5 Classic Superhero TV Series Nobody Talks About Today

These days you can't throw a batarang without hitting a great superhero TV show. The cape and cowl crew have taken over streaming, making it hard to keep up with every show when they come out, and it doesn't look like things will be slowing down any time soon. We live in a time when Daredevil has gotten at least six seasons of TV, and Green Lantern — minus the Green — is getting a prestige HBO series. Heck, Penguin has been the main character of two shows, and one of them won a whole lot of awards. As the kids like to say, superhero fans are eating good.

But, not that long ago, superheroes on TV were a rarity, and it was even rarer for them to be done with care and respect. Fans used to have to hope and pray that a new show wouldn't treat the idea of superheroes as a joke or, if it did, the jokes were at least funny. And as for proper superhero action, well, that was just about out of the question. TV-level special effects just weren't up to the task 20 years ago, let alone 30 or 40 years. Still, some of these old superhero shows stood out and deserve to be celebrated, even if they aren't up to modern standards.

5 1990's Flash Couldn't Outrun Its Budget

Since 2014, fans of DC's speedster have had plenty of live-action stories to dig into. The Arrowverse Flash series ran for eight seasons, and the character got their own movie in the last iteration of the DC Cinematic Universe. And while the quality of the show and movie can be debated, there is no arguing that Flash has spent a lot of time on screens lately, and all of it has pushed the Scarlet Speedster's first show out of people's memories.

Starring John Wesley Shipp as Barry Allen. 1990's The Flash was unlike any superhero show that came before it. Looking more like a movie — as much as that was possible on network TV at the time — this Flash had a shockingly accurate costume, played up the speed elements, and cost way too much and had far too few viewers to survive. Supposedly, each episode cost upward of $1.6 million and, by the end of the first and only season, had 10 million viewers.. To put that in perspective, Cheers cost about $2.2 million an episode and was watched by 34 million people every week.

But to look at Flash now, and to see that suit, it is hard to understand why the modern live-action versions can't seem to properly capture how the character looks. And the show also introduced a common Flash concept for anything happening outside the comics; calling the character Barry Allen but essentially making him Wally West. Still, the show was a dream come true for fans of the character at the time, and Mark Hamill playing Trickster set the stage for his performance as Joker just two years later.

4 Greatest American Hero Struggled To Fly

A superhero comedy about a guy who is given a supersuit by a group of aliens but loses the instructions and can't figure out how to properly use it is a great concept, and The Greatest American Hero played with it as much as it could for 45 episodes. And while the show poked fun at superheroes, it did so lovingly, and was built more around the situations main character Ralph Hanley — who had to have his surname changed from the original Hinkley four episodes in after John Hinkley Jr. tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan — finds himself in.

These days, The Greatest American Hero is best remembered for its theme song, thanks in no small part to George Costanza using it as his answering machine message on Seinfeld. And while the theme song is fantastic, the show itself deserves to be given more credit than it gets. It never looked down on the comics it was taking inspiration from, even as, just two years earlier, DC's heroes were still being used as jokes in the Legends of the Superheroes specials.

Attempts to bring Greatest American Hero back have consistently fallen flat; even Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the minds behind Into the Spider-Verse, weren't able to get a reboot off the ground. And while the original series still has a fanbase, it isn't one that is growing. But there is hope. A new comic series based on the show hit stands in the summer of 2026, keeping the idea alive.

3 My Secret Identity Kept The Heroics Fun

When teenager Andrew Clements (Jerry O'Connell) gets zapped with a photon beam, he ends up with superpowers and becomes the superhero Ultraman, though his adventures are not very ultra, man. Still, My Secret Identity, like The Greatest American Hero, managed to poke fun at superheroics - Andrew needs to use aerosol cans to steer himself when he flies - without mocking the concept. The series, which ran for three seasons, was one of those late 1980s/early 1990s shows that seem almost like a fever dream, leaving those who were growing up at the time wondering if it was real or if they imagined the whole thing.

It wasn't that My Secret Identity was all that strange, but, because it aired in syndication, it came on at odd times of the day in different areas, making it hard to remember that it was a thing that was airing. Still, the show itself played into the basic elements of superheroes, with powers and mad scientists, and a hero dealing with loss. And while it may not match the levels of shows like Wandavision or Peacemaker, it helped pave the way for the future, only to be left behind.

2 Beauty And The Beast Mixed The Classic Fairy Tale With Superhero Standards

While it may not seem like a superhero show from the outside, looking at the story, Beauty and the Beast, which starred Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman, has all the hallmarks of a superhero tale. You have the superpowered Beast, who lives in an underground society but comes to the "World Above" to fight crime and face off against his nemesis, the equally powerful Paracelsusm who was exiled from the "World Below." And then there's Catherine, the woman who Beast saves and falls in love with. It helps that A Song of Ice and Fire creator George R.R. Martin, who is an avowed comics nerd, was a writer and producer on the series.

Beauty and the Beast was never a rating juggernaut, but it had a diehard audience that kept it running for three seasons, despite the hefty budget. But, over the years, the show has become lost in time. A box set of the show was released on DVD, but the show has never gotten a Bluray release, which is somewhat surprising when names like Hamilton, Perlman, and Martin are attached to it, seemingly making it an easy enough of a sell.

1 M.A.N.T.I.S. Made History Before It Was Forgotten

Created by Sam Hamm — who wrote Tim Burton's Batman — and produced by Sam Raimi in 1994, M.A.N.T.I.S. made history when it aired in 1994, becoming the first superhero show to feature a Black lead. The show, which starred Carl Lumbly as the titular hero, aired on Fox and, sadly, never seemed to find an audience. The series itself was shelved before the final two epsiodes aired, leaving fans waiting years before they finall showed up on the Sci-Fi Channel.

Across its 22 episodes, M.A.N.T.I.S. hit on a number of social issues that are sadly still relevant today. Lumbly's character, Dr. Miles Hawkins, is himself paralyzed after being shot by a police officer while trying to save a child, and he finds that the inventions he created to help keep people safe are actually being used against people in poor communities to help make the rich even richer. In many ways, M.A.N.T.I.S. shares a lot of elements that could be seen in Milestone Comics' Hardware, which was on shelves at the same time.

While M.A.N.T.I.S. is available to buy digitally in SD, there is no easy way to get it on disc, and certainly not in HD. And while the show itself has fallen down a memory hole, Lumbly's work seems to have been remembered, with the actor becoming the voice of Martain Manhunter in the Justice League animated series of the 2000s and playing J'onn J'onzz's father in the Arrowverse. Most recently, he appeared in Marvel's Falcon and the Winter Soldier as well as Captain America: Brave New World as Isaiah Bradley.