By the 1960s, Marvel had been able to firmly establish itself as the home of various popular superheroes. So the idea of taking their comic book stories to television made plenty of sense, leading to the debut of The Marvel Super Heroes in 1966.

The show contained various separate segments all focused on a different hero: Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, the Invincible Iron Man, the Mighty Thor, and Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner. Each segment ran for about seven minutes each, and each half-hour episode would usually consist of three of these segments.

The cartoon’s animation was pretty limited, and was produced by means of xerography. The show was produced by photocopying images directly from the comics themselves, and manipulating them from there, for the sake of minimizing as much animation work necessary as possible. Often, the only piece of an image that would actually be moving would be the eyes or the mouth.

The Marvel Super-Heroes would only run for the initially produced 65 episodes, from September to December of 1966. As the show was broadcast in first run syndication, some stations opted to put their own spin on things; for example, in Boston, the show would feature live-action segments in addition to the animated spots. Marvel didn’t see huge success with the series, but a different animated series took off the following year: Spider-Man.

Fans of these earlier versions of beloved Marvel characters can head over to Hake’s Auctions current Auction #227, which sports three limited Bowen statues. Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, and Spider-Man are all available. These statues are from the 1990s and were all released in a limited quanity of just 100 each. They come with matching certificates of authenticity and are each individually numbered. These and other items will close on Wednesday and Thursday, July 10-11, 2019, so interested parties are encouraged to get their bids in before it’s too late.