After the cancellation of The Green Hornet tv series in 1967, the character, while not quite disappearing, maintained a low profile.  Because the tv show only ran one year, it rarely popped up in reruns because TV stations liked long-running shows they could "strip" (run Monday through Friday) for several months without repeats.  LP records and cassettes of the radio shows continued to be released throughout the 1970s, but little else was available to the general public.  It seemed like the end for the classic crusader.  A feature film compiled from episodes of the TV show was released shortly after the death of Bruce Lee in 1974.  It did fairly well at the box office, but was seen more as a showcase for Lee's martial arts prowess than a revival of The Green Hornet.

As we mentioned earlier, the first comic book shops in Chicago popped up in the mid-1970s. Stores like Variety Comics offered a place where a superhero fan could hang out with like-minded aficionados and find new comics, related collectibles...and back issues, including old copies of The Green Hornet!  With only fading memories of the tv series, a limited supply of back-issue comics, and the reissued radio shows, The Green Hornet & Kato achieved "cult" status, with existing fans introducing their friends into their slowly, but steadily-growing secret society.
Besides unifying comic collectors as never before, comic book shops also created what is called "the direct market", enabling comics publishers to produce comics to be sold only in comics shops, not on newstands and magazine racks, allowing publishers to sell fewer copies of a title, but still make a profit. Publishers were now financially-able to take chances with characters and subject matter that had a limited audience.  It also enabled new publishers to enter the market.

One of those new publishers was Chicago-based NOW Comics. NOWs books were mostly based on movies and tv shows like Ghostbusters, Terminator, and Speed Racer. And, in the late 1980s, they added The Green Hornet!

The new comic series took the premise that all the previous versions of The Green Hornet from the 1930s radio series to the 1960s tv show were actually part of a multi-generational family of crimefighters! (It was an extension of the radio show's idea that The Hornet was the grand-nephew of The Lone Ranger.) This allowed for an ongoing series featuring the present-day Hornet, but mini-series featuring his ancestors, the Golden Age (radio show/movie serial) Hornet and Silver Age (TV series) Hornet! There was even a mini-series expanding on the origin of the 1940s version that was only hinted-at on the radio show!  The books sold well, but NOW Comics had expanded too quickly, and when a recession hit the comics industry in the mid-90s, the company folded.

You can still find back issues of the NOW comics series at local comic shops such as Brainstorm Comics.

Also during this period, home video in the form of videocassettes had taken off like a rocket.  Companies looked around for titles and characters to put into stores.  In particular, movies and tv shows whose copyrights had lapsed and were in the public domain became "cash cows" for video companies.  Most of the movie serials of the 1930s and 1940s fell into that category, including both Green Hornet serials!  Several companies released the two serials on VHS. (And you can still find both those vhs tapes and the radio show lp albums at places like Reckless Records!)

Tomorrow: The Cataclysmic Conclusion--The Resurrection of The Green Hornet!