DISCOVER--the pre-CGI Marvel Super Heroes

This serial was made by Republic at the height of their powers and is great fun as usual, but has little to do with the Captain America comic other than swiping the costume...

Very limited animation series which takes its stories and artwork from the Captain America strips then running in Tales of Suspense. Fun nostalgia with lots of Jack Kirby art.

Colourful recreations of Iron Man's adventures from Tales of Suspense, although the switching back and forth between the disparate artistic styles of illustrators Don Heck and Gene Colan can be distracting. Fun.

Stories from the original short run of Hulk comics and his early exploits in Tales to Astonish make up this nostalgic but very primitive cartoon production. Episodes are extremely variable, with a version of Avengers vs. the Space Phantom (issue 2 if I recall?) being virtually untransmittable and the worst effort in all five series, but the Metal Master story being a rare example of animated Steve Ditko art. The voices are particularly bad on this series, with the Hulk and General Ross very poor, although John Vernon (also Iron Man and Sub Mariner) voices Major Talbot, and the younger version of Tyrannus is surely George Takei, who was doing voice work at this time. The theme song is a riot.

Interesting animation of the Sub-Mariner strips from Tales to Astonish. Highlight is a bizarre re-hash of Fantastic Four annual no. 3 (the wedding partially recreated in the Fantastic Four/Silver Surfer film) but without the Fantastic Four, who were licensed to Hanna-Barbera at the time! Features the first animated appearance of the X-Men.

Perhaps the best-looking of the five mid-'60's animated Marvel Super-Heroes productions, this utilises superb Jack Kirby art from some splendid Lee-Kirby yarns from the Thor strips in Journey into Mystery.

Initially attractive animated adventures featuring original non-comic stories, some with stylish Marvel villains like Mysterio and the Rhino, others with the usual cartoon cliche losers, with clear colourful art and the legendary theme song. The second season is less impressive, and the third season by Ralph 'Fritz the Cat' Bakshi is absolutely appalling.

While they obviously pale in comparison to the Lee-Kirby originals, by TV cartoon standards these are very well done simplified reworkings of the classic and legendary Fantastic Four comics of the 1960s (including Galactus and the first animated appearance of the Silver Surfer). Far superior to the 1970s FF cartoons, we anxiously await a legitimate DVD release.

One of the great mysteries of American television is why networks shell out for the rights to a proven success, and then change or discard everything that makes it work. It's all there for the taking, but instead they take it away. The strongest aspect of the Spider-man comics are the characters and the villains, so they replaced most of the former and didn't use the latter. Instead, we got standard TV plots and set-ups, with bland TV-style bad guys. The result was a watchable but very mediocre short run, the highlight being "The Hostage Tower". A lost opportunity, but an official DVD release anyway, please...

Despite the presence of Jack Kirby himself, this is inferior to the earlier Hanna-Barbera version, with feeble delineation and hampered by the absence of the Human Torch and his substitution by a comedy robot. Yuk.

This popular and long-running combination of Marvel's Hulk with TV's man-on-the-run format pioneered by The Fugitive was enormously successful on its own terms, but had very little to do with the comic-book incarnation of the character, hamstrung by the lead actor's and producer's strong animosity toward the medium. Both said that they "didn't want to do a comic-book show", which is a bit like signing on for a cop show and saying 'no guns or criminals'. Despite this, it was an okay if perhaps inadvertently appropriately schizophrenic show, a serious drama interspersed with interruptions from a big green musclebound monster. One might think that this would make it neither fish nor fowl, irritating the adults, and boring impatient kids, but the show ran for five years. By the time the 21st century Hulk movies were being made, it had become a strong enough part of the character's cultural baggage to have earned several coy verbal and visual references in these more faithful adaptations of the strip.

Of the original series, the pilot and the two-parters "The First" and "Prometheus" most closely capture the spirit of the source material. At least Lou Ferrigno, who portrayed the Hulk, was a fan of the comics...

Disappointingly flat and mis-cast attempt to bring Marvel's "master of the mystic arts" to the small screen. Strange has no gravitas at all, and comes across like the assistant manager of a disco. Doomed from the outset, perhaps, when attempted with a 1970s TV network budget and sensibilities. Ironically, a shameless straight-to-video rip-off called Doctor Mordrid from Charles Band's comics-inspired Full Moon operation did a much better job! However, given the series' content and pedigree, this is surely the most difficult Marvel character to get right.

I can't explain why I like this badly-made rubbish, but I do. At least it wasn't as poor as the actual comic.

When this animated cartoon series premiered during the dog days of TV cartoons between the first season of Scooby-doo in 1969 and the arrival of The Simpsons in 1989, it was a welcome breath of fresh air. For a start, characters moved three-dimensionally around the screen rather than just from left to right, and despite the usual TV cartoon failings (ridiculous additions like the completely redundant hidden headquarters, the comic relief dog, and the occasional cackling nitwit villain) it was a lively and enjoyable half hour enhanced by guest appearances from other Marvel super-heroes, narration by dear old Stan Lee himself, and one of the best background scores ever used. The amazing friends were Iceman from the X-Men and original creation Firestar, a likeable and workable supporting cast.

One simply missed the amazing friends...

After the prime time live-action reboot, it was back to basics for these new animated adventures.

This is the first of three TV movie revivals of the 1970s TV series by New World, marred by a truly abysmal attempt to co-feature Thor.

This is the second of three TV movie revivals by New World. Trial features the first live action appearance of Daredevil, portrayed by Streethawk's Rex Smith.

Seriously underrated low budget adventure for Captain America. I don't understand why nobody but myself and a few mates like this movie. Matt Salinger is excellent, but spends too little time in the costume. There's a splendid Red Skull, Ronny Cox makes a good U.S. President, the supporting cast is excellent, and it's light and bright. Faithful to the source, and based loosely on the 1960s man-out-of-time Lee and Kirby stories in Tales of Suspense.

"Look at you--the Fantastic Four!"--and they are. Made on a shoestring budget to honour a time-sensitive business deal, this is a charming and faithful recreation of the early 1960s Fantastic Four comics with a great cast and a simple, straightforward and--for once--respectful approach to the material. Unlike the equally enjoyable big budget incarnation of the team, everyone looks like who they are supposed to be, and Doctor Doom and the Thing, the two most difficult to get right, are particularly well realised. Unfairly maligned by the sort of people who think Mystery Science Theatre is funny, it is in fact vastly superior to more costly disasters like Superman III etc. or some of the TV pilot travesties of the 1970s. It's quite thrilling to see everything happen as it should, and looking like it did in the comics, something that wasn't the case in the later version, where for all the 'rebooting' and 're-imagining', the best moments were the sequences faithfully recreating scenes or images from the Lee/Kirby original. There are flaws (the Jeweller is unnecessary, and some of the super power effects are understandably a bit ropey), but considering how easily the mega-budget movies screw up with millions at their disposal, I'm reminded of the interviewer who asked John Ford if he could have made a bad movie. "Sure", he replied. "It'll cost you more, but I could do it".

Opening with a lame rehash of the origin story, but improving with the appearance of the Puppet Master in part two, this is a slick two season series with good animation, but tries way too hard to be cute. Neither fish nor fowl, the stories are pointlessly altered rewrites of early stories, when they could have been presented as new, if derivative adventures rather than factually incorrect old ones. Featuring several multi-part storylines, first season adversaries include the Sub-Mariner, Doctor Doom, the Skrulls, and Galactus and the Silver Surfer. The show is greatly hampered by a dreadful dated and tacky disco theme and soundtrack by Giorgio Moroder.

If the casting of professional self-effacing joke David Hassellhoff as Marvel tough guy Nick Fury seems a little surprising (especially to those movie-goers who don't realise the character's not supposed to be black), it will come as even more of a surprise to discover that this Fox TV pilot almost works! Hassellhoff was surprisingly acceptable, if not most fans' first choice casting, as Fury, and all the usual trappings of Fury's universe were present and correct, including the Contessa, Baron Von Strucker, Hydra, and the LMDs. What wasn't right was the timing--the plot involves terrorists attacking New York, and the very stylish 1960s comic strip was Marvel's response to the Bond/UNCLE spy craze, so it was all a little late.

Jon is not on Facebook, but can reply to comments here, at the base of this list.

Obsessed with the popular culture of the 1960s and surrounding decades, Jon Abbott has been writing about film and TV for over thirty years in around two dozen different publications, trade, populist, and specialist. He is the author of several books, including

Irwin Allen Television Productions 1964-1970, Stephen J. Cannell Television Productions: A History of All Series and Pilots, The Elvis Films, Cool TV of the 1960s: Three Shows That Changed the World, and Strange New World: Sex Films of the 1970s.

See his Amazon author's page, and his other lists on the IMDB, all under the pre-fix DISCOVER.