Filmmaker and comic-book writer Kevin Smith and his frequent podcast collaborator Ralph Garman will team for a DC Comics/Dynamite Entertainment crossover comic book titled Batman '66 Meets the Green Hornet. The 12-part series will launch as a digital-first title on May 21, with the first print issue available in stores on June 4.

"It's like getting to be five years old again and tell stories that you would have made up while watching the show as a kid," Smith told USA Today. "To be able to do it, man, it really does bring it full circle in a bucket-list kind of fashion."

Award-winning artist Ty Templeton will bring the story, a sequel to a 1967 Batman two-parter that brought the Hornet and Kato to Gotham City to foil a counterfeit-stamp ring run by Colonel Gumm, to the page.

That will take some creative work by Templeton; the publishers don't own the likeness rights to Roger C. Carmel, who played Gumm on TV, so they're working around it in part by promoting him to General and "disfigur[ing] his face in a way that's very comic book but something they probably couldn't have gotten away with on the show itself," Smith said.

The story will lean on history from both shows, not just Batman.

"I have been preparing for this particular gig my entire life," said Garman.

"Let's be honest," Smith added. "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."