It’s fair to say that Kevin Smith is a wee bit of a Batman fan: he’s not only parodied the character in his movies (Bluntman and Chronic, anyone?) but he’s written a story line in the regular DCU Batman comics and hosts a weekly podcast on all things Gotham called Fatman on Batman. According to USA Today, the director and SMODcaster is teaming up with his buddy Ralph Garman, KROQ/Los Angeles Kevin and Bean cast member, frequent Family Guy voice actor, and SMODcast Hollywood Babble-On co-host (and himself a huge fan of the sixties television version of the Caped Crusader), for a DC Comics/Dynamite Entertainment crossover comic set in the Gotham City as portrayed in the 1966-68 television series. Batman ’66 Meets the Green Hornet will launch as a 12-part, digital-first biweekly series beginning May 21st and will debut in comic shops as a print comic on June 4th. Interior art will be provided by former Batman: The Animated Series artist Ty Templeton, and comics legend Alex Ross will paint the covers.

The Green Hornet made an appearance on Batman back during the show’s original run, despite not being a DC comics character (The Green Hornet TV series was, like <emBatman, an ABC show; the character originated on radio and was published in comics by various publishers over the years, including a comic written by Smith for Dynamite in 2010). The Green Hornet and his sidekick Kato (played by Van Williams and a young Bruce Lee, respectively) came to Gotham to help Batman and Robin foil a crime from Colonel Gumm, played by the late Roger C. Carmel (space pirate Harry Mudd on the original Star Trek). Neither DC nor Dynamite have the likeness rights to use Carmel’s face, so Smith and Garman are having to use a creative way to hide his mugg; Smith says that they “disfigure his face in a way that’s very comic book but something they probably couldn’t have gotten away with on the show itself.”  The new series will also reference the back story hinted at in the show, that Bruce Wayne and Britt Reid (Green Hornet’s alter-ego) knew one another from school days and had a rivalry going.

Although both Smith and Garman maintain that this version of Batman is suitable for little kids, unlike current incarnations of the character in both movies and comics, he also says, “Let’s be honest, the core audience is adults like us, people who loved that show and grew up watching it and always dreamed of, ‘Oh, imagine if they had done one more season, there might have been another crossover with the Green Hornet and Kato.’ And so we got to do that.”