I have noticed a lot of love for the terrible Adam West Batman over the years on this site and thought that it would only be fair to pay tribute to two comic book based shows that were much....MUCH better than that steaming turd.
First we start with Wonder Woman starring the lucious Lynda Carter. A little bit of backstory on the television evolution of the character: the same assclowns who made the terrible Batman show actually were going to make a Wonder Woman show in the late 60's but thankfully the 5 minute clip that was produced was so terrible it never got off the ground. In 1974 they made a TV movie starring Cathy Lee Crosby as a blonde WW that in no way resembled the comics and was panned. The Lynda Carter WW ran for three seasons. First it was on ABC and set during WWII but after the first season ABC didn't pick up and it went to CBS where the time period was set to modern day (late 70's). The series also starred Lyle Waggoner (Carol Burnett Show) as Major Steve Trevor as well as Cloris Leachman as her mother Queen Hippolyta in the pilot and Debra Winger as her younger sister Wonder Girl in 3 episodes.
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The other comic book tv adaptation I want to put the spotlight on is the Incredible Hulk starring Bill Bixby as Dr. David Banner, Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk, and Jack Colvin as Jack McGee, reporter who tries to track down the creature. This is one of, if not THE most successful TV adaptations of a comic book of all time, lasting 5 seasons and spawning three made for TV movies afterwards. The series strayed from the comic as they did away with a lot of the more comic book-y aspects: no super villians and the like. Still, Bixby shines as Banner. Instead of being hunted by the Army and fighting monsters Hulk encountered more real-life issues and was pretty much a social commentary of the times. I definitely prefer the show to either of the big budget movies and even to the comic book itself. There is a rumor that Banner's name was changed from Bruce to David for the show because "Bruce" was seen as being gay, but in reality producer Kenneth Johnson didn't really care for the alliterative name thing. The studio and Johnson also wanted to change the Hulk himself from green to red (red being the color associated with anger) but Stan Lee put thankfully squashed that. Richard Kiel (Jaws from James Bond) was originally hired to play the Hulk but when they started filming they felt he didn't look muscular enough and went with Ferrigno instead.
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