Continuing our weekly feature "YouTube Wednesday"...
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| Yes, this promo art was by Jack (King) Kirby! |
In January 1966,
Batman
, starring
Adam West and Burt Ward
debuted on ABC.
This set off a wave of
Bat-Mania
, and all three TV networks scrambled to add superhero programming to schedules already crowded with science fiction and fantasy programming ranging from
Man from U.N.C.L.E.
to
My Favorite Martian
!
While one or two, like
The Green Hornet
, were done
seriously, most of the new shows were not even campy tongue-in-cheek like
Batman, but flat-out
comedies!
The best of the new shows was the brainchild of
Get Smart
co-creator Buck Henry, who was asked to to to superheroes what he had done to spies, hopefully with similar ratings.
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| "My mom made my costume!" |
Broadway actor William Daniels was cast as police chemist/mamma's-boy Carter Nash who gained short-term super-powers by drinking a formula he accidentally created.
Along with veteran performers Alice Ghostly (Carter's overbearing mother), Liam Dunn (annoyed Mayor Finney), Bill Zuckert (inept Police Chief Segal) and newcomer Ann Prentess (police Sgt/Carter's girlfriend Candy Kane), the show tried it's best to capture the style and flavor that made
Get Smart a hit.
It didn't.
It was amusing, and Daniels tried his best, but a limited budget caused a lot of the super-stuntwork to misfire, ruining the jokes.
After only 15 episodes,
Captain Nice was cancelled.
Maybe if they had done a crossover with
Get Smart...
There
was some merchandising including a one-shot comic book, a novel written by the same author who did the Get Smart books, and a limited-distribution batch of trading cards, all of which are HTF.
It's not out on DVD, and unless you videotaped it when it ran on
Comedy Channel around 1993-94 (like I did), the only place you'll find it is on bootleg dvds or YouTube.
Here's the pilot/origin episode "The Man Who Flies Like a Pigeon".
Enjoy!
which features both the movie's personnel and characters from the movie prequel comic Green Hornet: Parallel Lives
.
, which was as good, or (more often) better than his work. 
, another costumed Black superheroine flew across comic pages (in her own strip) for two issues!
XZ-31 Rocket Pistol from the 1930s!
Red Ryder BB Gun
)!
.
