By Joshua Tyler and Jacob VanGundy | Updated
Decades before Iron Man kicked off the MCU, there were plans to create a different Marvel universe that would end with a team of Avengers. It started on the CBS television network and spawned numerous superhero movies.
The network has fully established a handful of characters and made crossover plans. If CBS had gotten their way Marvel superhero universe, could have started the live-action comic book trend 30 years earlier. Here’s what went wrong.
Spider-Man Spider-Man does everything a spider can In the 70s
The network television version of MCU began with the 1977 TV movie, Spiderman. This led to an ongoing series on CBS called The Amazing Spider-Man.
Starring Nicholas Hammond as Peter Parker, the show was a success but was mostly popular with children. This limited age popularity affects the web. So Spider-Man was retooled to be more adult-friendly in its second season.
This didn’t change the demographics of the show, so CBS pulled the plug on its first Marvel show in 1979.
Muscles were not a special effect and 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. This served as a back pilot for the soon-to-be TV series aired on CBS.
Starring Lou Ferrigno as the green, muscular version of the Hulk character and Bill Bixby as the diminutive 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 show ran for 4 seasons, the show came back for two more made-for-TV movies, some of which were pieced together 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. Despite everything, The Incredible Hulk was a real success.
It’s something of a miracle that success happened, as both CBS and showrunner Kenneth Johnson wanted to make him as little like the Hulk from the comics as possible. There was even a strong push from Johnson to make the Hulk red instead of green.
Green, he said, is not the color of rage. The color of rage is red. The host of the show 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 co-creator.
now The Incredible Hulk is Marvel’s only early attempt to endure in the pop culture consciousness. It’s not forgotten, and if their other efforts had been as successful, then we might have gotten the MCU decades earlier.
It wasn’t for lack of trying because after The 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 back pilot. It was released the year after the back pilot for The Incredible Hulkand given the success of that show, CBS probably 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 his bad grades, Dr. Strange is the closest to a comically accurate look at a character from that era. This may be in part because Stan Lee actually serves as a consultant on the show.
Because of Lee’s involvement, it almost feels like an older, low-budget version of a modern MCU film. Assuming you can overlook the bad special effects.
The early Captain America motorcycle movies debuted on television
Unperturbed by the failure of Dr. StrangeCBS has moved forward with its attempts to turn the Marvel universe into a television phenomenon. Their biggest push to adapt a Marvel character came via a pair of Captain America made-for-TV movies released in 1979.
The first was titled Captain America and the second was titled Captain America 2: Death Too Soon. Captain America was released in January 1979. and Captain America 2: Death Too Soon premiered on television in November of that year. They collapsed.
In both films, Reb Brown plays Captain America and significantly alters his origin story and characterization, making the character feel ordinary. Nobody liked them.
Their failure could have been the final nail in the coffin for CBS’ version of the MCU, but The Incredible Hulk it was a success, and while it was on the air there was hope that there might be more.
Thor awkwardly slams his hammer into a Hulk outfit
Long after that The Incredible Hulk finished its run, network television brought it back for the 1988 TV movie The Incredible Hulk is back. The real purpose of this movie was the last attempt to get another Marvel character working on TV. The Incredible Hulk is back was a behind-the-scenes pilot for a series of Thor.
It saw Lou Ferrigno’s Hulk team up with Eric Kramer’s Thor. Thor’s appearance was meant to excite audiences enough for the character to warrant his own show. But the Thor they put on screen was awesome and terrible.
It failed and network television dropped Marvel.
Other attempts to create the Avengers
CBS’ attempt to create its own Marvel TV Universe failed, but Marvel continued to try other deals.
In 1990 The Cannon Group, famous makers of shlock films, tried to make a theatrical version of Captain America. The film was never released in the United States, although it received a brief theatrical release in the United Kingdom. However, it has become something of a cult favorite as a direct-to-video recording, appearing on the bottom shelves of local Hollywood video stores.
Marvel kept trying, even though it meant they’d failed to make a Captain America movie worth watching three times so far. In 1994 they gave another low-budget director, Roger Corman, a chance to make The Fantastic Four movie. 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 hold on to the Fantastic Four movie rights. Others claim it was so bad that even Corman was embarrassed to release it.
Leaked versions of Corman’s Fantastic Four are now available online, and thanks to the exaggerated main characters and cheap costume armor, it ends up looking a lot like the early episodes of The Power Rangers.
There was also an attempt to launch a live-action Iron Man movie around the same time. There was even a script written, but the project stopped there. That’s probably for the best, considering how awful the Iron Man suit would probably be.
Why ’70s and ’80s TV Avengers never took shape
It’s CBS that has really put the most effort into trying to make the live-action Marvel universe a complete success. They were ready to form their own The Avengersif they had been able to get something to work in addition to the Hulk. They just needed other popular characters to ally with.
Plans were made for crossover episodes between The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man early on, but concerns about Spider-Man’s young fanbase prevented an 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 gave Spider-Man back to Hammond.
If crossovers had happened, they could easily have been Dr. Strange and Captain America teamed up in a campy ’70s Avengers TV event. Inconsistent ratings were a hurdle for CBS trying to make its TV version of the MCU, but it also faced two major corporate problems.
One was that CBS was worried about becoming synonymous with superheroes, which at the time were considered just for kids. This is at least part of the reason why Spider-Man was canceled despite its ratings success.
The other is that Marvel itself was increasingly unhappy with CBS and worried that the network was creating its own new characters, rejected shows that owed money to Marvel. It was this paranoia that led Marvel to create She Hulk, in an attempt to prevent CBS from owning the idea of ​​a female Hulk.
The interconnected universe has been a huge part of Marvel comics since the 1960s, and CBS almost brought that to the small screen nearly 50 years ago. While the camp style of CBS productions may have hindered MCU-level popularity, a full universe with the impact of The Incredible Hulk could change the entire genre.
While the idea seems very modern, shared superhero universes could easily have become the hot trend of the 80s if even one of these CBS projects besides Hulk had taken off. It didn’t happen. The world wasn’t ready.
Maybe it’s for the best, because if any of Marvel’s plans from the 70s, 80s, and 90s had worked, they would never have turned out as good as what we have now. Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark was worth the wait.
