By Joshua Tyler & Jacob VanGundy | Published
Decades before Iron Man started the MCU, there were plans to create another Marvel universe, one that would culminate in an Avengers team. It started on the television network CBS and spawned many superhero movies.
The network fully established a handful of heroes and made plans for a crossover. If CBS had managed to do theirs Marvel superhero universe, it could have started the live-action comic book trend 30 years earlier. Here’s what went wrong.
Spider-Man Spider-Man does what a spider can In the 70s
The network television version of MCU began with the 1977 TV movie, Spider-Man. It led to an ongoing series on CBS called The Amazing Spider-Man.
Starring Nicholas Hammond as Peter Parker, the show was a ratings success, but was most popular with children. The limited age popularity concerned the network. So Spider-Man was reworked to be more adult-appealing in its second season.
That didn’t change the show’s demographics, so CBS pulled the plug on its first Marvel show in 1979.
The muscles weren’t a special effect and that made The Incredible Hulk a success
Following the same release formula as Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk began as a TV movie released in November 1977. It served as a backdoor pilot for the soon-to-follow television series, which aired on CBS.
Starring Lou Ferrigno as the green, muscular Hulk version of the character and Bill Bixby as pitiful Banner, The Incredible Hulk was by far the most successful of the CBS Marvel shows, running for five seasons. It was such a hit, that even after the series’ four seasons ended, the show was back for two more Made for TV movies, some of which were culled from old episodes.
Unlike almost every other Marvel superhero attempt made during this era, The Incredible Hulk has endured in pop culture, with the MCU even referencing it in its present streaming shows. Against all odds, The Incredible Hulk was a genuine success.
It’s something of a miracle that the success happened, as both CBS and showrunner Kenneth Johnson wanted to make it as little like the Hulk from the comics as possible. There was even a hard push from Johnson to make the hulk red instead of green.
Green, he argued, was not the color of anger. The color of anger is red. Showrunner said he called Stan Lee for permission to change the Hulk’s skin color to red, but that was a bridge too far for the man-monster’s co-creator.
Now, The Incredible Hulk are the only early Marvel efforts to endure in the pop culture consciousness. It hasn’t been forgotten and if their other efforts had been as successful, maybe we would have had the MCU, decades earlier.
It wasn’t for lack of trying though, because after Incredible Hulkthey did Dr. Strange.
Dr. Strange is getting a TV movie
CBS’s next attempt at a Marvel adaptation was Dr. Strangeanother TV movie designed as a backdoor pilot. It was released the year after the backdoor pilot for The Incredible Hulkand given that show’s success, its likely CBS had high hopes.
Starring Peter Hooten as Stephen Strange and Jessica Walters as the villainous Morgan Le Fay, it didn’t do well enough to warrant a series. Despite poor grades, Dr. Strange is the closest thing to a comically accurate take on a character from that era. That may be in part, because Stan Lee actually served as a consultant on the show.
Due to Lee’s involvement, it comes close to feeling like an older low-budget version of a modern MCU film. Assuming you can overlook the bad special effects.
Captain America’s Early Motorcycle Riding movies debuted on TV
Undeterred by the failure of Dr. Strangepropelled CBS forward with its attempts to turn the Marvel universe into a television phenomenon. Their biggest foray into adapting a Marvel character came through a pair of Captain America made-for-TV movies released in 1979.
The first got the title Captain America and the other had the title Captain America 2: Death Too Soon. Captain America was released in January 1979 and Captain America 2: Death Too Soon premiered on TV in November of the same year. They flopped.
Both films starred Reb Brown as Captain America and significantly changed his origin story and characterization, making the character feel generic. Nobody liked them.
Their failure could have been the final nail in the coffin for the CBS version of the MCU, though The Incredible Hulk was a success, and while it was on the air the hope that there might be more lingered.
Thor boringly slams his hammer into a Hulk team
Long after The Incredible Hulk ended its run, Network Televisio brought it back for the 1988 TV movie The Incredible Hulk returns. The real purpose of this movie was the last ditch effort to make another Marvel character work on television. The Incredible Hulk returns was a backdoor pilot for a Thor series.
It saw Lou Ferrigno’s Hulk team up with Thor, played by Eric Kramer. Thor’s appearance was meant to get audiences excited enough that the character would warrant his own show. But the Thor they put on screen was awesome and terrible.
It failed and network television gave up on Marvel.
Other attempts to form The Avengers
CBS’ attempt to create its own Marvel TV Universe failed, but Marvel continued to try other offerings.
In 1990, The Cannon Group, infamous shlock filmmakers, attempted a theatrical version of Captain America. The film was never released in the US, although it received a brief theatrical run in the UK. However, it became something of a cult favorite as a direct-to-video entry appearing on the lower shelves of local Hollywood video stores.
Marvel kept trying, even if this meant they had failed to make a Captain America movie worth seeing, three times then. In 1994, they gave another low-budget filmmaker, Roger Corman, a shot at making one Fantastic four Film. If you’re wondering why you’ve never heard of it, or seen it, it’s because the movie was never released.
Why it was never released is something of a debate. Corman claims he never intended to release it and the film only exists as a way to hang on to the film rights to Fantastic Four. Others claim it was so bad that even Corman was embarrassed to release it.
Leaked versions of Corman’s Fantastic Four are available online now, and thanks to overacting leads and cheap costume armor, it looks a lot like early episodes of Power Rangers.
There was also an attempt to get a live action Iron Man movie off the ground around the same time. A script was even written, but the project stopped there. It’s probably for the best, considering how awful Iron Man’s suit would likely have been.
Why the TV Avengers of the 70s and 80s never formed
It’s CBS that really put the most effort into trying to make a full live-action Marvel universe a success. They were ready to form their own Avengersif they could have made anything work besides the Hulk. They just needed other popular heroes to team up with.
Plans were made early on for crossover episodes between The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man, but concerns over Spider-Man’s young fanbase prevented the MCU-style team-up. After both series ended, actors Bill Bixby and Nicholas Hammond pitched a Hulk/Spider-Man TV movie, and while more Hulk TV movies were made, they never brought back Hammond’s Spider-Man.
If the crossings had happened, they could have easily evolved into Dr. Strange and Captain America join a campy ’70s Avengers TV event. Inconsistent ratings were an obstacle for CBS, which attempted its TV version of the MCU, but it also faced two major corporate problems.
One was that CBS was nervous about becoming synonymous with superheroes, which at the time were considered only for children. That’s at least part of why Spider-Man was canceled, despite its ratings success.
The second is that Marvel itself became increasingly disaffected with CBS and worried that the network would create new characters of its own, jettisoning the shows it owed to Marvel. It was that paranoia that led Marvel to the creation of She Hulk, in an attempt to stop CBS from owning the idea of a female Hulk.
The interconnected universe has been a big part of Marvel comics since the 1960s, and CBS almost brought it to the small screen nearly 50 years ago. While the campy style of the CBS productions may have prevented MCU-level popularity, an entire universe influenced by The Incredible Hulk could have changed the entire genre.
While the idea feels very modern, shared superhero universes could easily have become the hot trend of the ’80s, if even one of these CBS projects besides the Hulk had taken off. It didn’t happen. The world was not ready.
Maybe that’s for the best, because if any of the Marvel plans of the 70s, 80s, and 90s had worked, they would never have turned out as good as we have now. Robert Downey Jr. that Tony Stark was worth waiting for.
