The Marvel Action Hour

The Marvel Action Hour, later Marvel Action Universe, was a syndicated television block from Genesis Entertainment featuring animated adaptions of Marvel comic book heroes the Fantastic Four, Iron Man and Biker Mice from Mars.^[1] The Marvel Action Hour debuted in 1994. The Marvel Action Hour lasted two seasons before being cancelled.

Format

The first half of the hour, was an episode of Iron Man; the second half, an episode of Fantastic Four.^[2] During the first season, Stan Lee introduced the episode.^[2]

The show underwent a notable modification when broadcast on the BBC in the United Kingdom; because the BBC does not feature commercial breaks, the two shows that made up the Marvel Action Hour would actually only have totaled about forty minutes, and so episodes of the 1980s Incredible Hulk series were added between the two original shows to bring the whole bundle up to the promised hour in length. The Stan Lee segments were, however, dropped.

Both the Fantastic Four and Iron Man were radically retooled for the second seasons, sporting new opening sequences, improved animation, and more mature writing, though the introductions by Stan Lee were shortened and now against a green screen displaying various production paintings from both shows.

In most markets, the second season was known as Marvel Action Universe, which was the name of a previous syndicated programming block in the late 1980s, with the addition of Biker Mice from Mars extending the block to 90 minutes.^[1]

See also

• New World Communications (Generally, New World owned television stations broadcast The Marvel Action Hour along with generally Fox, WB, UPN, or independent stations in markets where New World did not own a station.)
• Spider-Man (1994 TV series)
• The Incredible Hulk (1996 TV series)
• X-Men (TV series)

References