Action Comics Weekly, Time Masters, Secret Origins, The Hacker Files and others.

By 1990, he had given up editing to become the company’s Editorial Coordinator, helping grow the Editorial Administration department.  When he left the company, he was Manager-Editorial Operations.

In March 2000, he left DC to become a Producer for Gist Communications, television news and listings web site. After ten months there, he learned some new skills and got out before the dotcom bubble burst.

In January 2001, he joined Marvel Comics as Director-Publishing Operations.  During his year with the company, he oversaw editorial schedules, Production, Manufacturing, the Print Library, and other departments.

In January 2002, he left Marvel and rejoined DC in May 2002 as a Senior Editor-Collected Editions.  He helped grow that department, introducing new formats and improving the editions’ editorial content. He also managed DC’s ElfQuest publishing program.

He left DC in January 2006, becoming a freelance writer and editor.  His clients included Weekly World News, Platinum Studios, scifi.com, DC and Marvel. By June, he was offered the post of Managing Editor at Weekly World News where he helped transition the newspaper from being produced jointly in Florida and New York to just NYC.

When the paper folded in August 2007, he resumed his freelance career which continues to this date.  Along the way, he helped revitalize Famous Monsters of Filmland and served as News Editor at ComicMix from August through December 2008.

He is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and theInternational Association of Media Tie-In Writers.  He served on the final Nebula Short Fiction Jury.