By Michaela Gordoni
It might sound odd, but it’s true that the novel Les Misérables inspired the live-action ’70s series, THE INCREDIBLE HULK.
The show was created by Kenneth Johnson, who had little interest in making it until he read Les Misérables, TVLine reported.
“I was in the middle of reading Les Misérables, which my wife Susie had given to me, and suddenly it just clicked,” he explained. “I could take Victor Hugo and, also, certain bits from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the whole idea of Greek tragic hubris.”
Even though there had already been a couple of successful HULK movies, CBS was hesitant to launch the show.
“I think it took us three meetings with Bud Grant at CBS to finally convince him to try it as a series,” Johnson said. “But he still didn’t have any faith in it.”
But the show still went ahead, and it paid off. The show ran for five seasons and launched three TV movies.
Before Johnson’s show, The Incredible Hulk was only a comic. The first issue was released in 1962 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Marvel said.
Lee said of his inspiration for Hulk, “I was getting tired of the normal superheroes and I was talking to my publisher. He said, ‘What kind of new hero can we come up with?’ I said, ‘How about a good monster?’ He just walked out of the room.”
“I remembered Jekyll and Hyde, and the Frankenstein movie with Boris Karloff and it always seemed to me that the monster was really the good guy; he didn’t want to hurt anybody, but those idiots kept chasing him up the hill until he had to strike back. So why not get a guy who looks like a monster and really doesn’t want to cause any harm. But he has to in self-defense, because people are always attacking him,” he said.
Lee told illustrator Kirby that he wanted his monster to look “sympathetic” and man-like.
“Jack got it right away. He did a great drawing and I decided to make his body gray because all the other superheroes had costumes. I couldn’t figure how or why the Hulk would buy a costume or sew one for himself, but to make him look different I thought I’d give him different-colored skin, and I thought gray would be a nice, scary color.”
Lee’s idea launched everyone’s favorite green monster, who still has appearances in Marvel movies and inspired Disney’s most recent venture in the Hulk franchise, SHE-HULK: ATTORNEY AT LAW.
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