At the end of the 70s, Marvel and Toei made a three-year licensing agreement. Each could use the other’s properties in any way they wanted.

Marvel would use the main robots from two of Toei’s anime, Wakusei Robo Danguard Ace and Chōdenji Robo Combattler V, as part of the Mattel licensed Shogun Warriors comic book and, sadly, not much else. That’s right, Marvel could have had a Kamen Rider comic.

Toei was inspired by Captain America to make Battle Fever J* and also made animated movies of Tomb of Dracula and Frankenstein.

And, of course, their version of Spider-Man.

Across 41 episodes and one movie made for the Toei Manga Matsuri, this story took the costume of Spider-Man and then went absolutely insane.

Motorcycle racer Takuya Yamashiro sees the Marveller — a UFO — fall to Earth just as his father Dr. Hiroshi Yamashiro — a space archaeologist! — investigates. He’s killed by Professor Monster and his evil Iron Cross Army, who were being opposed by the alien Garia, the last surviving warrior of Planet Spider. He injects Takuya with his blood and gives him a car named the Spider Machine GP-7 as well as a bracelet that allows him to control the ship and the robot form — Leopardon — to protect Earth.

Obviously, this series is a blast. Of course Spider-Man needs a car and a giant robot and is bothered by cold. I might even prefer it to nearly every other live-action version of the character.

*The popularity of this show and Battle Fever J led to a new interest in sentai shows, which of course how we got Power Rangers here. Toei’s next two sentai series, Denshi Sentai Denziman  and Taiyo Sentai Sun Vulcan featured Marvel Comics Group in the credits yet had no characters from the company.

Released in Europe as a theatrical film, this 1979 TV movie is really episodes 12 and 13 of the show, “The Chinese Web.”

Director Don McDougall had the same experience when episodes of the Planet of the Apes TV series that he directed were re-released as the foreign theatrical films Farewell to the Planet of the Apes and Forgotten City of the Planet of the Apes.

Min Lo Chan, who is the former Chinese Minister of Industrial Development, has defected to the U.S. under suspicion of being a spy. An old friend of J. Jonah Jameson, he is staying with his niece Emily while he tries to prove his innocence. Spider-Man comes in to the story when Jameson asks Peter Parker to help and the journey to save Min Lo Chan will take our friendly neighborhood web swinger all the way to Hong Kong.

While the costume looks great — except for the web shooter — the show as always drags. That said, I would have been excited by the show coming back for more, as Nicholas Hammond claimed that there were plans to do an Amazing Spider-Man/Incredible Hulk TV crossover/comeback movie. Even better — Spidey would have appeared in the new black costume. Supposedly, Universal canceled the film, saying that Lou Ferrigno wasn’t available as he was filming Hercules, a fact that Ferrigno says is not true.

I always felt that this show would have done better if CBS hadn’t aired it as a ratings spoiler throughout 1978 and 1979, programming it against other shows instead of airing it regularly.

This would be the final theatrical film of Spider-Man released until Columbia Pictures acquired the rights in 1999. That said, I would have loved to have seen whatever Cannon would have made.

Despite its high ratings, the CBS Amazing Spider-Man series only lasted 13 episodes. There are a lot of reasons why it didn’t last — Marvel Comics publisher and co-creator of the character Stan Lee fought with producer Daniel R. Goodman (even telling Marvel house magazine Pizzazz that the show was “too juvenile”), it was expensive to make, it didn’t get the demographics that the network wanted and they no longer wanted to be the superhero network.

Columbia Pictures helped recoup those costs by releasing two movies in UK, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand, taking the “Deadly Dust” episodes — season 1, episodes 1 and 2 — and turning them into a feature-length movie.

Upset that their professor has brought a small amount of plutonium onto campus, three students decide to steal it and build a bomb in order to protest the dangers of nuclear power. They didn’t figure on international businessmen and arms dealer Mr. White (Robert Alda) taking their bomb and trying to detonate it in Los Angeles as an attempt to kill the President of the United States.

Meanwhile, Captain Barbera (Michael Pataki!) suspects Peter Parker (Nicholas Hammond) of the crime. He’s also pursued by Rita Conway (Chip Fields), a reporter who wants an interview with his alter ego, Spider-Man.

The great thing about the UK — well, maybe not great — is that nunchucks are illegal, so they get censored from every movie. Like this one. It played on U.S. broadcast TV but couldn’t play UK theaters.

I can tell you exactly where a five-year-old me was on the night of September 14, 1977.

Watching this movie on CBS.

I wasn’t alone, as it was the highest performing CBS production for the entire year and played as a theatrical movie in Europe, often in a double bill with Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.

Directed by E. W. Swackhamer (Vampire) and written by Alvin Boretz, this TV movie has Nicholas Hammond as Peter Parker, who becomes Spider-Man when he’s bitten by a radioactive spider.

His first villain isn’t Doctor Octopus or the Green Goblin, but instead The Guru (Thayer David), who is mind-controlling people to rob banks and threatens to cause ten people to commit suicide unless he’s paid $50 million. The real drama happens when Peter becomes one of the people under the villain’s thrall.

It’s just sort of like the comic and not really filled with action, but it does have the wild stunt of Spider-Man climbing an actual building in New York City and swinging on a web, which wasn’t CGI back in 1977 and blew all of our minds.

January 18, 1979: I was six years old and in pure comic book mania, as Superman had come out, there was a DC ski stunt show at Sea World, The Incredible Hulk was on CBS, the Captain America TV movie would be airing the very next day and there had already been a few Spider-Man TV movies. It was an amazing time to be a kid and get free superhero stuff sent over the airwaves and often, we’d have no idea what we were about to get other than what TV Guide told us.

The Justice League of America were all showing up on my TV! And not just Batman and Robin, played by Adam West and Burt Ward, but the deep cut heroes I loved, like Hawkman (Bill Nuckols, Wally from Supertrain), Captain Marvel (Garrett Craig, the third man to play the man who says “Shazam!” in the 70s after Jackson Bostwick and John Davey), Huntress (Barbara Joyce) and Black Canary (Danuta Wesley, who took over as the Tea Time Matinee Lady on The Tonight Show after the death of Carol Wayne), plus more well-known ones like Flash (Rod Haase, Candy Stripe Nurses, If You Don’t Stop It… You’ll Go Blind!!! and the sequel Can I Do It ‘Till I Need Glasses?) and Green Lantern (Howard Murphy, the gardener in Young Lady Chatterley II, which would become another important memory in my young life for different reasons).

A party for the retirement of Scarlet Cyclone (William Schallert from Inner Space and In the Heat of the Night) when the Legion of Doom spoils everyone’s fun by announcing they’ve hidden a bomb, so everyone must get de-powered, split into smaller teams and save the day. If that seems like a Gardner Fox story, it’s not a bad thing. The bad guys are Riddler (Frank Gorshin, who else?), Weather Wizard (Jeff Altman, who a year after this would star in one of the most baffling TV shows in broadcast history, The Pink Lady and Jeff), Sinestro (comedian Charlie Callas), Mordru (yes, a Legion of Superheroes villain! He’s played by Gabriel Dell, doubling down on oddball kids shows, as he had just been the voice of Boba Fett on The Star Wars Holiday Special), Doctor Sivana (Howard Morris, whose voice was all over the cartoons I grew up on), Giganta and Solomon Grundy (Mickey Morton, who was also in the aforementioned Star Wars nightmare, playing Chewbacca’s wife Malla).

While the show looked cheap and kind of silly, I was six. So I was beyond excited because there was another episode the very next week.

The next week is why I grew up to be the cynical person who will go on at length about why I hate Wed Craven or how no good slasher has been made with minor exceptions after 1984. All my pain came from this show, in which the adventure format was ditched to instead present a celebrity superhero roast of the superheroes hosted by Ed McMahon.

Now, I love celebrity seventies roasts.

I love Ed McMahon.

But I had been laughed at — and would be laughed at my entire life — for knowing too much about comic books.

Now, even comic books were abandoning me to the void of ennui. Yes, I was the kind of six year old that often asked for an Anacin because I claimed life was giving me a migraine.

Anyways…

New characters were added, including stand-up comic black hero Ghetto Man (Brad Sanders), Captain Marvel’s Aunt Minerva (Ruth Buzzi), Hawkman’s mother (Pat Carroll, the voice of Ursula in The Little Mermaid) and superhero reporter Rhoda Rooter (June Gable, Estelle on Friends) who lets the world know that Giganta (early trans actor Aleshia Brevard, who played one of the female creatures in Bigfoot) was marrying The Atom (Alfie Wise, who was Batman in Cannonball Run).

If it sounds horrible, well — it was. And it still is.

I mean, didn’t the producers realize that Captain Marvel lived on Earth-S, I wondered? Yet even I knew that this was above Wonder Woman, who had her own show, and Superman, who at one point eclipsed Batman, who bided his time and worked with the right directors obviously.

In his book Back to the Batcave, Adam West said that he regretted doing these shows. They couldn’t even get his Batman costume right.

But hey! Gary Owens showed up!

Iron Man Tiger Seven was a Japanese tokusatsu series that aired from October 6, 1973 to March 30, 1974 with a total of 26 episodes. It’s pretty much trying to be Kamen Rider without being Kamen Rider and has a hero born of tragedy, as several Mu monsters — yes, the same Mu that sung under the ocean and is also the home of the KLF — attack a dig that our hero’s human alter ego — Takigawa Go — is part of with his father, who is leading it. He’s stabbed in the heart and his father gives him an ancient heart that he has found in the ruins and a magic pendant that activates his powers when he says, “Tiger Spark.”

I say tragic because moments later, everyone but Takigawa Go gets killed and then a few episodes later, his girlfriend gets killed to, giving him the trademark scarf he wears when in Iron Man Tiger Seven mode.

Then again, he does get a somewhat intelligent motorcycle with rocket boosters and transformative powers that comes to his aid when he roars.

The bad guys in this are astounding with each monster of the week being called “something” Genjin, so we have Kappa Genjin, Merman Genjin, Flying Dragon Genjin, Rat Genjin and the incredible Wolf Genjin, who is a white wolf riding a motorcycle.

The same company that made this also created Kaiketsu Lion Maru, which has three kids in the samurai era who can transform into a human/lion hybrid.

You can watch the first episode on YouTube. There are also episodes with English subtitles on the Internet Archive.

Airing on November 23 and 24, 1979 — the same nights that Salem’s Lot was also on CBS — with the new creative team of director Iván Nagy (perhaps better known as the boyfriend of Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss) and Wilton Schiller (who produced the last season of The Fugitive and wrote this with his wife, former casting agent Patricia Payne).

According to star Reb Brown, Captain America wore a helmet in these movies because the California Highway Patrol — you know, CHiPs — said that he must have a helmet to ride a motorcycle on the freeway.

At least he gets to hang-glide this time. And get a decent villain, as Christopher Lee plays General Miguel, who is using an aging formula to hold Portland hostage. Cap has Connie Selleca on his side as a scientist, but this pitch for a series — the second if you count the other TV movie that aired four months before — didn’t get the ratings needed, what with those expensive stunts.

I kind of love reading reviews making light of Steve Rogers being a painter in these movies. That’s totally the character from the comics, one of the few things that made it into this film.

On Friday night, January 19, 1979, a seven-year-old me sat down to watch this and promptly lost his mind.

There was supposedly a directive from CBS to not follow the comics exactly, which makes no sense, because the comics sell the show which sell the comics, but for some reason, no one figured that out yet.

So that’s how this version of Captain America is a legacy hero, even if they get the part about Steve Rogers being a commercial artist right. He’s almost killed by some spies who are trying to get the F.L.A.G. serum that his father invented and gave to himself to become the first Captain America. But all Steve wants to do is roam in his cool van because it’s 1979 and this Earth-CBS version of Cap is Nomad before he’s Cap.

He ends up being saved by the aforementioned F.L.A.G. formula, gets super-strength, a special motorcycle, a clear shield, a motocross-centric costume and the actual job of being the Sentinel of Liberty.

According to star Reb Brown at Comic-Con, CBS planned crossing over his character with Spider-Man (Nicholas Hammond) and the Hulk (Lou Ferrigno/Bill Bixby). Seven-year-old me loves that.

Writer Don Ingalls once worked on the LAPD magazine The Beat, as well as scripting The Initiation of Sarah. Director Rod Holcomb has worked on all sorts of episodic TV, including The Six Million Dollar Man and The Greatest American Hero.

The reviews I’ve seen for this online are a mix of “look how far we’ve come” and “the idea of Captain America is capitalist nonsense.” First, this show is just fine. It’s strange to compare low budget TV movies made forty years ago to glossy multimillion films on so many levels. And Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Captain America to represent the best of this country and what it could be, a character that two Jewish men created to make a stand for America entering World War II, that protest groups came to their offices to try and find them, that became a character of a man lost out of time and with no country, even fighting the Secret Empire the whole way to the White House, exposing Nixon as a supervillain — who killed himself off-panel! — and then traveled the nation as the aforementioned man with no country called Nomad. And this was no millenial story for social media clout. This was in 1974.