A Brief Visit to the Small Screen

This is Asteroid G’s regular column documenting the rise of superhero films in Hollywood. For the complete story, make sure to read the previous parts:

• Part 1: Batman ‘66
• Part 2: Superman '78

Technically our next stop in cinematic superhero storytelling should be Tim Burton’s Batman from 1989. But before we can really get there we need to take a quick stop off on the boob tube to see what was going on with superhero television. We already know that TV could feed to film, and back, because Batman ‘66 made the transition to the Silver Screen from TV between seasons of its show. But not every series that was on TV at the time was like that campy classic, and a couple of them did help to define, and flesh out, how superheroes could work in the visual medium.

Sing Out Her Name

While Superman: The Movie was in development, the third of the Big Three superheroes made her own debut on the small screen. This series, Wonder Woman for its first season and then The New Adventures of Wonder Woman for its second and third seasons, ran from 1975 through 1979, giving the Amazonian princess a solid run of episodes, helping to cement her in the minds of a generation of kids. There’s a reason why Linda Carter is still remembered for this role, and why the character was considered iconic even when she didn’t technically get a movie for over 70 years after she was first introduced.

Production on Wonder Woman did take time, and was almost as troubled as the development for Superman: The Movie. The first TV pilot was filmed and aired in 1974 and featured Cathy Lee Crosby in the title role. This version felt less like an adaptation of the classic character and seemed to draw more from her international spy, depowered stories that were the main feature of the character in the 1970s. Why the film did help to prove the character could be viable on the small screen, Crosby was recast and the series was reworked. That’s when Carter was brought in, a new pilot was filmed, and that show eventually caught on with fans.

Still, even then the series had to be retooled. The first season was set in the 1940s, during World War II, letting Diana fight against Nazis and the Axis. Filming a period piece was costly, though, so between seasons the series was reworked, moving it into the modern era while only keeping Linda Carter’s Diana Prince / Wonder Woman character the same. The now 1970s show then ran for two more seasons, getting tweaked and retooled again between seasons before, finally, being canceled with 60 total episodes (including the pilot movie) in the can. That’s a bit short for proper syndication, but the show did have a solid second life in reruns for years before finally fading away.

This series did help to prove a few points, though. First, while many superhero works up to that point had been pretty campy (following in the vein of Batman ‘66), Wonder Woman was decidedly less so. Sure, as a 1970s production it had many hallmarks of the era, looking pretty silly now with modern sensibilities, compared to what we’re used to in this era. But for the time, Wonder Woman played the material pretty straight, having the right amount of tongue-in-cheek to show everyone it knew how to have a good time.

It also showed that many of the elements of comics could come over into visual storytelling. Diana’s history on Themyscira, her being an immortal Amazon warrior, and many of her super powers, all made the transition from the comics to the small screen. Little things were adjusted, but she didn’t gain a huge assortment of new gifts that didn’t ever appear on the comic page (unlike with Superman throwing out his “S” symbols in his movies). Bringing Diana into live action media, and treating her right, was a big step for superheroes and representation. If only it hadn’t taken another forty-plus years to get her a real movie.

The Big, Green Guy

Around the same time that Wonder Woman was airing on CBS (after having first debuted on ABC before switching networks), the broadcaster also brought another superhero to its network… although this time from Marvel, not DC. Debuting in 1977, The Incredible Hulk took the angry giant from the comics and put him into a TV show where he wandered the countryside letting people know that, despite what they might think, they really did not want to see him when he was angry.

Taking a page from other road-style shows, where a hero (or heroes) take to the open road, traveling from place to place, finding crimes to stop, people to help, and minds to change, this series saw Dr. Bruce Banner (Bill Bixby in human form, Lou Ferrigno in The HulkOnce the brilliant Dr. Bruce Banner had dreams of making the world a better place by building super soldiers to act as a shield for all mankind. Then an accident at his lab bathed him in gamma radiation. Now he has a living nightmare, as a big green guy lives within, just waiting for the rage to take over so he can be free. form) traveling from one place to another, helping people out as only a guy that can turn into a seven-foot-tall green dude can do. He’d come, he’d help, and then he’d leave town before a tabloid reporter could get the dirt and prove, once and for all, that the Hulk actually did exist and (in his words) that he really was a menace.

The show was a big hit for CBS, which had already seen success with not only Wonder Woman when it picked up that show but also The Amazing Spider-man in 1978. That series only went 13 episodes before CBS axed it, though, while The Incredible Hulk managed 80-plus episodes and three additional made-for-TV movies, creating a long and indelible impact on superhero television. Yes, the show was goofy, with the Hulk being just a seven-foot-tall muscly guy and not, you know, the giant, hulking monster of doom you expected, but like Wonder Woman it treated the character with respect and tried to do right by his stories.

The series, via its TV movies, even gave us appearances from other Marvel characters, many of whom were getting their very first live-action roles. That included Thor (Eric Allan Kramer), Daredevil (Rex Smith), and Kingpin (John Rhys-Davies). A crossover cameo for Spider-man featuring The Amazing Spider-man star Nicholas Hammond was also planned which would have, in effect, created one of the earliest Marvel cinematic universes before the Marvel Cinematic UniverseWhen it first began in 2008 with a little film called Iron Man no one suspected the empire that would follow. Superhero movies in the past, especially those not featuring either Batman or Superman, were usually terrible. And yet, Iron Man would lead to a long series of successful films, launching the most successful cinema brand in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe. was even a glimmer of a thing.

But How Did It Redefine Superheroes?

This being television, these shows (and their related properties) didn’t have as big of an impact on the medium as other works would. No one discusses Wonder Woman ‘75 or The Incredible Hulk ‘78 ‘78 in the same way that later movies and shows are discussed now. These are notes on the resumes of these heroes, moments/ to be remembered fondly by long time fans, before the whole genre moved on to bigger and brighter things.

In fact, the only real impact you could feel on the genre as a whole were the cameos for Carter in Wonder Woman ‘84 and Lou Ferrigno in The Incredible Hulk down the road. The most important thing these works could do was prove that these characters were viable for live-action adaptations. All it would take was a studio willing to invest in them and give them their due. But to do that we had to get through the eras of dominance by SupermanThe first big superhero from DC Comics, Superman has survived any number of pretenders to the throne, besting not only other comic titans but even Wolrd War II to remain one of only three comics to continue publishing since the 1940s. and BatmanOne of the longest running, consistently in-print superheroes ever (matched only by Superman and Wonder Woman), Batman has been a force in entertainment for nearly as long as there's been an entertainment industry. It only makes sense, then that he is also the most regularly adapted, and consistently successful, superhero to grace the Silver Screen. first.

Next Time On…

Now we finally get to Burton’s Batman, a film that truly changed the game for a generation…