Last week, I blogged about the arrival of the new Fantastic Four: First Steps movie, and in the blog I mentioned that the Fantastic Four’s first TV appearances came from a 1967 Hanna-Barbera animated series.
At the time, the Fantastic Four were part of an onslaught of Marvel super heroes on weekend television. For while Hanna-Barbera gave us the action adventures of Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben, ABC aired an animated version of everyone’s favorite web-crawler, Spider-Man. Yeah, you know the theme song. Yes, it’s stuck in your head. Yes, you’re welcome.
But there was a third television series with Marvel’s champions of justice – and this one featured Iron Man, Captain America, the Mighty Thor, and others. And it was made on the cheap.
No, seriously. This is limited animation at its most limited.
Say hello to The Marvel Super Heroes.
These cartoons were ripped straight from the comics. No, seriously. Ripped from the comics, they copied actual comic book art and comic book plots. Heck, you could probably still see Jack Kirby’s fingerprints on the artwork.
And if a character actually moved more than just his lips, that animation was repeated over and over in nearly every episode. Trust me, Captain America does a cartwheel more times in this YouTube clip than I’ve done in my entire life.
Still, this is a fascinating view into the difficulty of making an animated weekly television series of any kind in the 1960’s. Everything, and I mean everything, had to be reused over and over, so that you didn’t waste time with flowing, sweeping animated moves. The kids watching would understand, it’s not like they are expecting Fleischer Studios-era rotoscoping, are they?
Yep, this is cheap. It’s right up there with the super-cheap Synchro-Vox cartoons of Captain Fathom, Space Ace and Clutch Cargo. Maybe one level above the old Colonel Bleep cartoons, for what they’re worth.
But yeah, if you want to really see what can be done with bare funds …
The YouTube link is above. Enjoy.
Chuck The Writer 
You forgot to mention that the same studio that packaged the Marvel Superheroes Show also did season 1 of Spider-Man before being bounced in favor of the legend in the making Ralph Bakshi. And, yeah, Ray Ellis’ Spider-Man theme is an earworm.
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I have all of them on DVD. Yes, the animation is limited, but it’s the classic 60s marvel artwork and stories. It’s a great education on the early stories.
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