Marvel cartoon flood on Family Channel

This is probably old news but something I only just discovered while flipping channels today: the Family Channel is broadcasting five hours of superhero cartoons on Saturday mornings, most of them featuring Marvel characters.

They are showing: the old Fantastic Four cartoon, Spider-Man, Hulk and even Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. If you're a cartoon junkie, you might want to check this out.

Today's broadcast of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends was the episode featuring Swarm. Brought back a lot of great memories.

'Swarm...Swarm is my master...I am a worker...I work for Swarm...' Great dialogue, that.

Is that the excellent 60's FF cartoon, or the crappy version with Herbie the robot?

rose up with the following chant:

The 1990s version with Human Torch and no Herbie.

The 60's FF cartoon, was it like the Spider-Man one with actual animation, or like the Incredible Hulk where it was all talking heads with little animation? I've seen some Hulk and Sub-Mariner episodes from that time and found them utterly bizarre. The Hulk one looked to have frames taken out of Ditko Hulk comics with the word balloons erased.

The FF cartoon was produced by Hanna-Barbera and had honest to God animation, along with a pretty snappy bit of theme music. The Hulk and Sub-Mariner ones you mention were made along with Captain America and Iron Man and were as bare bones as you get, as the 'animation' was just what you describe....art from the comics with movement by the characters done by basically moving the image quickly by the camera. As quirky as they were, they were a lot of fun.

ABC Family was suppossed to work in the 1960s Spider-Man series, but so far it hasn't appeared sicne the Spider-Mania weekend event. Commericials also show scenes from Fantastic Four, Iron Man, The Avengers, and Silver Surfer, but so far they are only showing various Spider-Man cartoons, X-Men, and The Hulk.

I would like them to also air the 1980s Hulk cartoon that was originally paired with Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.

Cartoon Network's Boomerang channel currently airs the 1960s Fantastic Four cartoon along with cartoons from the 1980s Thing cartoon.

I loved that run. Especially the second season (the first was kind of lame on initial viewing but improved with later viewings). That second season saw better art/animation and many of the classic stories updated with a more modern feel. How long have they been airing? I hope this Saturday was the first time because I would like to record them all.

<< The 60's FF cartoon, was it like the Spider-Man one with actual animation, or like the Incredible Hulk where it was all talking heads with little animation? I've seen some Hulk and Sub-Mariner episodes from that time and found them utterly bizarre. The Hulk one looked to have frames taken out of Ditko Hulk comics with the word balloons erased.>>

<<The FF cartoon was produced by Hanna-Barbera and had honest to God animation, along with a pretty snappy bit of theme music. The Hulk and Sub-Mariner ones you mention were made along with Captain America and Iron Man and were as bare bones as you get, as the 'animation' was just what you describe....art from the comics with movement by the characters done by basically moving the image quickly by the camera. As quirky as they were, they were a lot of fun.>>

The FF cartoons took most of the plots & dialogue right from the Lee-Kirby comics of the period. Alex Toth stayed remarkably faithful to the Kirby designs, doing mimimal simplification. The voices were dead-on (especially the guest-stars such as Vic (Outer Limits) Perrin as the Silver Surfer and Ted (Lurch) Cassidy. And music by Hoyt (Jonny Quest) Curtin! Why they're not on DVD is beyond me!

The Marvel SuperHeroes series took the actual art from the comics and did limited (never was the word so aptly used) animation using it. Seeing Iron Man go from Kirby to Heck to Colan to Heck in the space of a minute was truly a bizarre experience! If the project was done today with computers doing the inbetweening, it could be absolutely incredible!

I am looking at the Saturday morning schedule on the Family channel, and I don't see the FF, just X-men, Hulk, and Spiderman. Can anybody tell me what time that the FF is on?

Thanks!

Unfortunately, they're rotating them in and out. I've caught one in the last 8 weeks or so by luck. Try tvguide.com or titantv.com and you can search for series.

- Batz

With all of this discussion about Marvel comics, it raises an interesting question: what was the best animated adaptation of a Marvel series? The worst?

And speaking of animated adaptations, what's the deal with the new Spider-Man series? Is it still slated to debut on MTV?