The Marvel Super Heroes · Season 1 · Episode 13
A Titan Rides the Train / The Horde of Humanoids / On the Rampage!
Synopsis
Alone in a hidden lab, a green-skinned super-genius plots the theft of every nuclear device on Earth. The Leader was once an ordinary chemical-plant laborer until a gamma ray explosion changed his brain. Now he covets the atomic work of Dr. Bruce Banner. His weapon is Humanoids, an indestructible synthetic slave he steers through a cybernetic headpiece and watches through its eyes. General Thunderbolt Ross puts Banner on a train under Major Talbot's guard, hauling a nuclear device across the desert. A Humanoid drops from a helicopter, uncouples the cargo car, and Banner's rising panic triggers the change into The Hulk. Try as he might, The Hulk cannot dent the Humanoid's rubbery hide. The fight has caused the nuclear device to be knocked loose and it threatens to fall from the train. The Hulk saves the device by knocking it clear of the train into soft sand. Eventually cut off from the Leader's control, the Humanoid goes inert. The Hulk focuses on calming himself and Banner reappears beside the saved weapon. He is, once again, arrested as a saboteur.
Word comes that Banner's trial is postponed. He is shipped to Astra Island to test his Absorbatron, still shadowed by Talbot, still swallowing tranquilizers to hold the Hulk down. The Chameleon feeds the Leader the itinerary, and this time a whole horde of Humanoids waits beneath the waves. Banner's pills run out at the worst moment, the change takes him, and the Hulk meets an army of foes he cannot break. Marines storm the island and fare no better. When the transformation reverses, Banner surfaces in open water and is fished aboard a Communist submarine bound for enemy shores. A foreign colonel tries to press the famous scientist into service, threatens to starve him into cooperation, then learns the hard way what happens when Banner gets desperate enough to change. The Hulk scatters them, a vaporizer and a proton gun and all. Banner slips away once more, a wanted man on every side.
Reality Designation
This story takes place outside the main Marvel continuity: 600026
Reality numbers are Marvel's official designations.
Where a universe has no official number we follow the Marvel Database and use its Temporary Reality Number (TRN-1092). Where there is neither — official or temporary — at the time we watch it, we assign a Snark Industries number of our own (SI-001).
Characters in the Episode
Atomic scientist under suspicion, guarding then testing his own devices
Gamma-mutated mastermind directing the Humanoids to steal Banner's nuclear work and capture the Hulk
Commanding officer who distrusts Banner and orders him watched
Banner's assigned guard, convinced he is a traitor working with the Hulk
The Leader's master-of-disguise spy who reports Banner's movements
Gallery
In-Universe Date
No date on screen or in dialogue. Contemporary Cold War setting, placed after S1E8 (Feb 1966) in Hulk’s run. March is a sort device, not a real in-universe date.
Comic Roots
Where the episode's people and places come from on the page.
This half-hour is a near-verbatim telling of three consecutive Hulk stories from Tales to Astonish, all Stan Lee scripts with Steve Ditko art. "A Titan Rides the Train" adapts Tales to Astonish #63 (Jan 1965): the Chameleon's intelligence, the Humanoid dropped onto the train, the decoupled car, and Banner jailed as a suspected saboteur after the Hulk saves the device. "The Horde of Humanoids" adapts #64 (Feb 1965): Banner's release, the shift to Astra Island, and the swarm of Humanoids that grow to full size to seize the Absorbatron. "On the Rampage!" pulls from #65 (March 1965): the losing battle against the horde, the plunge into the ocean, and Banner's capture by a Communist submarine. The cartoon compresses the arc but keeps the beats.
The Leader debuts in Tales to Astonish #62 (1964, Lee/Ditko), so this chapter is drawing on a villain only one issue old at the time. His civilian name, Samuel Sterns, and his origin as a janitor-laborer exposed to gamma radiation are comic-canon, though the strip keeps him anonymous behind the title "the Leader." The Humanoids, his signature synthetic enforcers, come with him from that same debut. Banner's Absorbatron is a Lee/Ditko/George Bell (George Roussos) invention: hidden under tarpaulins and unidentified in #63, then seen and named in #64, designed to swallow the full force of a nuclear blast.
Recommended Reading
Where to go next if the episode left you wanting more.
The introduction of The Leader and the three issues this half-hour adapts, start to finish, including the train heist, the Astra Island horde, and the submarine capture.
The arc's payoff, where the Absorbatron test resumes and the Hulk finally destroys the device to keep it from the Leader.
Where it all started.
The Snark File
Easter eggs, callbacks and technical tidbits.
The Chameleon
The Chameleon turning up in a Hulk story is a genuine crossover for 1965 continuity. He is Spider-Man's guy, poached into a different hero's book and the story doesn't bother slowing down to explain it.
The Cold War
The Cold War framing is unmissable. The closing act hands Banner to a "Communist" sub and a foreign colonel who tries to starve a captive scientist into building weapons, textbook 1960s Marvel geopolitics.
