BATMAN's COWL!

The Mad Hatter shared a common goal with a lot of Batfans-- he wanted Batman's Cowl

The 1966 Batman, love him or hate him.  To a generation of Batfans he is Batman.  Debuting in January 1966 the ABC-TV show (in COLOR!) starred Adam West in a characterization that was at times extremely faithful to the comic books of the time up to straight parody.  The comic fans that dismiss the show as comedy overlook some of the real gems of the series and seem to forget that the Batman comic book was in danger of cancellation due to weak sales, and the show saved the character!

Batman's Cowl to most modern fans is a thing of molded rubber, but to many of us it's made out of silk with a distinctive face pattern and those great eyebrows.

The cowls for the show were far from lovingly created props-- often whipped together at the last minute there is no real way to know how many of these Batman masks were made during the original run.

A prop master on the set of the show with a box of cowls

We know there were at least eight made because of the Mister Freeze episode in Season One when he has a fleet of henchmen dressed as Batman's walk into a bank.  Reasoning that there were stunt cowls and the sheer heat of the lights which would cause the actors wearing them to sweat it's likely that they were exchanging the cowl every so often for a 'fresh' one.  It's also interesting to note that the markings on the cowls varied since they were hand done.  It's not hard to imagine that there were at least two dozen cowls used during the run of the series.  But this is just conjecture.