It’s the late 1960’s. You get up on a Saturday morning and turn on the television. By the time the set warms up, you’ve already fixed yourself a bowl of Frosted Flakes and are ready to watch four or five hours of television before your parents enter the living room and chase you outside. Go out and play, they say. Get some fresh air, they say. You need some sunshine, they say.
But until they wake up and chase you out of the living room… the television set is yours. I had a ton of cartoons on the big three networks – yes, this was before cable television – and I watched them with eager glee.
And those shows included such cartoon corniness and braggadocio, with plotlines that were simply “bad guy threatens everybody, superhero stops him in seven minutes or less.”
Want to watch some clips?
Sure you do!
THE FANTASTIC FOUR
The animated adventures of the FF have populated Saturday morning broadcasts, off and on, for years. This was the first iteration of the Marvel team in action, as animated by Hanna-Barbera. Nice to see them take one of the greatest FF comic book stories – the one that began in Fantastic Four #48 – and condense it into a 30-minute cartoon for the kiddies.
THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA
Okay, you’ve heard of the Super Friends cartoons from the 70’s? Well, a few years before that cartoon, Filmation created a series based on DC Comics’ “Justice League” comics. Yep, that’s Ted Knight of the Mary Tyler Moore show (and of local WTEN announcing fame) as the narrator of the series.
BATMAN AND ROBIN
Filmation also produced a series of Batman episodes, featuring Olan Soule as the voice of the Caped Crusader, and Casey Kasem as Robin the Boy Wonder. What’s interesting about this series is that it uses the artistic look of the villains from the comics, while using fantastic plotlines that seem to have been inspired from the 1967 live-action TV series.
SPIDER-MAN
Okay, sing along with me. You all know the words. The animation was halfway decent – Spidey slinging webs that connect to places that are higher than the tallest buildings (and conveniently off-screen), but that theme song. Pure gold.
THE MARVEL SUPER HEROES
At the same time that Grantray-Lawrence Animation was producing half-hour Spider-Man episodes, they also produced a series of short cartoons featuring some of Marvel’s other super-heroic properties. These included the Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and Namor the Sub-Mariner. The animation on these shows are barely above tracing the comic book art – but come on, you’re tracing the work of Jack Kirby. You should feel honored.
BIRDMAN AND THE GALAXY TRIO
Yes, there was a time, long before Birdman was a defense attorney, when he fought crime and battled super-villains, all to the swinging beat of a Hoyt Curtin soundtrack. This show also featured a cosmic superpowered team called the Galaxy Trio. The less said about them, the better.
SUPER PRESIDENT
This show lasted for about a year, and from what I can gather, it was one of the lowest rated programs on the Saturday morning schedule. You have the President of the United States – who also has the power to change his molecular density. Meditate on this.
YOUNG SAMSON AND GOLIATH
Another Hanna-Barbera classic, featuring a boy who can bang his wrist bracelets together and suddenly become a super-strong man. And if he bangs his wrist bracelets in front of of his dog, the dog turns into a laser-beam-eyed lion. No word on whether cutting this guy’s hair would make him a 98-pound weakling again.
THE MIGHTY HERCULES
And we travel from Biblical superheroes to Hellenic ones. Limited animation, a catchy earworm theme song as sung by Johnny Nash – yes, the “I Can See Clearly Now” Johnny Nash – and you have the adventures of the mighty strongman of Greek mythology.
SINBAD JR.
And finally, here’s another “tighten your belt and you become a superhero” cartoon. Originally these cartoons were done by American International Pictures; but at some point in time, the series was outsourced to Hanna-Barbera.
Okay, now go outside and get some fresh air and sunshine. And have a great day!
Chuck The Writer 
I picked up the entire collection of the Marvel Superheroes cartoons at the New York City Comic Con this past fall. Its barely animated, but you’re right – its Kirby so its still fun to watch them. Particularly as they capture the early storylines and spirit of Marvel.
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I was in very early years in the late 1960s but by the time I was watching TV in the early 1970s, all of these cartoons had hit syndication and I ate the majority of them up.
In addition to the straight-up comic book superheroes and those original creations like Birdman inspired by them, there were a gaggle of interesting, often oddball ’60s superhero offshoots as well. Such as…
Comedic superheroes: often but not always super-powered animals. Underdog, Courageous Cat, Fearless Fly, Bat Fink, Atom Ant, The Mighty Heroes, The Impossibles and my personal favorite, Super Chicken who had no powers whatsoever… he just thought he did after drinking his “super sauce.”
Anime Heroes: 8th Man, Gigantor the Space Age Robot, Astro Boy, Marine Boy – all were pretty super. And Speed Racer and Kimba were pretty heroic in their own right.
Western Hero: Format Films (better known for the original Alvin series) made an amazingly dark and compelling Lone Ranger animated series that took its cues from Wild Wild West and featured plots with villains of a sci-fi and supernatural horror nature.
’60s and ’70s were the best time to be a kid, in my opinion!
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