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By Joshua Tyler & Jacob VanGundy | Published
Decades before Iron Man started the MCU, plans were in place to create a different Marvel universe, one that would culminate in an Avengers team. It started on the CBS television network and spawned numerous superhero movies.
The network has fully established a few heroes and made plans for a crossover. If only CBS had managed to do its thing Marvel The superhero universe, may have launched the trend of live-action comics 30 years earlier. Here's what went wrong.
Spider-Man Spider-Man does everything a Spider can In the 70s
The television version of the network of the MCU began with the 1977 TV movie, Spider-Man. That 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 especially popular with children. This limited age popularity concerned the network. So Spider-Man was retooled to be more appealing to adults in its second season.
That didn't change the demographics of the show, and so, CBS pulled the plug on its first Marvel show in 1979.
The muscles were not a special effect and made the incredible Hulk a success
Following the same release formula as Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk It began as a TV movie released in November 1977. That served as a backdoor pilot for the television series that followed, which aired on CBS.
Starring Lou Ferrigno as the green, muscular Hulk version of the character, and Bill Bixby as the no-nonsense Banner, The Incredible Hulk was by far the most successful of the CBS Marvel shows, spanning five seasons. It was such a success, that even after the end of season 4 of the show, 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 in this era, The Incredible Hulk has suddenly entered pop culture, with the MCU even referencing it in its present streaming shows Against all odds, The Incredible Hulk was a real hit.
It is something of a miracle that the success, since CBS and showrunner Kenneth Johnson, wanted to do as little as Hulk from the comics as possible. There was also a hard push from Johnson, to make the Hulk red instead of green.
Green, he, was not the color of anger. The color of anger is red. The showrunner said he called Stan Lee for permission to change the color of the Hulk's skin to red, but this was a bridge too far for the co-creator of the man-monster.
now, The Incredible Hulk is the only early Marvel effort to survive in the pop culture consciousness. He has not been forgotten and if his other efforts had been successful, then maybe we would have had the MCU decades earlier.
It wasn't for lack of trying though, because later 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 backdoor pilot. It was released the following year after the backdoor pilot for The Incredible Hulkand given the success of the show, 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 its poor ratings, Dr. Strange is the closest to an accurate comic take on a character from that era. This may be in part because Stan Lee actually served as a consultant on the show.
Because of Lee's involvement, it almost feels like an older, low-budget version of a modern MCU movie. Assuming you can overlook the bad special effects.
Captain America's first motorcycle movies debut on television
Impaired by the failure of Dr. StrangeCBS moved forward with its attempts to turn the Marvel universe into a television phenomenon. His biggest push to adapt a Marvel character came for a pair of Captain America made-for-TV movies released in 1979.
The first was entitled Captain America and the second was entitled Captain America 2: Die Too Soon. Captain America was released in January 1979 and Captain America 2: Die Too Soon premiered on TV in November of that same year. They went down.
Both films starred Reb Brown as Captain America and significantly changed his origin story and characterization, making the character feel generic. Nobody liked him.
His failure could be the final nail in the coffin for the CBS version of the MCU, but The Incredible Hulk it was a success, and while it was on the air the experience lingered that there could be more.
Thor awkwardly throws his hammer at a Hulk squad
Long after The Incredible Hulk after its run ended, the television network picked it up for the 1988 TV movie The Incredible Hulk is back. The real purpose of this movie was the last attempt to make another Marvel character on television. The Incredible Hulk is back it was a backdoor pilot for a Thor series.
It saw Lou Ferrigno's Hulk team up with Eric Kramer's Thor. The appearance of Thor was intended to excite the audience enough, that the character will justify his own show. But the Thor they put on the screen was terrible and terrible.
It failed and network television gave up on Marvel.
Other attempts to train the Avengers
CBS's attempt to create its own Marvel TV Universe failed, but Marvel kept trying with other offerings.
In 1990 The Cannon Group, famous shlock filmmakers, tried a theatrical version of Captain America. The film was never released in the US, although it had a brief theatrical run in the UK. However, it has become something of a cult favorite as a direct-to-video entry showing up on the back shelves at local Hollywood video stores.
Marvel kept trying, even if it meant they failed to make a Captain America movie worth seeing, three times, since then. In 1994, they gave another low-budget filmmaker, Roger Corman, an attempt to make a 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 that he never intended to release and the film exists only as a way to hang on to the rights of the Fantastic Four. Others say 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 the overacting leads and cheap costume armor, they end up looking a lot like the early episodes of The Power Rangers.
There was also an attempt, to get a live-action Iron Man movie, around the same time. There was also a script written, but the project stopped there. It's probably for the best, given how terrible Iron Man's suit could have been.
Because the TV Avengers of the 70s and 80s never formed
It's CBS that has really put the most effort into trying to make a complete success of the Marvel universe in live-action. They were ready to form their own Avengersif they could have done something to work in addition to the Hulk. They just needed other popular heroes to team up with him.
Plans were made for crossover episodes between The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man earlier, but concerns about 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 featured Hammond's Spider-Man.
If the crossovers were to happen, they could easily evolve into Dr. Strange and Captain America teaming up for a '70s Avengers TV event. The inconsistent ratings were an obstacle for CBS, trying out its TV version of the MCU, but also faced two major corporate problems.
One was that CBS was nervous about becoming synonymous with superheroes, which at the time were only intended for children. That's at least part of why Spider-Man was canceled, despite its ratings success.
The other is that Marvel itself was increasingly dissatisfied with CBS and worried about the network creating new characters of its own, clearing out the shows that owed it to Marvel. It was that paranoia that led Marvel to create She Hulk, in an attempt to stop 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 it to the small screen nearly 50 years ago. While the campy style of CBS productions might have prevented MCU-level popularity, a universe complete with the impact of The Incredible Hulk might 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 those CBS projects besides Hulk had taken off. It didn't happen. The world was not ready.
Maybe it'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 like what we have now. Robert Downey Jr. like Tony Stark was worth the wait.
