BACK IN THE 1960s , when I was a lad of about ten, our cinema entertainment didn't include an Avengers or an X-Men franchise ... heck, we didn't even have a Fantastic Four franchise. But I'll tell you what we did have in the way of superheroes on the screen - nothing. That's right, zilch. As I've recounted in an earlier post on this blog, the biggest cause for excitement for me in 1965 was the imminent arrival of Batman at my local ABC Minors Saturday morning pictures. Not in person, of course, just in the form of the 1943 Batman movie serial. "Careful what you say, fellas ... you never know who may be listening. Now let's get this stolen money divided up ..." As excited as I was, this was tempered with some disappointment that the episodes were in black and white and were obviously very old. But it was Batman. Fighting bad guys. In a costume. When you've never seen real life superheroes doing what they do on screen, this was pretty brilliant...