CraveOnline: What was your first exposure to the ’60s Batman and Green Hornet?
Ralph Garman: For me, I was old enough to have been there [for the] first run. There’s a family legend that says they would sit me in my high chair in front of the television set and the first song I ever sang was Na, na, na, na, na, Batman!
I remember being fixated by the screen with the colors and the action and then I followed it through syndication and grew up watching that. That was my Batman. I think that Kevin came to it a little bit later.
Kevin Smith: I came to it around 1973 or 1974, between ages three and four years old. My parents were that first generation that said “pay a babysitter? Why? There’s a TV.” So they sat me in front of the TV and Batman was what I responded to the most and started watching religiously. We couldn’t binge watch in those days. Your idea of binge-watching was if they put two episodes back-to-back. And you’re like “Oh, it’s Heaven!”
But shy of that, you waited for it every day. And thankfully, there was still some merchandise around and that was still kind of the predominant idea of Batman in a lot of people’s minds because it had been so pop-culturally huge only a few years prior. So, that Batman was my first. It fed my love of the character.
It wouldn’t be for years that I found out all of the other cool stuff. “What? His parents were killed? This tragic background. The Joker kills people?!” All of these things you never knew about from the show because they only presented that one version of Batman.
And what was your first exposure to the Green Hornet?
Kevin Smith: Mine initially was just through those Batman episodes. Because you couldn’t find a run of that show. I think they only made 19 episodes, so it wasn’t even a full season. So that never went into heavy rotation, at least not on WPIX, which is the station I watched back east. My exposure to the character was very limited until years later when I got hired to work the Green Hornet movie over at Miramax. Not the one that they made with Seth [Rogen] at Sony. The one that Harvey Weinstein was going to make.
At that point, I had enough loot and the world was a small enough place where you can go to a comic book show and get a bootleg of the whole season on DVD. That’s when I immersed myself in the world of the Green Hornet as presented in the TV show. I heard about it from my grandfather because of the radio show and that the character was related to the Lone Ranger.
But the TV show was “Bruce Lee as Kato!” and when you finally watched it, it wasn’t nearly as good as the Batman TV show. They had no villains. There was no rogue’s gallery. You had two dudes in masks fighting dudes in suits who are like “Why are you wearing a mask?” It just didn’t have the same zip and dazzle that the Batman TV show had. My experience with the character was limited to the shows for a long time until I wrote the screenplay. And when you start writing, you realize there’s so much to include.
They kept the very basic concepts, but they never even named the city that the Green Hornet takes place in. Which was something we faced when we were writing this miniseries because Ralph was like “What do we call it?” I was like “I don’t know. They never called it anything. When they made the Seth Rogen movie, I think they called it Los Angeles or something, but they never named the city. So, you’d have to go out of your way to make a reference to the city where Green Hornet is from.
Ralph Garman: It was very awkward.
What was your solution for that when writing this series?
Kevin Smith: That was literally the line!
Ralph Garman: Yeah, you referred to that city or the Hornet’s city or when talking to the Green Hornet, say “you know, in your city” and you just never really have to say it where you can throw Gotham around all of the time. You have to find more creative ways to talk about the city without drawing attention to the fact that it doesn’t have a name.
What brings Batman and Green Hornet back together for this team up?
Kevin Smith: The same thing that brought them together the first time, kinda.
Ralph Garman: In the original two parter from 1967, they were brought together because Britt Reid was in Gotham on some business and there was a mutual villain that they both had cause to take on… largely generated by the fact that Bruce and Britt (who knew each other in the past, at least according to the series) also had romantic designs on the same woman, Pinky Pinkston.
In this case, it’s similar. We kinda homage to that by the fact that Bruce Wayne and Britt Reid are brought together for their respective business reasons and then a villain rears his ugly head that they both decide to take on. At first separately and then together.
I’m told that this is a 12 part digital first series. Is that the equivalent of six issues?
Ralph Garman: You’ve got it. It’s 12 digitally and then it will be six print issues.
Kevin Smith: It’s weird, because I had to learn a new way to write comics. I was just used to writing 22 page format and then of course they shaved that down to 20. When you’re writing for digital, you’re kind of writing half comic at the same time. Ralph, he kind of came into this format so I think it was a little easier for him to make the transition. But for me it was like trying to write left handed when you’re right handed. All of a sudden, you have to redo your math about where a splash page falls.
What are your dream team up characters for Batman and Green Hornet?
Ralph Garman: As we were writing this thing and putting it together, I was thinking it would be fun to take the ’66 TV Batman and team him up with ’60s versions of DC’s other characters. Like Batman teamed up with the Metal Men or the Doom Patrol, or Metamorpho. Some of those characters that were so classically ’60s, have [Batman] interact with those people in that world as well. Green Hornet would be great with The Shadow or any straight up mystery men that he can deal with.
Kevin Smith: I’m gonna go self-serving and say Batman and Robin meet Green Hornet and Kato meet Jay and Silent Bob.
Ralph Garman: [laughs]
Kevin Smith: That’s me shoehorning a little bit of my own legacy in there as well. I don’t have real talent, so what I like to do is attach myself to those who are more talented. That would be the way to do it.
Now that you two have collaborated on this project, will you team up for other comic book projects in the future?
Kevin Smith: Hell yeah, man. While we were working on the project I was like “as soon as Jeff Parker is done or is like ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ I was like ‘the guy you gotta bring on is Ralph. He could do this in his sleep.
Me, I could never commit to a regular comic schedule because I still owe a sequel to Batman: The Widening Gyre called Batman: Bellicosity, and I’m still only one issue in on a Daredevil miniseries I started at Marvel over ten years ago. I’m really bad about keeping a timely schedule.
But even though Ralph had a day job and he also has podcast every week (and we’re turning the podcast into a pilot for AMC) I guarantee you that he would carve out time to work on that comic. Because he loves that world of Batman so much.
Ralph Garman: Yeah, I spent my life with these characters and I know them well enough that for me to get to put words in their mouths is not a job, it’s just a joy.
