For fans of the four-color page, times have been good. Superheroes have exploded out of the comics and made their way to movie theaters and TV in ways no one would have imagined just two decades ago. The adventures of Wonder Woman, Thor, Aquaman, and Captain Marvel, among others, bring in big box office returns while the Arrowverse and the Disney+ MCU shows fill up the time between.

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But it wasn't so long ago that superhero movies were, for the most part, a little embarrassing. While every hero, from Ant-Man to Shazam, seems to get the big-screen treatment now, there was a time when the lesser-known heroes—and even some of the biggest names—were relegated to cheesy TV movies filled with poor representation of the characters, cheap costumes, and bad storylines.

10 Trial Of The Incredible Hulk Was Found Guilty Of Wasting Everyone's Time

Trial of the Incredible Hulk with Daredevil

From 1977 to 1982, fans of all ages tuned in every week to watch the adventures of The Incredible Hulk. Each week would see Dr. David Bruce Banner, played by Bill Bixby, travel to a different town where he would inevitably get involved in something nefarious and turn into the Hulk, played by Lou Ferrigno.

Six years later, The Incredible Hulk Returns aired on TV, and viewers loved seeing the Green Goliath match muscles with Thor. The next year, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk aired, which teamed Marvel's Resident Rager Monster with Daredevil for a court case. Along with Daredevil looking nothing like himself, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk was proof that sometimes a good show's era comes to an end.

9 Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD Was Decommissioned

Nick Fury David Hasselhoff

On paper, Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD seems like a solid fit for a TV movie. The character—and SHIELD in general—isn't so wrapped up in big-budget special effects that it would feel like something was missing for fans of the comics. Nick Fury is, after all, a spy who deals with other spy groups.

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It was written by David S. Goyer, who would go on to write Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Where Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD really suffers is in the casting, namely David Hasselhoff as the eyepatch-wearing soldier. But even beyond the casting, Goyer's script is far from great, and the movie's look is shockingly lame.

8 Professor X Should Erase Generation X From Our Minds

Generation X tv movie

Made as a pilot for a possible TV series, Generation X was based on the Marvel comic of the same name but left out everything that made the comic so popular, most notably the decision to take the Asian character of Jubilee and have her be played by the very much not Asian actress Heather McComb.

The TV movie also did away with the Generation X member Chamber. Instead of the mutant with much of his chest and lower face missing, Chamber was replaced with a new character, Refrax. The pilot was not well received and any plans for a Generation X series were scrapped.

7 Justice League of America Is Just Embarrassing

BARRY ALLEN FLASH APPEARANCES - Justice League of America TV Movie

These days, superhero team movies are all the rage, and while Warner Brothers bungled the 2017 Justice League film, that somehow isn't the worst live-action take of DC's most famous team. In the final days of 1997, Justice League of America aired on CBS, and no one was happy about it.

This TV movie, which uses Flash, Ice, Fire, Guy Gardner, the Atom, and Martian Manhunter as the members of the JLA, has no redeeming qualities. The special effects are bad even for the time, the suits are shockingly lame, and none of the characters come close to acting like their comic book counterparts.

6 Wonder Woman Didn't Get It On The First Try

Wonder Woman 1974

While everyone remembers 1975's Wonder Woman TV series with fond memories, a year before Lynda Carter put on the tiara and bracelets, Cathy Lee Crosby played a vastly different version of the star-spangled Princess. In this 1974 TV movie, Wonder Woman is a blonde who wears a red and blue jumpsuit and doesn't have any superpowers.

In essence, this version of the character is more like the poorly received "I Ching" period of the Wonder Woman comics from the late '60s. While the movie did relatively well in the ratings, the decision was made to go back to the drawing board, giving fans the version they know and love.

5 The Spirit Should Have Stayed Dead

the-spirit-1987

While Will Eisner's The Spirit isn't the best-known superhero out there, if you asked someone if they saw the bad movie based on the character, they may respond "which one?" Twenty years before Frank Miller directed a very bad Spirit movie with Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johanson, Steven E. de Souza—the writer of Die Hard—wrote a TV pilot that starred Sam J. Jones from Flash Gordon and Nana Visitor from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

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The script for The Spirit is head and shoulders better than the other movies on this list, but this TV movie fails to capture the style and energy that has made Eisner's character stand out from the crowd.

4 It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman! Is Out Of Tune

It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman! Leslie Ann Warren as Lois Lane

It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman! was originally a Broadway musical by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, the men behind the ultra-popular musical Bye Bye Birdie. Unlike Bye Bye Birdie, Superman's journey to the stage was not as successful, closing after just three months and becoming the biggest Broadway flop in history at the time.

A decade after It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman! tanked on Broadway, it was made into a TV movie as a way to hopefully recoup the money lost on the stage version. It was so bad that instead of running the special in prime time, ABC aired it at 11:30 at night.

3 The Superman 50th Anniversary Special Is Filled With Talent, But None Of It Works

Superman 50th Anniversary Special with Lou Reed

Sadly, It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman! wasn't the only TV movie that the Man of Steel had to suffer through. In 1988 CBS aired the Superman 50th Anniversary Special, in which comedian and Saturday Night Live star Dana Carvey hosted and introduced segments about the special people in Superman's life, including his dry cleaner Morton Simon, Metropolis Deputy Mayor Finn Howard, and musician Lou Reed as himself.

The Superman 50th Anniversary Special was written by a number of talented comedians, including Bruce McCulloch from The Kids in the Hall and Robert Smigel, best known for Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Still, the special is nearly unwatchable.

Man-Things Live-Action Movie

Released just three years before Iron Man would kick off the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Man-Thing was meant to be a theatrical release, but after test audiences reportedly walked out mid-screening, it was decided to premiere the film on the SyFy Channel. The movie, based on the Marvel Comics character, was met with bad reviews, although many critics did praise the film's special effects.

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While it only aired on TV in the United States, Man-Thing did get a small theatrical release overseas, where it made less than a million dollars off of a $30 million dollar budget. Man-Thing ended up being the final movie released by Artisan Entertainment, which closed its doors a year before the movie hit the airwaves.

1 The Death Of The Incredible Hulk Killed Fan's Souls

Death of the Incredible Hulk TV Movie

While Trial of the Incredible Hulk broke the hearts of many a fan, Death of the Incredible Hulk destroyed their souls. In the TV movie, which was originally going to introduce She-Hulk, Dr. Banner hides from the authorities by pretending to be David Bellamy, a mentally challenged janitor who works at a scientific research facility.

At night, when the scientists go home, Dr. Banner tries to find a way to cure himself of the Hulk. Sure enough, Banner finds himself forced to save someone from criminals, and in the final battle, the Hulk falls off of an exploding plane and dies. No one mourned his passing and a planned fourth Incredible Hulk TV movie was canceled.

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