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In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover one of the wildest Doctor Stranges around and he sure isn’t part of the Marvel Multiverse!
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and sixth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first part of this installment’s legends. Click here for the second part of this installment’s legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I’ll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
The first live action Doctor Strange was actually on a Hanna-Barbera kids show.
STATUS:
True
The upcoming Doctor Strange sequel is titled Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, suggesting, of course, that the Marvel Multiverse will be a key part of the film (as it apparently is going to be a key part of the next Spider-Man film, as well). However, years ago, there was a Doctor Strange that was never going to be part of Marvel’s Multiverse!
You might also recall the first live action TV appearance of Marvel’s Doctor Strange, in the September 1978 TV movie where Peter Hooten played Stephen Strange, who gained his supernatural magical abilities in that flick (which was basically a pilot for a TV series that never was).
That’s the official first live action appearance of Marvel’s Doctor Strange, but amusingly enough, a year earlier, there was a whole OTHER Doctor Strange that made his live action debut and bizarrely, he actually looked a lot like the Marvel Doctor Strange!
In 1968, Kellogg’s was looking for an hour of Saturday Morning entertainment to sponsor and all the big cartoon studios pitched them on new shows. However, Hanna-Barbera thought it could come up with a unique concept to make their approach stand out at the pitch meetings, so they decided to make a deal with Sid and Marty Krofft to create a LIVE ACTION television series. This was so early in process that they obviously didn’t have actual costumes built for the characters and amusingly, Kellogg’s initially didn’t quite get the idea, since everyone else was pitching cartoons and the concept drawings, of course, looked like cartoons, as well. Luckily, Hanna-Barbera recalled that they had a Yogi Bear costume that had been used for some publicity stuff and so they had the costume flown in from California to Chicago where they had someone wear the costume at the pitch meeting and suddenly, the Kellogg’s executives got the concept and so the Banana Splits were born, Hanna-Barbera’s first live action TV series!
Of course, while the Banana Splits themselves were played by people (using Krofft costumes), there were other features mixed into the Banana Splits hour, including a few cartoon features and one live action feature (directed by Richard Donner!) called Danger Island.
In 1977, Hanna-Barbera attempted to replicate its Banana Splits magic with a new live action/cartoon hyrbid series called The Skatebirds, debuting in September 1977. It was about a group of, well, you know, birds that skate…
One of the highlights of The Skatebirds was the live action feature, Mystery Island, starring a pilot who is flying a computer expert, her younger brother and their fancy robot, P.O.P.S. (voiced by Frank Welker) somewhere when the evil Doctor Strange uses a projector beam to force the plane to crash on a mystery island. Strange plans to use P.O.P.S. (who was made up out of the original Robot designed for Lost in Space) to help him conquer the world.
Here is Doctor Strange (played by Michael Kermoyan)…
Isn’t it crazy how much he basically DOES look like Marvel’s Doctor Strange?
Here’s the opening installment…
The Doctor Strange TV movie was a year later. Marvel got involved when Filmation wanted to do a Spider-Woman character, but were cool with Doctor Strange here, go figure!
Thanks to the longtime anonymous reader who suggested this one!
CHECK OUT A TV LEGENDS REVEALED!
In the latest TV Legends Revealed – Discover how He-Man was nearly not a barbarian character at all!
MORE LEGENDS STUFF!
OK, that’s it for this installment!
Thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don’t even actually anymore, but I used it for years and you still see it when you see my old columns, so it’s fair enough to still thank him, I think.
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com. And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well! Also, if you have a correction or a comment, feel free to also e-mail me. CBR sometimes e-mails me with e-mails they get about CBLR and that’s fair enough, but the quickest way to get a correction through is to just e-mail me directly, honest. I don’t mind corrections. Always best to get things accurate!
Here’s my most recent book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know And Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books.
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Here’s my second book, Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? The cover is by Kevin Hopgood (the fellow who designed War Machine’s armor).
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Here’s my book of Comic Book Legends (130 legends. — half of them are re-worked classic legends I’ve featured on the blog and half of them are legends never published on the blog!).
The cover is by artist Mickey Duzyj. He did a great job on it…
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See you next time!
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