Released in 1966, “The Marvel Super Heroes” is the great-grandfather of today’s Marvel Studios entertainment.
Not just the first-ever series based on characters from Marvel, its cartoons were created by xerography — meaning images were photocopied from the comic books themselves and manipulated to appear fully animated. Only the show’s music, composed by Jacques “Jack” Urbont, was fully original. True “if you know, you know” oddities among the company’s many decades of projects, adaptations and spinoffs, its themes were seared into the brains of a certain generations of fans before being largely lost to history.
Commemorating Marvel’s 85th anniversary, Disney Music Group is officially releasing Urbont’s music for “The Marvel Super Heroes,” much of it for the very first time. And all of it is coming to vinyl: following the launch of a series of 7” records on July 12 with “Merry Marvel Marching Society,” DMG and Hollywood Records released “Captain America” Aug. 9, with “Iron Man” due Sept. 6. Featuring remastered audio and packaging artwork that’s faithful to the Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Don Heck comic books that inspired the show, the records offer fans a nostalgic collectible that reaches back to one of the first times that the company’s heroes leapt off the printed page.
Disney Music Group
Aside from some limited VHS releases of the show, some sporadic Easter-egg bonus material and a handful of European DVD releases, the best way to hear any of the music has been on songs and albums by hip-hop artists who sampled it, like Ghostface Killah and MF Doom. Given the complex legal history of Marvel merchandising — much less the material’s age — Disney Music Group marketing and product management director Paulo DaCosta says that figuring out the rights was a multi-year process. “It took a minute for us to just compile and get our ducks in a row,” DaCosta told Variety. “These things take time, the restoring, remastering, all of the art approval, we needed to make sure we were all buttoned up.”
After working as a composer for off-Broadway productions in the late 1950s and ‘60s, “The Marvel Super Heroes” marked one of Urbont’s first television assignments. Still alive if not actively working (his music can still be heard on the daytime soap opera “General Hospital”), the composer collaborated with DMG to obtain the original recordings for remastering. “Jack and his team were incredible to work with,” said DaCosta. “Our production team said that they just spoke to him a couple of weeks ago and he said, ‘Hey, I still have a few other pieces, maybe I can send it to you.’ So as more is coming in, we’re trying to evaluate if maybe is there an extended version of one of the songs that we can put out.”
“We really anchored on the theme songs,” he continued. “But in speaking with Jack, we found out that there are different or additional pieces that were used in the shows that weren’t necessarily part of the opening theme song sequence. And that is something that we’re also digging into.”
Disney Music Group
Running from September to December 1966, the syndicated TV series followed the debut of the Merry Marvel Marching Society, a fan club which launched in 1964. The $1 membership price included a welcoming letter, membership card, scratch pad, sticker, certificate and a one-sized 7” record, “The Voices of Marvel,” which included humorous conversations between comics impresario Stan Lee, artist Jack Kirby and other members of the Marvel staff. “It’s just a great story in terms of the fan club in ’64, and what Stan started and then Jack Kirby and how it all developed — and the vinyl [records] that the members used to get as part of their package,” DaCosta observed.
“We wanted to be very respectful to the look and feel of the sixties time period, some of the phrasing that the membership used, that we brought into the sleeves and some of the packaging.” Evidencing their commitment to the period imagery, DaCosta said that they actually drew upon artwork from the 1967 flexi-disc “Scream Along With Marvel” for the back cover of a forthcoming 12” record containing all six of the themes.
After “Iron Man,” DMG will release “Incredible Hulk” Oct. 4; “Mighty Thor” Nov. 1; and “The Sub-Mariner” Nov. 15 for a total of six 7″ releases. Then on Nov. 29, the company will release the 12” for Record Store Day. (There’s no indication yet if they will reissue “The Voices of Marvel.”) All feature remastered and -mixed sound that provides new clarity without sacrificing the texture and sound of the original recordings. “Part of the mystique and the magic and the coolness of it is if you go onto YouTube and you hear the original versions tied to the episodes,” DaCosta said. “The audio quality is of the age. So it was important for us to try to enhance that.”
Disney Music Group
Because rights to the show itself remain complicated, DaCosta couldn’t confirm that the release of the soundtracks was a prelude to remastering “The Marvel Super Heroes” for Disney+, or even physical media. But he did indicate that the sales and popularity of these records may incentivize the company to work on that next. “Disney+, as they are always doing, are looking at additional content that makes sense,” he said. “Marvel and that team are geniuses in terms of interweaving all of the right touch points with fans.”
With this initial series underway, Marvel may have unwittingly awakened a segment of the company’s fandom that not only wants more material the more that it gets, but also knows its history by chapter and verse to identify what should also be released. That doesn’t just include early-1970s Power Records book-and-record storybooks like “The Amazing Spider-Man: The Mark of the Man-Wolf” and “Invasion of the Dragonmen,” but 1980s cartoons like “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends” and “The Incredible Hulk.” The late Johnny Douglas composed the music for those latter shows, along with mainstays from that decade, “The Transformers” and “G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero;” perhaps his themes for those shows aren’t far behind?
“Obviously we’re just starting this campaign, but absolutely as we move forward with this phase, we’re already talking and seeing what could be for additional content,” revealed DaCosta. “I’ve asked, what does Spider-Man look like? That theme song was composed by other folks, so what are the details there? That’s all being investigated and explored now, and hopefully those and other ones can come together.”
