Superhero film as action, horror, fantasy, comedy etc. Almost immediately after superheroes rose to prominence in comic books, they were adapted into Saturday film serials aimed at children, starting with "Mandrake The Magician" (1939). Serials such as "Adventures of Captain Marvel" (1941), "Batman" (1943), "The Phantom" (1943), "Captain America" (1944), and "Superman" (1948) followed. In the following decades, the decline of Saturday serials and turmoil in the comic book industry put an end to superhero motion pictures, with the exception of "Superman and the Mole Men", starring George Reeves, which was a trial balloon for the television series "Adventures of Superman", compilations
The Prisoner in other media series fascinated comic book artist Jack Kirby, who created a four-issue homage in 1969 in "Fantastic Four" #84-87, in which the superhero team finds itself in Doctor Doom's Latveria, a city like the Village in many respects. In the "Bullpen Bulletins" page in Marvel Comics cover-dated July 1976, Marvel announced a comic book based on "The Prisoner", to be written by Steve Englehart and drawn by a then-unchosen artist and scheduled to be "starting this summer". The artist assigned to the project would be Gil Kane. When Jack Kirby returned to Marvel in the mid-70s after a run at DC