Mistake Mined Marvel: The Early Days of Marvel’s Attempts to Jump from Print to Screen
There are two linked dates embraced by comics fans the world over: August 8, 1961, the day the comic book Fantastic Four #1 first hit newsstands, and April 4, 2008, the day the film Iron Man had its world premiere. The first, of course, is the official date of the start of the “Marvel Age,” the start of Marvel’s publication history during which it introduced its universe(s) full of memorable iconic characters engaged in compelling stories. The second was the day the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the “MCU”) was born, an interconnected series of films and TV shows that offers as broad and deep a fantastic universe as readers of the comics enjoyed for 40 years before that.
The MCU is recognized as a major accomplishment, an overall franchise that has as of this date been a phenomenal success by all measures. Such is the regard its held in, that when Sony announced that they were loosening their rights to Spider-Man adaptations to allow him to be part of the MCU, fans were ecstatic that one of their favorite heroes was going to be in good hands, among people the audience could trust. (As this heads online, the big rumor waiting to be confirmed is that this will allow Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark to appear in the next Spider-Man film Sony is producing, which is not altogether unlikely as he did appear as Stark in The Incredible Hulk back in 2008.)
Which is a big, big change from expectations they held after the first two decades Marvel tried to adapt their stories and heroes. Those first years during which Joss Whedon and others involved with the MCU were born, the MCU’s perennial cameo actor and living Easter egg Stan Lee, as Marvel’s head writer then publisher, learned lots of hard lessons as various efforts were made to bring that universe to life, often with embarrassing results. They say there is no better teacher than failure; if so, then the success of the MCU must rest on the mistakes made in the 1960s and 70s.
A Man Out of Time: Captain America (Republic Pictures, 1944)
The greatest irony is that the first Marvel adaptation happened in a way that succinctly tied in with the character involved. Before being reintroduced to the world in The Avengers #4, Captain America had been a character published by Timely Comics (Marvel’s predecessor) during World War II, who according to the comic had been fighting the Nazis before being put in suspended animation. When Lee and artist Jack Kirby (who co-created Cap back in the 1940s at Timely) have Cap turn up with the Avengers, we have a character who had a long past before the Marvel Age officially started.
So it’s only fitting that the first Marvel media property was made before the Marvel Age began, when Timely licensed their best character to Republic for a 15-part serial. And much like many following Marvel adaptations, this, to put it mildly, had problems.
For starters, the Captain America on screen is so far removed from the one in the comics; instead of super soldier Steve Rogers going into battle against Nazis with a shield, we get district attorney Grant Gardner having brawls against cultists with a revolver. The conclusion that Republic appears to have adapted scripts that were lying around from other unfinished productions is buttressed by a close comparison with some of their other serials and scripts from announced titles that didn’t make it to theaters. The fact that all we get in the end is a bruiser with a two-fisted solution to crime in a throwaway story that’s one of the weakest serials Republic ever distributed makes this both a disservice to the character and a portent of what’s to come.
By the time Fantastic Four #1 was released, few if any fans might have been aware of it, either as the original serial or the recut and condensed 1953 re-release The Return of Captain America. The problems with history unlearned, unfortunately, is the repetition.
Still Life, Just Pictures: The Marvel Super-Heroes (Syndication, 1966)
In 1966, there were clear distinctions being made between the two biggest comic book publishers, Marvel and their crosstown rivals, National Periodical Publications, which were better known by their cover name Detective Comics, or DC Comics. While Marvel was scrappy and a bit edgier, DC was more staid and mainstream, having kept books in print continually since the late 1930s featuring Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, projected to readers a sense of being the establishment.
This distinction became stark on television screens that year, as CBS started running The New Adventures of Superman on Saturday mornings. This series was produced by Filmation, which had a reputation for jerky animation done on the cheap.
Which still managed to look like Disney compared to the Marvel series Grantray Lawrence Animation came up with. Rushed quickly onto air and consisting of lifts from the comics themselves with minimal animation to show lips and maybe an arm or thrown item moving, to call these 65 three-part stories “animation” would be wildly off the mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js7LRe_tCoM
Other than getting the Hulk, Iron Man, the Sub-Mariner, Captain America, and Thor on the air, the only enduring contribution to canon the series made were the musical segment intros composed for each character’s stories. Short but snappy, these cartoon themes serve as great examples of what the average commercial jingle from the 1960s tended towards; the work done on these helps to make possible the next theme Grantary Lawrence brings to a Marvel property.
What a (Un-)Revoltin’ Development: The Fantastic Four (NBC, 1967)
Historically, in a Marvel comic storyline, things tend to go wrong for the heroes more often than not, but when they occasionally go right, it’s a moment to celebrate. And now and then during this time, the same could be said for Marvel’s efforts to get onscreen.
Whereas The Marvel Super-Heroes was an el cheapo scan-and-run-with-it production, the first effort to adapt the Fantastic Four got the royal treatment. Produced by Hanna-Barbera during their heyday, with character designs handled by the legendary Alex Toth (who among other triumphs gave the world Space Ghost and Birdman), the 20 episodes delivered to NBC were some of the best treatments of the characters and their more common antagonists (Doctor Doom, the Skrulls, etc.). As the series stayed true to the source material, from comics geared for an audience slightly older than the usual Saturday morning TV watching set, it made it vulnerable to pressure over parental concerns about violence on TV, leading to cancellation after a single season.
Sings Whatever a Spider Can: Spider-Man (ABC, 1967-1969; Syndication, 1969-1970)
With slightly more money in the bank and a working relationship with Marvel, Grantray Lawrence Animation managed to get a second Marvel superhero show on the air, with ABC presumably committing to the project while NBC was getting good notices about Fantastic Four but before the cancellation pressures grew.
Their treatment of Web-Head was a marked improvement over their last Marvel treatments, with more fluid animation with more original drawings; this in all likelihood led to Grantray Lawrence going out of business by the end of season one, which brought in Ralph Bakshi (he of The Mighty Heroes fame and Fritz the Cat infamy, among other highlights) to do the next two seasons. And when Bakshi took over, he did it on the cheap; two episodes, “Phantom from the Depths of Time” and “Revolt in the Fifth Dimension,” were originally episodes of his earlier series Rocket Robin Hood which Bakshi re-drew over, replacing the earlier title hero with the one Marvel was paying him to work on now.
At least the music was original; the theme by Paul Francis Webster and Bob Harris became one of the more iconic themes to ever front a TV show. Covers of this piece have been recorded by artists as varied as Aerosmith, Michael Bublé, Moxie Fruvis and the Ramones. This proved to be the one legacy from the 1960s that Marvel gave the world that persists to this day. Outside of their iconic comic books, of course.
An Easy to Read Hero: Spidey Super Stories (PBS, 1974-1977)
Come the 1970s, and Spider-Man has his first live-action adventures, thanks to… the Children’s Television Workshop?!
Out of what was probably built on the basis of free marketing in return for public service, Marvel allowed Spider-Man to appear on The Electric Company, PBS’ educational program dedicated to building reading and grammar skills. Starting in Season 4, segments of the series under the umbrella Spidey’s Super Stories would run for a few minutes, during which time Danny Seagren, wearing a Spidey suit, would perform in the piece, his lines unsaid but noted with a word balloon that the kids at home could read and the cast on set would look at. Spider-Man had 29 adventures through the last three seasons of the series’ initial run; half as many adventures as Grantray Lawrence and Bakshi gave him the last decade, but none of those put him up against Morgan Freeman.
For the first time in Marvel’s history, the licensing out flowed back to the House of Ideas, as Marvel had a 57 issue run of Spidey Super Stories available alongside their other titles. In addition to adaptations of the stories from TV, there were also new stories featuring such guest stars as Iron Man, Captain America, Doctor Strange, and Storm. As these were geared toward the 6-to-10-year-old demographic, with larger type face than standard Marvel titles, and had on the cover of every issue an endorsement from the Easy Reader, we can probably assume that all of these were non-canonical.
Does Kinda What a Spider Can (Sometimes): The Amazing Spider-Man (CBS, 1978-1979)
You can be excused for forgetting about this one; produced by Chuck Fries Productions, which according to IMDb last mounted a production in 1985, this series has not had a home video release in the DVD era, and the last VHS releases on Rhino in the 1990s had a spotty distribution, much like their other products.
Mind you, there was plenty to forget about from the series as well. As this was live action in the pre-CGI days, a certain amount of “managed expectations” had to be allowed by the audience, so many of the wilder elements from the comic books were jettisoned, like all of the rogues gallery (no Green Goblin, no Sandman, etc.). Likewise, some swinging, wall crawling, and web spinning were used sparingly, to keep the budgets under control, which despite these still made CBS wary of the budgets, resulting in only 13 episodes ever being produced over two seasons.
Some of the other changes, however, did not work as well. They de-fanged J. Jonah Jameson, making him more of a grump than a menace. They never got into Peter Parker’s complicated love life with the women he faced on the page. They even gave him an unstable relationship with his Aunt May, in that the role was recast for every appearance she made! Add to that the series supposedly being set in New York, but beyond the opening sequence it was evident in every shot that they lensed most of the series in Los Angeles, and even the casual Spidey-fans were dismayed by the show.
Hulk Smash! (As A Show): The Incredible Hulk (CBS, 1977-1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqZuhrDM5vE
If anything, most viewers familiar with the Hulk owe their introduction more to the TV series than the comics. Developed for television by Kenneth Johnson for Universal TV, where he had overseen The Six Million Dollar Man and created The Bionic Woman, the show stripped away from the comics such aspects as the US Army’s pursuit of the Hulk and all the extreme foes and collateral damage that surrounded him, and kept the main elements of the character’s story, of a man unable to control his dark side, looking for a cure for his condition despite the obstacles he faces in his quest.
Enabling the success of this “diminished expectations” adaptation, where Lou Ferrigno would spend only a short time doing a Hulk rampage that a decent contractor could clean up in a week, was Bill Bixby’s David Bruce Banner. His portrayal of a haunted scientist on the run, trying to hide and avoid triggering a rage, served as the emotional, relatable center of the series, and helped carry the show through five seasons. The addition of Jack Colvin’s Jack McGee, a reporter tracking down the truth about Banner’s death like Barry Morse’s Lt. Gerard from The Fugitive, added aspects to the series that could be found in the comics, on a more reasonable budget.
The success of the series ultimately brings those involved with the initial run back to the character. In 1988, NBC commissioned three made-for-TV Hulk movies: The Incredible Hulk Returns, which featured the first live-action depiction of Thor (played by Eric Alan Kramer), The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, that included the first live-action Daredevil (played by Rex Smith) going up against his arch-foe the Kingpin (played with all his hair by John Rhys-Davies), and The Death of the Incredible Hulk, where he dies at the hands of a Eastern European spy (Elizabeth Gracen) who seems a hell of a lot like the Black Widow. Which means had NBC stayed with the new productions, we could have gotten a trimmed-down MCU nearly two decades earlier. Such are the connections the public has with the show that when the Hulk gets a line in The Avengers, the voice actor chosen to dub it is of course Lou Ferrigno.
By the Hoary Hosts of Hogwash: Doctor Strange (CBS, 1978)
It may seem odd to today’s audiences, but by 1978 CBS was complaining about there being too many superhero properties. By this time, they had The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man on the schedule, along with a show based on a character from Marvel’s main rivals, Wonder Woman, and there was a real worry about being thought of as “the superhero network” by the populace at large, which considering today’s offerings seems self-destructive to us.
Which thankfully prevented this pilot from ever going to series after its initial airing in September of 1978. Written and directed by Phillip De Guere, a mainstay on the Universal lot who did scripts on such shows as Baretta and Black Sheep Squadron, the pilot owes more to made-for-TV horror films of the week from that era than it did to anything Steve Ditko and Stan Lee worked on. With an origin that owed more to J. K. Rowling than Stan Lee (dead parents bequeathing their gifts to an unknowing individual) and abandoning the established opponents and making the villain Morgan Le Fay (like she doesn’t get blamed for enough out there…), the Sorcerer Supreme we might have gotten could have been, well, rather mundane.
(In an alternate universe, had CBS picked up the pilot to series, the fact that Universal also produced this could have easily led to a cross-over the The Incredible Hulk; we should send gifts to Dormammu for sparing us that.)
The Fantastic Fu-u-u-: The New Fantastic Four (1978, NBC)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb5ZGUk1XWo
When DePatie-Freleng Enterprises (the company that oversaw the cartoon Pink Panther, through all of his animated intros to the films and the shorts produced thereafter) got the chance to bring the Fantastic Four back to NBC’s Saturday morning, the first reaction viewers had was: Who the F! is H.E.R.B.I.E.?
There’s an urban legend that stays to this day that the reason Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, was dropped from the series was the fears by NBC’s Standards and Practices section (the group that advises what can and cannot go on the air) was uncomfortable with a character that was set aflame all the time, believing that there would be too many copycat incidences. In truth, the Human Torch was under license for a project with Universal (who also had the Hulk and Doctor Strange) and was just not available.
With horrible scripts that would have sunk the series regardless of who was the fourth member of the group, the show did its 13 episodes and then disappeared, to the relief of many.
Kon’nichiwa, Spider-Man: Spider-Man (Tokyo Channel 12, 1978-1979)
Yes, Marvel did do a licensing deal with Toei Company, and they did do a Spider-Man series featuring a young Takuya Yamashiro, who got his spider powers from a UFO where he received a transfusion from someone from Planet Spider, which allows him the edge when he goes up against Professor Monster. And when that’s not enough, he can call on his giant robot Leopardon, with which, he… can…
Aw man, what the hell? This feels more like an episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which Toei would produce later on. I wish I could forget this whole thing, but Marvel just made it canon in their current Spider-Verse crossover event, so we’re stuck with it now. Da-a-a-a-a-am…
Catch Me Now I’m Falling: Captain America and Captain America II: Death Too Soon (both 1979, CBS)
What can we say about not one, but two pilots that CBS aired but did not pick up on? At the very least, it had Steve Rogers (a Marine who became a beach bum, who was the son of a World War II agent as opposed to a combatant in the war himself) who actually gets a chemical treatment (the FLAG- a “super steroid” to save his life), which makes him a few steps ahead of Republic’s efforts back in 1944, but still! The fact that Universal produced these two, meaning we could have had a crossover with the Hulk (and Doctor Strange) makes me glad we’re in this universe.
Uh, Yeah, This Thing: Fred and Barney Meet the Thing (NBC, 1979)
The Thing. With Fred Flintstone. No one else; just a teenage Benjy Grimm and a changing ring. Moving on…
Spins a Web, Any Size: Spider Woman (ABC, 1979-1980)
This is less a destination than a road-marker on the way forward; Spider-Woman, which bore no resemblance to anything done before or since with the character in print, is notable for being a stop on the road for both the actress who voiced the title character, Joan Van Ark, and the studio, DePatie-Freleng Enterprises. Within a year of delivering the series to ABC, the studio saw one of its founders, Fritz Feleng, return to the Warner Brothers Animation studio, while the company ended up being the basis for Marvel Productions Ltd. This became the start of the turnaround, when Marvel went from being a net licensor to a producer of their own fare and was the first step towards forming Marvel Studios.
It was the actions Marvel took to reclaim their fate in 1981 that led to their ascendance which started in 2008; had they not made the mistakes they made before then, they would not have had the triumphs they have now.
