It struck me recently (while watching someting on YT which I'll get to) that the United States TV season that started in fall 1966 , marked a real milestone for the super-hero comics (& comparable) fan - It was the first time that made-for-TV animated series of super-heroes were shown on American TV !
Ever . I will discuss .
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If the Vision (bless him) and Red Tornado are superheroes, then Astro Boy is one too. The English language version of his series was syndicated in the US from 1963 to 1965, according to wiki.
September 1966... WHAT A WEEK!!!
Among other things... THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, SPACE GHOST, FRANKENSTEIN JR. AND THE IMPOSSIBLES, MARINE BOY, KIMBA THE WHITE LION, GIGANTOR, STINGRAY, THE GREEN HORNET, THE TIME TUNNEL, STAR TREK, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, THE MONKEES, TARZAN... (crazy enough, the last 3 I never saw until the following year! Too much good stuff to watch at once)
...and on top of that, LOST IN SPACE went color!
We got out first color & UHF TV in February 1966. Suddenly, a whole new world opened up. Among the shows I saw for the first time that day (amazing I can still remember this) were ROGET RAMJET, 8TH MAN and ASTRO BOY. (And until that week, for me, BATMAN was in B&W!) I forget exactly when PRINCE PLANET debuted around here. The 4 B&W Japanese cartoons aired off-and-on pretty regular (well, 3 of them, PRINCE PLANET aired maybe once and then disappeared) until the end of the decade, at which point, anything B&W, even B&W episodes of long-running shows (like VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA) just disappeared-- never mind if they were the better-written stories.
Crazy thing-- I can still remember which episodes of 8TH MAN and ASTRO BOY I saw first-- for 8TH MAN, it was the tragic story of the astronaut whose mind had been transplanted into a giant robot body... for ASTRO BOY, it was the one about the time-machine with the twisting glass tubes to get in and out of it.
The giant robot must have inspired my brother, a few years later he used it as the basis for one of his own home-made comics...
...Okay , I am gratified to get as much of a response this quickly :-) - It's about 8 PM in NJ now (are you in Camden , Henry ?) , while , in comparison to Santa Cruz , CA , wherever in AU Figs is in is - ?????
I will go into the " definition " thing now rather than later , as I was going to do . My initial entry had to be REALLY short , too (And other ones now will have to be so as well)...........
I tend to mean " super-hero " in the way that such fans as the ones , especially , who gather here - And , Figs , I grant that that probably tends to mean North American fans , perhaps those from other areas wouldn't tend to define it that way . - wou;d tend , I believe , to define it .
...I just had to post the last installment , hurriedly , in front of the " broomstick " of this machine that I am at the keyboard at automatically switching off !
So , if you perceive chain of thought interruptions...
I suppose I argue that the US TV 'toon series on before the fall '66 season tended to be:
" not quite " super-heroes
or
spoofs .
I've not done any additional research here , so it's all IIRC here...........
JONNY QUEST was a consious updating of the earlier-20th-Century " boy's book " concept into the Space Race/Cold War/Jet Age era . The UPA?? DICK TRACY series was , aside from its title sequence , done rather lightly .
There's a few others I could cite , but that's for a new post , not a revision of an old one !
I just argue that 8TH MAN , GIGANTOR , etc. were examples of another culture , not the US one .
That's not to say they weren't good - just (An initial top-of-head of) a whole another culture , two or so decades before anyone , really , Stateside said " magna " .
Look , one of the points here is that both DC and Marvel characters were among the new series of '66 I'm referring to !!!!!!!!! That's about 80% (or so it seems)of what is discussed here , and those were the first times either companies' characters came on in made-for-TV cartoons !!!!!!!!!
...I was especially referring to:
(1) The Filmation SUPERMAN series starting on CBS's schedule .
(2) Likewise , a number of original super-hero/" almost " Hanna-Barbera creation series staring on CBS's Sat-AM schedule - SPACE GHOST , MOBY DICK AND THE MIGHTY MIGHTOR ,, THE HERCULOIDS , and the I guess played more spoof/cartoon-like?? FRANKENSTIEN JR. AND THE IMPOSSIBLES .
(3) The Gantray-Lawrence MARVEL SUPER-HEROES series staring in syndication , not network showings .
...We got our color TV in '67 , Henry , I'll give my (not concerning a genre series , alas - :-( - ) memory connected to that soon...
We didn't get a color TV until '76 or '77.
...COURAGEOUS CAT AND MINUTE MOUSE was a spoof .
UNDERDOG certainly was , and was it pre-'66 ?
I suppose there's an argument that could be made that both series cited above , 'specially Courageous Cat , were practically/more kiddie/" nursery " versions of the super-hero concept - But , ah , maybe the fact that they were drawn cartoonishly - and featured anthomorphic animals , most of all?? - put them in the " spoof " camp .
The Trans-Lux THE MIGHTY HERCULES does occur to me as a bit of an earlier , though !
CLUTCH CARGO - did anybody take that seriously ?
COLONEL BLEEP was a spoof ,Iknow little about SPACE ANGEL (If that's its title) , I suppose there may have been some obscure " not-a-full-half-hour series " concepts I've missed...but I wager theyd've tended to follow western-frontier or " general adventure " concepts??
I didn't have you down as such a supporter of cultural apartheid, Emerkeithdavyjack. Astro Boy and Superman alike belong to us all...
Why be restrictive and exclusivist when you can be inclusive and expansive?
Superheroes often get a hard time as Saturday morning trashy kids stuff. Why not include something like Astro Boy, that is hugely respected across the world, in all sorts of critical circles, in your definition of a superhero? It can only reflect well on this peculiar little sub-genre we all love!
:-)
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