1978's The Incredible Hulk TV Series Tried To Ditch Stan Lee's Comic Book Style
Films and television shows based on comic books are ubiquitous nowadays. In the 1970s, however, superhero fare wasn't exactly the drama mine it is now. We had the light and entertaining "Wonder Woman" TV series with Lynda Carter, and the campy and comedic "Batman" series with Adam West was in the rearview mirror. Comics were still mostly for kids, and we were years away from seeing Michael Keaton dramatically don the Batsuit. The genre wasn't taken particularly seriously.
In the mid-1970s, Universal got the rights to some of Stan Lee's Marvel comic book characters, including the Hulk. Though the resulting TV series "The Incredible Hulk" produced a two-hour pilot and had five subsequent seasons, not everyone was on board with the idea of a show about a man who gets mad and turns into a hulking green dude. Series writer, producer, and creator Kenneth Johnson wasn't interested at all at first, despite having worked on shows like "The Six Million Dollar Man" and "The Bionic Woman," according to a 2022 feature in The Guardian.
Johnson, who explains in the story that he trained in classical theater, was tapped to be the youngest director on the Universal lot. He was offered a choice of doing a show about one of five Marvel superheroes the studio had acquired by then-head of Universal Television Frank Price and wanted to turn them down because he "just didn't identify with spandex and primary colors."
Merging a classic and a superhero
If you haven't seen the series, it was a departure from what most people expected from a story based on a comic book. In "The Incredible Hulk," Bill Bixby starred as Dr. David Banner, a widowed scientist who is presumed dead after a lab accident that made him turn into the Hulk (Lou Ferrigno) when angry. He travels the country trying to help people while searching for a cure. All the while, Banner is being followed by reporter Jack McGee (Jack Colvin), who thinks he's a murderer. It's the first TV series I remember touching my heart as a little girl as I watched reruns. This poor man keeps trying to do the right thing, attempting to keep balance in his life and spread good in the world, all the while dealing with the heartbreak and fear that he'll hurt someone as the Hulk.
So how did a person who wasn't into doing a comic book-based television show create one of the best? (Fight me. It was ahead of its time.) Johnson said in the feature:
"That night, I sat at home trying to figure out how to politely say no. I was reading 'Les Misérables' and had its hero Jean Valjean and the whole fugitive concept in my head. I wondered if I could take a bit of Victor Hugo, Jekyll and Hyde, and this ludicrous thing called The Hulk and turn it into a psychological adult drama about a man with hubris, who brings the curse down upon himself in the classic Greek tradition, then has to live with the consequences."
'A name that didn't smack of comic bookery'
I loved "Wonder Woman" and "Batman," but "The Incredible Hulk" did something that those others didn't — it took the story seriously. Johnson didn't look at children's stories for inspiration. He looked to classic literature. He mined the idea of a good man who was accused of being a menace like Valjean and someone dealing with the light and dark sides of himself like Dr. Jekyll. As with the mythical Oedipus, he was the author of his own demise. Still, Johnson wasn't quite convinced at the beginning. He tried to break free from the comic aesthetic or at least do the show in a way that made sense to him. Johnson said:
"I wrote the pilot in seven days. When I sent Marvel co-creator Stan Lee the script, he pointed out the lead character was actually called Bruce Banner. But I had wanted to get away from the Peter Parkers, Lois Lanes, and Lex Luthors with a name that didn't smack of comic bookery. So I made him David Bruce Banner. I also wanted The Hulk to be red. I asked Stan: 'Why is he green? Is he the envious Hulk? The jealous Hulk? The color of rage is red!' I got nowhere."
It's not such a bad thing to have a bit of pushback, no matter how much you love a property. (We would eventually get Red Hulk anyway.) Johnson was ultimately happy with how it all turned out.
'This show is a hit'
In the Guardian story, Johnson recalled the first line of the pilot, which was, "Within each of us, ofttimes there dwells a mighty and raging fury." Not exactly the "Holy tintinnabulation" sort of line that "Batman" was known for. Johnson explains:
"I wanted to set a tone. Banner's quest was to find self-control and not be terrorised by demons. With him it was anger — but it might be obsession, greed, sexuality, drugs. I also gave Banner piercing white eyes like The Hulk's when he'd been triggered, so the audience knew we were at the point of no return. When we were filming the pilot, Bill Bixby, who played Banner, came back from makeup wearing the contact lenses. I said out loud: 'Holy s***! This show is a hit.'"
Even Stan Lee loved the series. He told IGN back in 2012, "'The Hulk' was done intelligently. It was done by Ken Johnson, who's a brilliant writer/producer/director, and he made it an intelligent, adult show that kids could enjoy. He took a comic book character and made him somewhat plausible."
On a personal note, I used to co-host a web series with Lee called "Cocktails with Stan." Between shoots, he once told me how much he loved not only Lou Ferrigno (who was a guest on an episode) but what a lovely thing it was to see the Hulk on television in live-action that he enjoyed. There is no better endorsement than that.