Call Me Stormy

Finding righteous currents in turbulent times

Archive for the tag “Marvel Super Heroes”

03 Jul 2021

Peril In The Surface World

Hey kids (of all ages), it’s Saturday Morning Cartoon time again!

Three of the five characters starring in the MARVEL SUPER-HEROES wheel show were shiny, new, Silver-Age adventurers who’d just debuted in print a few years before. Saturday before last, we covered one of the Golden Age players in the rotation with CAPTAIN AMERICA. Today we’ll look at an even older superguy. NAMOR THE SUB-MARINER, who dates back to 1939, around the same time as BATMAN.

Namor, predates rival DC Comics’ AQUAMAN by over a year, but each character seems to have influenced the other over the decades of publication. Namor, however, has been more consistently depicted as a borderline antihero, while Aquaman has been everything from that through a generic good-guy nerfed for ’70s network kid shows.

Apologies for the eccentricities of this ‘print’. It was surprisingly difficult to dig-up a copy of this particular segment. But I didn’t want to stop short of finishing the set. From 1966. More from the OldHorseman.

 

Posted in Saturday Matinees and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment
19 Jun 2021

Captain America

Hey kids (of all ages), it’s Saturday Morning Cartoon time again!

The week before last, we covered IRON MAN. Third in our series on the MARVEL SUPER HEROES wheel show that hit TV in the wake of the company’s super-guy renaissance after HULK and THOR. But not all the featured stars were newbies. Some dated back to the pre-Marvel “Timely” era.

Well before the US entered WWII, comic books were literally draping heroes in the Stars ‘n’ Stripes to fight the Nips and Krauts. CAPTAIN AMERICA wasn’t the first of these, but he became the best-known. A 4-F, 90-pound weakling who got ‘roided-up with an experimental Super Soldier Serum, put on a costume, and wielded an invulnerable shield that thought it was some kind of boomerang.

In keeping with the established norms of 1940s masked adventurers, Cap had a teen sidekick (rather lazily named “Bucky” in and out of costume) and a secret identity to preserve. The latter seemed particularly pointless, as Steve Rogers served only to annoy his sergeant as a clumsy Army private.

Cap was featured in a 1944 Republic serial… Sort of. It appears the script was written for an entirely different character (some speculation as to which) and they just stuck the Captain America name and costume on the lead at the last minute.

Like SPIDER-MAN, Hulk, and DR. STRANGE, there was an attempt to bring an updated version of Cap to live-action TV in the ’70s. This resulted in two TV movies, but no series.

He got a notoriously bad live-action feature film in the early ’90s, which was mercifully forgotten when he was introduced into the blockbuster MCU AVENGERS franchise ten years ago.

Like all the Marvel Super Heroes ‘toons, Captain America is pretty much lifted directly from the comics. This episode from 1941’s CAPTAIN AMERICA #1, which introduced Cap, Bucky, and archenemy Red Skull. More from the OldHorseman.

 

 

Posted in Saturday Matinees and tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment
05 Jun 2021

Iron Man’s Double Disaster

Hey kids (of all ages), it’s Saturday Morning Cartoon time again!

A couple weeks ago we covered THE MIGHTY THOR, and before him, THE INCREDIBLE HULK. But these two weren’t the only new Marvel characters making the jump to the company’s TV wheel show just a few years after their four-color print debuts…

Ol’ Greenskin was the most successful of Marvel’s attempts to put their characters into live-action, prime-time TV in the ’70s. They brought him back to try and launch others (including Thor) in the late ’80s, but none took root.

Iron Man didn’t even get a tryout in either era. (No. EXO-MAN doesn’t count!) But he was there at the start of Marvel animation. (If you can really call it that, with art lifted directly from comics and CLUTCH CARGO level motion added.) And he got various animated appearances in later decades… But it wasn’t until the 21st Century MCU that Tony Stark’s armor-plated techno-hero became a household name. (The Black Sabbath song had nothing to do with the comic book character.)

Kind of funny that, groundbreaking as Marvel’s 1960s superheroes were, they still felt obliged to stick to genre conventions… A doe-eyed Lois Lame knockoff. (You’ve come a long way, Pepper.) The whole well-guarded secret identity thing.

The episodes featured today include the introduction of Happy Hogan, sort of Iron Man’s less-lame answer to Jimmy Olsen. We also see the introduction of supervillain Jack Frost (who would later go by “Blizzard”). You might think he’s a poor man’s Mister Freeze… Well, maybe Mr. Zero, since BATMAN’s villain hadn’t really been developed beyond his ’59 introduction until well after this story was published in the comics. From 1966. More from the OldHorseman.

Posted in That's Entertainment! and tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment
22 May 2021

Trapped By Loki

Hey kids (of all ages), it’s Saturday Morning Cartoon time again!

A couple weeks ago we covered the not-so-jolly green giant’s animated debut. But he wasn’t alone. Marvel’s other popular superguys were part of the wheel show. Including fellow Avenger, Thor.

I suppose you can only have just so many comic book heroes get their powers by alien origin, Mystical Eastern training, science accidents, or super-tech before it dawns on writers to say “Screw it! Let’s just recruit mythical gods!”

The Norse god of thunder was well suited for the gig, and had already been used in DC comics back in the ’50s. Marvel’s version traded in the traditional red beard for a clean-shaven fellow with blonde locks, but kept the mythical backstory for the most part.

Still, superheroes of the era had to have a wimpy alter ego and some sort of weakness. In this case, the awesome immortal’s other self was a lame (literally) Dr. Donald Blake. Not only did Thor have to live as Blake when not saving the day, but he would involuntarily revert into that mortal form whenever Thor was separated from his signature war hammer for over sixty seconds!

Of course, he also got an ersatz Lois Lame (figuratively). We’ll not go into what has happened with her in our current, godforsaken, woke era!

Several attempts at live-action TV series starring Marvel characters were made in the 1970s. But Thor didn’t get a shot then. The only one of the bunch who really made it was the HULK. TV movie follow-ups to his series beginning in the late 1980s were used as tryouts for other Marvel characters, starting with Thor. Like the Hulk, he was considerably different from his four-color print incarnation. Unlike Ol’ Greenskin, his TV version didn’t succeed and was never heard from again.

He has, however, been a smashing success in the current MCU live-action blockbuster movies. But his on-screen career started with these humble, barely animated adventures. Lifted pretty much directly from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY comics, and produced by what was left of the old Paramount unit that did the theatrical POPEYE shorts, as well as some of the King Features TV output.

From 1966. More from The OldHorseman.

Posted in Saturday Matinees and tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment
01 May 2021

Ain’t He Unglamour-ace?

Hey kids (of all ages), it’s Saturday Morning Cartoon time again!

Before he got CGI’d into the AVENGERS movies that drew all the money in the known universe at the box office… Before his somewhat less impressive CGI incarnation was featured in Ang Lee’s ‘meh’ film… Even before they slathered Mr. Universe Lou Ferrigno in green paint for the hit TV series… The Not-So-Jolly Green Giant made his first screen appearance (just a few years after his print debut) on the MARVEL SUPER HEROES, a wheel show featuring the comic book company’s more popular characters.

It doesn’t get much truer to the source material than this, with stories and art lifted directly from the comics. Animation was more than a little limited. But, in those days, we were watching standard def, analog, over-the-air broadcasts subject to static and fading, rendered on small, black and white screens. So this was good enough!

You may note that, this being at the dawn of his career, the Hulk is far from the gigantic, unstoppable force he would become. They also re-colored him green to match his usual appearance, despite the fact he was originally gray skinned in his origin story. For reasons I cannot determine, the villain was renamed from “Gargoyle” to “Gorgon” for TV. Confusing, since the latter name was used for at least two other Marvel bad guys.

Of course, the most memorable thing about the series is the theme song! They could’ve skipped the origin story, as it is brilliantly and hilariously encapsulated in a few seconds. Here is the original 1966 cartoon The Origin of the Hulk that aired in September 1966. More from the OldHorseman.

P.S. We took a one-week breather from Saturday Morning Cartoons last week, owing to there being too much news to report. We won’t try to preempt the cartoons again anytime soon. Higher priorities!

Posted in That's Entertainment! and tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Post Navigation