The Marvel Super Heroes

The Marvel Super Heroes
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Starring	Peg Dixon Paul Soles Sandy Becker John Vernon Jack Creley
Country of origin	United States Canada
No. of episodes	65
Production
Running time	Half-hour series
Production company(s)	Grantray-Lawrence Animation Marvel Comics Group
Distributor	Krantz Films (1966 - 1982) Disney–ABC Domestic Television
Release
Original network	first-run syndication
Original release	September 1 – December 1, 1966

Krantz Films (1966 - 1982)

The Marvel Super Heroes is an American / Canadian animated television series starring five comic-book superheroes from Marvel Comics. The first TV series based on Marvel characters, it debuted in syndication on U.S. television in 1966.

Produced by Grantray-Lawrence Animation, headed by Grant Simmons, Ray Patterson and Robert Lawrence, it was an umbrella series of five segments, each approximately seven minutes long, broadcast on local television stations that aired the show at different times. The series ran initially as a half-hour program made up of three seven-minute segments of a single superhero, separated by a short description of one of the other four heroes. It has also been broadcast as a mixture of various heroes in a half-hour timeslot, and as individual segments as filler or within a children's TV program.

The segments were: "Captain America", "The Incredible Hulk", "Iron Man", "The Mighty Thor", and "The Sub-Mariner".

Sixty-five half-hour episodes of three seven-minute chapters were produced, for a total of 195 segments that ran initially in broadcast syndication from September 1, 1966 to December 1, 1966.

The series, produced in color, had extremely limited animation produced by xerography, consisting of photocopied images taken directly from the comics and manipulated to minimize the need for animation production. The cartoons were presented as a series of static comic-strip panel images; generally the only movement involved the lips, when a character spoke, the occasional arm or leg, or a fully animated black silhouette. The series used the original stories largely in their entirety, showcasing Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Don Heck art, among others, from the period fans and historians call the Silver Age of comic books.