Oh, Ultimate Spider-Man. Seeing you again is certainly something that I have...feelings...about.
By the time I started identifying as a Spider-Man fan, it was the late 2000s, and whilst I wasn't aware of it at the time, we were in-between Spider-Man: The New Animated Series and Spectacular Spider-Man. I didn't watch the latter as it came out, as I was unaware of it - and I'm pretty sure it didn't air on any free-to-air channels where I was anyway - but the same can't be said of Ultimate Spider-Man. I remember hearing it announced and seeing a short trailer for the first episode that had Spider-Man fighting the Frightful Four. I knew that it wasn't based on the mostly pretty excellent comic series of the same name, but who cared? The animation was smooth, Peter having been Spider-Man for a year was a good setup, and hey, it's Spider-Man! I love Spider-Man!
Then I started watching it actively, as the episodes came out, and I soon felt very, very childish for choosing to watch such a show.
I don't have a problem with the fourth-wall breaking moments, with cartoony, exaggerated proportions that I recall being a sticking point with some people - Spider-Man is known for his humour, and while it's not what I'd go with, it's certainly a way to showcase it and also gives the show a style that helps it stand on its own compared to other Spider-Man cartoons. No, what I have a problem with is that all of the characters are absolute fucking morons, and their potential is completely wasted. My memory is that the majority of the conflict comes from the characters arguing and failing to communicate when they're not acting like immature little shits.
Worse, I actually like most of the characters. Luke Cage and Iron Fist are great characters, White Tiger has potential, and Nova is...okay, I actually kind of do hate Sam Alexander regardless of medium. (Hey Marvel, if you ever want to hire someone to cover all of the absolutely moronic plot holes created by Jeph Loeb writing Nova's first comic book arc, I'll do it for free). But still, four out of five of the main characters isn't too bad. I'll be keeping an eye out for whether any of them live up to their potential, but I'm not going to be holding my breath.
I quit watching after the first season finale, as I couldn't take it any more, but I am tentatively hopeful that I jumped off too early and that it gets better later. I do know that Miles Morales shows up in the later seasons, and one of the final episodes has Moon Knight in it, which is fucking awesome. I love Moon Knight to pieces. There's always hope that the writing could get better, and with over one hundred episodes to cover, some of them have to be decent...right?
So, Ultimate Spider-Man doesn't actually have an opening, unless you count a few seconds of the Marvel logo, followed by the above logo appearing before being webbed away, to be an opening. It doesn't leave me a lot to talk about here, actually. Nice enough logo though, and the flipping pages of Marvel's logo is pretty iconic by now. I'm actually a little disappointed that the films have replaced it with the stuff where you see a few frames from the existing movies, and I always liked when the pages that were flipped through were from comics relevant to whatever the movie was.
Join me next time as I start my journey into the longest-running Spider-Man series, with "Great Power". I'll be looking forwards to hearing your thoughts as I go.
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