Marvel's Spider-Man: After Watching

If I had to sum up Marvel's Spider-Man with three words, it'd be "Dan Slott's Spider-Man". Much of the series' DNA very much feels like his writing, even ignoring the arcs that are directly based on his own comics like Spider-Island or Superior Spider-Man. It's the little details, like the occasional references to wheatcakes, or Harry Osborn's Hobgoblin using a flaming sword, that really stick out as his fingerprint. Unfortunately, while I mostly like Dan Slott's run on Amazing Spider-Man, there wasn't as much here that I felt really worked brilliantly. Most of it was adequate, but when Dan Slott's at his best he's coming up with clever concepts, like Sandman merging with the Sahara Desert, or Cloak and Dagger working with Mr. Negative, or a prison where they shrink down the prisoners using Pym Particles.

This show, by comparison, frequently feels underwhelming. It doesn't quite hit the level of Ultimate Spider-Man's logic, where the characters would shout out that doing something inane would randomly defeat the villain, but at the same time it's hard to feel that there were many clever solutions to problems in the show. Some of the arcs drag on quite a bit, and it felt like we didn't really get to see many of Spider-Man's most iconic villains in the show - we never even get a decent Green Goblin! Instead we get underwhelming antagonists like the Wake Riders and Regent, who never show any potential to be interesting villains.

That's not to say that this was a bad show, though. I always love a good, conflicted Harry Osborn, and this show had that - and a good character arc for Harry - in spades. Peter's friends were all really likeable, and I'm pleased that they all ended up getting powers, even if it did take Gwen and Anya far too long to learn that Peter was Spider-Man. Peter's mind getting trapped inside the neuro-cortex when Doctor Octopus took over his body worked a lot better than what ended up happening in the original comics, and speaking of Doctor Octopus, he worked well as a redeemed villain and new ally of Peter's after the Superior Spider-Man arc was done.

The takeaway that I'd say that other Spider-Man shows should get from this series is that Peter having a solid supporting cast is always a recipe for success, whether or not they're super-powered. Some of the other show's ideas, like its heavy focus on science, don't exactly hurt it, but I didn't feel like they were all that necessary, even if they did help to give the show an identity of its own. Beyond that, maybe don't reinvent the wheel when it comes to villains - of the classic Spider-Man villains, the only one that I felt really had a good reinterpretation was the Lizard, and that was moreso owing to his Curt Connors side being a jerk.

A few final notes on the series:

• This show really doesn't like to decisively deal with villains, does it? Swarm and the Lizard are brought up in the final episode but nothing ever really comes of them, so I guess they're both just out there roaming somewhere. Alistair and Spencer Smythe both sort of quietly fade out of the show, with nothing ever being done with Alistair attending Horizon (although I guess he could be in jail?). And I guess Eddie Brock is just floating in a tank at the space research place for the rest of his life?
• So...why the hell was Norman Osborn trying to unleash a chemical attack on Manhattan at the start of Spider-Island, anyway?
  
• I didn't mention it in any of my episode synopses, but there's a recurring gag about Miles doing the robot that starts out mildly amusing, but continues to get better whenever it's brought up.
• While I'm glad that the show didn't rush into Peter taking photos for J. Jonah Jameson as a job, it never really went anywhere before Jonah just sort of disappeared from the show. I don't need Peter to be working at the Daily Bugle, but it's such a solid set-up that if you're not doing it, you'd sure as hell better be replacing it with something interesting.
• Between this show and Ultimate Spider-Man, I'm sort of getting sick of big symbiote invasions (which never really work that well for Spider-Man stories, anyway). I had my gripes with Spectacular Spider-Man's Venom stuff, but at least that show knew what works for Venom and what's silly monster stuff.
• I never thought that I needed sporty Mary Jane in my life, but she worked really well here and was consistently fantastic in the final season. I'd hesitate to call her the best animated Mary Jane without rewatching some other Spider-Man shows to refresh my memory, but she's definitely up there.
  

Anyway, those are some of my overall thoughts on Marvel's Spider-Man. I'm going to finish off my thoughts on this series with a list of the top ten and the worst ten episodes, so that you, the intelligent reader, know what to look forwards to and what to avoid if you decide to check out this series.

Marvel's Spider-Man: Before Watching

What can I say about Marvel's Spider-Man that hasn't been said already? Quite a lot, actually; I don't think that people have really talked about this show that much. At least, that's the general feel I get - people seem aware that it exists, but don't really seem to have any opinions on it. Or am I just looking in the wrong places?

I'm mostly going into this one blind, although I've picked up some stuff about the show here and there. I believe that Dan Slott is a writer, or a consultant, or involved in the show in some way, which I'm fine with. I've seen a lot of hatred for his run online and while I don't think that it's the best run of Spider-Man, for the most part it's pretty good and he had some really neat ideas. I sure as hell enjoyed it far, far more than Nick Spencer's run. I also met Slott in person once and he was pretty chill, so there's that, too.

I know that Max Modell and Horizon Labs show up, presumably because of the aforementioned Dan Slott. Again, I'm fine with this - if we're moving Peter away from photography, having him work at an actual science company is a good idea (although I prefer him being a science teacher, personally). Max Modell was a pretty enjoyable character in the comics, and while I doubt that they'll do or say anything about him being gay in the show, I'm going to assume that he is unless we get anything contradicting it.

Other than that, I'm fairly sure that Spider-Gwen and Miles Morales are regularly appearing characters in the show, and that's something I'm looking forwards to. I'm big on the idea of Spider-Man as a bit of a loner, and don't really need the whole extended spider-family around, with Araña and Spider-Woman and Madame Web and so on all suddenly appearing in Peter's life, but I do really like the mentor relationship Peter has with Miles, and Spider-Gwen's cool. (Actually, I lie; Araña is pretty cool too). Presumably this version of Spider-Gwen will just be this universe's version of Gwen Stacy getting spider powers somehow, without the whole "Whoah, you're the alternate version of my ex-girlfriend who I couldn't save!" thing going on, and that should work well, I think.

Finally, I'm also fairly sure that the Jackal is one of the main villains here. Jackal's a bit hit and miss for me - he's pretty good in the original Clone Saga, by Gerry Conway; these days he's got a few too many clones and magic genetic abilities - but he hasn't really appeared in any Spider-Man shows before, so at least we're not rehashing the same old story we've seen before.

Overall, I think I'm fairly positive about the show - it's going to be hard to be worse than Ultimate Spider-Man, and from what I've seen of the art style it looks quite nice. Let's hope that this is a good one.

Ultimate Spider-Man: After Watching

I've had a lot to say about Ultimate Spider-Man over the course of the last hundred-odd posts, and I've got a lot to say about it here, in my post-watching post, but there is something I'd like to say about it up front. I've been pretty critical of the series overall, and this post isn't going to be much kinder, but something that I will say in the show's defence is that it's hard to tell how much bad writing is due to executive meddling. I hated shit like the Sinister Six's ugly-ass "upgrades", but what are the odds that they were added in because some soulless being in a suit wanted to sell toys, not because the writers and designers thought, "Yes, this is genius"? There's no way to tell which pieces of bad writing were there thanks to the writers, which were due to writing constraints, and which were forced upon them, but with regards to the latter two, their presence is somewhat more forgiveable in the story. I can't fault the writers for going along with the bidding of their corporate overlords rather than resigning in disgust; they need money to live too.

Now, with that out of the way, let's ask the question: what does hurt Ultimate Spider-Man's quality so much, and makes me dislike it so much in spite of a pretty decent premise? Firstly, as I pointed out in more than a few posts, I think that the internal logic of the show is frequently faulty (and unfortunately, I don't think that this one can be blamed on executives). Taking a random episode as an example - Cloak and Dagger - Cloak is randomly able to be controlled by Dormammu, and Dormammu is looking to create an army of mystics when he already has an army of Mindless Ones, and doing so only attracts the heros' attention. The show constantly pulls things like this - characters do things only because the plot requires them to, or we'll be told that "Doing this thing will do the thing we want!" even when there's no logical connection between the two. I don't need some elaborate hard sci-fi explanation for why something works, but if I'm unable to suspend my sense of disbelief as frequently as I was watching the show, something's wrong. On a related note, the fights are also frequently subject to this logic, and very few of them were entertaining or well-choreographed.

A second issue I have with the show is that the writers fail to sell the characters very well. Everyone craps themselves when the Green Goblin appears, and he constantly monologues about how smart he is and how everything's going to plan, but he's more boring and annoying than anything. Peter talks about how much his teammates are his family, then complains about how they're living in his house and can't wait for them to get back to the Helicarrier. His teammates themselves end something like half the episodes in the first season playing a prank on Peter or laughing at him for something, and it doesn't come across as funny - it's spiteful. The writers have solid enough ideas for the characters, but the majority of the time they're executed poorly.

Another thing that hurts the show, admittedly not as badly as the above two points, is that it's frequently full of wasted potential. Spider-Man's teammates all move in with him, then move back to the SHIELD Helicarrier before half of the second season is even over. The New Warriors are gradually set up over the first few episodes of the third season, but quickly fade into the background and don't do much. Scorpion and Kraven the Hunter are set up as antagonists for Iron Fist and White Tiger, respectively, but soon become just another pair of villains in the crowd that's going after Spider-Man. The show rarely feels like it's willing to break free of the status quo, even when what's on offer is much more tantalising and different to what we've seen before.

The final thing I've identified (off the top of my head, admittedly) that hurts the show is probably one that a lot of people have an issue with when it comes to the show - it's really damn inane at times. More or less a year ago in my pre-watching post I said that I didn't have an issue with the fourth-wall breaking moments. How very, very wrong I was - I'd obviously blocked out my memory of just how bad the cutaway "jokes" in the show are, and they really bring things down a lot. Thankfully they started getting phased out as the show continued, but even once they're cut out there's plenty of childish stuff in the show (the stock scream Spider-Man gives when surprised or scared stands out). Apparently someone mistook "aimed at children" for "the writing has to be childish".

Still, the show does have its moments of competence - what does work? I like the Avengers, and that they're constantly presented as the standard the Spider-Man is striving for. I like Spider-Man's teammates (his original team, the New Warriors, and the spider-themed heroes) when we get a rare moment of insight into who they are, and when they're not there just to get thrown around by the villains. (Come to think of it, were there any times when Spider-Man was defeated by the villain, and one of his teammates saved the day?) I liked that pretty much all of Spider-Man's allies and supporting cast learned his identity and supported him once they did. I loved that Norman Osborn here mostly turned out to be a good guy, and that when cured of being the Green Goblin, he (eventually) stayed cured.

Yeah...looking at it broadly, there's a lot more bad things than good things here.

To wrap things up, I'll go over a few last miscellaneous thoughts before getting to the best and worst episodes of the series so that you, the intelligent reader, know what to look forwards to and what to avoid if you decide to check out this series:

• J. Jonah Jameson is really wasted here, and it's a pity because he's voiced by none other than J. K. Simmons. All he ever does is scream at Spider-Man, with none of the nuance or comedy that makes him such a beloved character. There's maybe two or three episodes at most where he actually influences or affects the plot, and even then I'd hardly say that his presence is essential.
• Speaking of Jamesons - remember when The Man-Wolf ended with John Jameson being held in containment? The writers don't!
• Another dropped plot point is the end of The Parent Trap - Luke's eyes started glowing, hinting that he'd get new powers, but this never goes anywhere.
• Agent Coulson is mentioned in Agent Venom to have disappeared on a "special classified mission," and that's the last we ever see of him. My headcanon is that his secret mission was to kill Nova, because everyone at SHIELD was sick of him but didn't want to be the first to say so. Although...I guess this means that he failed. Actually, I dunno, maybe he was playing the long game and a few seconds after the final episode he completed his mission. Okay, yeah, that works for me.
• Ava Ayala - White Tiger, for those of you not keeping up - is constantly presented as being obsessed with schoolwork and training, telling off the others most of the time when they want to have fun. It's meant to be annoying, and from what I've seen online a lot of people didn't like her, but it honestly worked pretty well for me - particularly in the first season, other characters are frequently so juvenile and irritating that it was nice to have someone with a clear head on their shoulders. For bonus points, the reason for her being so disciplined is justified very well with her backstory.
• I Am Spider-Man has Miles Morales listed as one of the students at the school, three seasons before the alternate Miles travels to this universe and eventually begins living here. I know it's just an easter egg for comic viewers, but still, it would be cool for them to meet, or for Peter to have realised, "Wait, there's a random student at my school who's your counterpart!"
  

Ultimate Spider-Man: Before Watching

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?

Spectacular Spider-Man: After Watching

What can I say about Spectacular Spider-Man that hasn't been said already? It's a fantastic adaptation. It reinvents characters in interesting and unique ways. The supporting cast are all interesting and have their own plots going on. The fights are interesting, and the show always keeps the momentum moving forwards. And, of course, it was cancelled far, far too early.

Probably the strongest aspect of the show is the way that it weaves together all of the different characters to form connections that are strong, but don't feel unnatural. Randy Robertson, Hobie Brown, Harry Osborn, and Gwen Stacy all being classmates of Peter's, in addition to the traditional Flash, Sally, and Liz? It works. Sandman and Rhino being thugs working for Tombstone before they get their powers? It works. How about making Eddie Brock a childhood friend of Peter's, who works with Curt Connors? Again, while on paper you might think, "Wow, are there any characters in this show that didn't originate in the comics?", in practice it's a lot more interesting than giving the roles to new characters that would otherwise need to earn our love (which is not to say that these characters are only interesting by virtue of where they originated).

The show also continually managed to keep things moving and setting up future stories and conflicts, which makes things so damn interesting. There's Peter's love triangle with Gwen and Liz - and trying to keep the latter's attention from Flash while he's at it, Flash's attempts to win over Sha Shan, Harry's issues with globulin green, the school play...and that's not even getting into the supervillain subplots and arcs, which are just as interesting. There's always something going on here, and the show rarely slows down or cuts down on the threads it's weaving.

I could keep going on, but honestly, I don't think I need to. If you've seen the show, odds are that you also love it, and if not, what's keeping you? This is a perfect interpretation of Spider-Man and his supporting cast, and I don't hesitate it to put its quality on the same level as Roger Stern's comics run, the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, or the PS4 Spider-Man game. It takes us in new direction and reinvents things in interesting ways, while still managing to feel familiar the entire time.

A few final dot points to sum up some other miscellaneous thoughts, then we'll get to the best and worst episodes of the series so that you, the intelligent reader, know what to look forwards to and what to avoid if you decide to check out this series.

• This is easily the most interesting, coolest version of Tombstone that we've ever gotten, and I don't think we'll ever see him surpassed. He's cool, collected, and competent, and there's no way that they'll ever make another version like him - he's less of a thug here, which is part of the appeal, but if you made him a Kingpin-esque figure in another series, he'd come off as trying too hard to be this show's version.
• Hammerhead's a bit of an awkward Spider-Man villain - he shouldn't be that much of a threat, and his powers don't make for that interesting a fight - so having him here as the guy who goes around delivering messages for Tombstone and having meetings is an excellent use of him - clearly villainous, but less reason for him to get involved in a fight.
• We never found out who Patch's backer was in Accomplices; if the show ever does miraculously get renewed, I hope they address it.
• This version of Harry Osborn may have basically been Milhouse, but he also knows how to fly a helicopter, and you can bet I'll be comparing all future versions of him against that.
• The only exception I can think of to the "hot damn does this show do some great reinterpretations of characters" rule is Electro - his origin isn't that great, and his aesthetic is pretty awful. I understand that the classic costume hasn't aged well, but I've yet to see anything that surpasses it.
  

Spectacular Spider-Man: Before Watching

Nearly two years ago, I mentioned in my first blog post that Spectacular Spider-Man was one of the only Spider-Man shows I'd seen. Things are a bit different now - I think that at time of writing, I've seen the majority of Spider-Man cartoon episodes? - but even after having experienced all of them, I'd still easily put Spectacular Spider-Man as being the best cartoon (and I don't see it being dethroned by Ultimate Spider-Man or Marvel's Spider-Man, though I'm happy to be proved wrong). Much like the pretty good Playstation 4 Spider-Man game, it's smart enough to draw on lots of ideas from across the decades, recognising what changes will work and when to leave things alone.

So, yeah, I'm not going to even try and avoid my obvious bias here. I love this show, I'm so happy to be watching it again, and I can't wait to start writing about it and discussing what makes it work. I'm not blind to its flaws - one thing that I do recall is that Spider-Man regularly gets beaten up and there's little attempt by the show to act as if it's affecting him - but they are few and far between. I'll be interested to see whether knowing the general overall plot will make things better or worse - if nothing else, I know who The Big Man is this time around. If there are any Spidey fans out there who don't enjoy this show, I'd love to hear why, because it absolutely nails pretty much everything, from memory.

Since I know what happens in the show, it does put me in a bit of a unique position here compared to other coverage I've done; in the past I'd usually speculate or hope what might be in the future for certain characters, but here I'll probably find I remember more than I think. I'll try and avoid letting my future knowledge affect how I feel about each episode, and treat each one on its own merits.

Spider-Man: The New Animated Series: After Watching

In spite of the claim that this series was set in the same universe as the Sam Raimi movies, there's enough evidence there - the most damning being, somehow, hair colours - that it's not, and so I find it easier to consider this to be set in a universe inspired by the Raimi movies. (Side note: the Marvel wiki agrees with me and lists them as different universes). It's an apt claim, however, as like those films, it's inoffensive, but most of the time isn't what I'd consider to be a great or essential Spider-Man experience.

I can absolutely understand the desire to ground the series a bit more, as even without the influence of the movie, it gives the show a bit more of its own identity, and could in theory be used to show a side of Spider-Man we haven't seen before. Heck, if it makes the show more appealing to people outside the usual superhero demographic, that's a bonus too. Most of the time, however, the efforts are a bit lackluster - is there anyone out there that prefers Talon to Black Cat? Did anyone think that Christina, the antagonist of Head Over Heels, is more realistic or relatable because she's a young adult who's yandere towards Spider-Man, as opposed to being a villain in tights? Most of the original villains are fairly forgettable, and the classic ones more often than not had at least one or two problems. Grounding a work can definitely be successful, but in my personal opinion, I usually find that superhero works are more enjoyable when they embrace the fantastic and quirky.

I will gladly say that while most episodes had a few questions or complaints from me that weren't adequately addressed, I don't think that there was a single episode here that I'd call abysmally bad, which might be a first out of all of the series I've watched. The plots flowed along fairly well and usually had decent enough pacing. This might sound like I'm damning the show by faint praise, but I honestly do appreciate it; it's the little things that can sometimes make or break a work. The CGI, which I was a little worried about, usually worked pretty well too; some shots of the city could definitely do with some work, but overall everything looked pretty smooth and natural.

If I had to time travel back and give some advice to the writers, it'd be to embrace more of the show's premise. We've got Peter, Harry, and Mary Jane all being friends and going to the same college, and when the show did focus on them just hanging out and watching people make out talking, it was pretty enjoyable. I'm not saying that this needs to turn into a slice-of-life show, but this is a good group of characters we've got - especially once you factor in Indy - and I think there was some good potential there. (The other pieces of advice that I'd give, of course, is to add in more comic book villains and to make up their minds on what Peter and Mary Jane want from one another).

Some final, miscellaneous thoughts before going through my top three and bottom three so that you, the intelligent reader, know what to look forwards to and what to avoid if you decide to check out this series:

• With the exception of a few times when he used his Oscorp connections for the plot, Harry mostly just hung around, made some quips, and day drank (that's what all the hip young adults we want to watch the show do, right? Day drink?) And you know what? It worked quite well. Harry is Peter's friend, and he acted like a normal person. A lot of mediums - I'm looking at you, certain periods of the comics and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - tell us that Harry and Peter are best friends then don't show them living up to it. Here they honestly did feel like two people who enjoyed each others' company.
• If Harry's the surprisingly enjoyable civilian friend, then Mary Jane is his dark reflection. Holy crap. First she and Peter are making out; now they're not; now she wants him to show up to her play; now she's going out with her coworker; now she's kissing Peter. This is just in the first three episodes, by the way. And then Peter somehow ends up casually doing stuff with both her and Indy? The show really, really needs to decide what it wants to do with the two of them and stick to it.
• I never really commented on it in my reviews, but the place where Harry and Peter live in has a weird, clock tower-esque structure towards one end, which Peter usually exits as Spider-Man. I sort of see what they were going for, but it feels kind of bizarre at the same time.
• I realise that this is a thing for most superhero stories (heck, for most adventure stories), but I feel like in this series more than any other Peter was constantly right around the corner whenever a crime or something that required him to be Spider-Man was going on. I can't recall a single sequence of him having to actively search for someone or something in the city.

Spider-Man: The New Animated Series: Before Watching

Like Spider-Man Unlimited, Spider-Man: The New Animated Series has kind of gone under the radar a bit. No doubt only being thirteen episodes contributes to that - it's hard to talk about a series when it doesn't have room to flex its muscles - but it also feels like it's a series that people just don't know anything about. All that I really know about it going in is that it's done in 3D, it was originally supposed to be set in the Raimi films' continuity, and it aired on MTV. Not a whole lot to use to extrapolate data - I guess it being on MTV means that it might end up having a better budget? MTV is a cable channel, right? So things on it cost more?

With such little information that I know about it, it's hard for me to speculate about it too much, but I guess I can try. The Raimi films are, in my opinion, a bit flawed and I think that people look at them through rose-tinted glasses a bit, but one thing that I think they did manage excellently was Norman and Harry Osborn - their actors, the acting, their arcs. It's doubtful that we'll get to see Norman, but depending upon how hard this show tries to stick to the promise that it's set in the same continuity as the Raimi films, Harry could end up being really interesting and enjoyable, assuming that he appears in the show. If we get any comics villains showing up, we could also end up with some really cool redesigns; the Raimi films were made in that era when movie villains shied away from the colourful costumes of the comics (I mean, superhero films still do now, but you know what I mean) but their villains generally came out looking alright, even if it wasn't and still isn't exactly my thing.

The 3D animation is something that I can see either being surprisingly good or really bad. We're in the PS2 era now, and honestly, while I do like the graphics level with video games these days, I wouldn't be complaining if we'd never advanced past there. Using that as a baseline for how the graphics could be (I know that Finding Nemo was out in the same year as this, but it's a bit much to expect the show to match the visuals of a big-budget Pixar film) I think I should be able to handle it. At any rate, it can't be awful as the 90's CGI from Spider-Man: The Animated Series.

Spider-Man Unlimited: After Watching

Before watching Spider-Man Unlimited, I commented that I wasn't very optimistic about it, and most of my praise for it was to do with the art style and with a hopes about the premise that I wanted to work out. I've finished the series now, and while it definitely isn't my favourite series, I can confidently say that overall, it's...okay.

One of my criticisms of the premise was that personally, I like my Spider-Man to be pretty grounded, and taking him into space and to another world completely wrecks that. Yeah, once he's on Counter-Earth there's an attempt at grounding him there by giving him a photography job with the Daily Byte and a place to stay with Doctor Naoko Yamada-Jones, but that doesn't change the fact that the world he's on is filled with bestials, flying cars, and machine men. I know that the Marvel Universe is itself pretty fantastic (seriously, how many alien species does it have? How many secret, hidden societies can their world fit?) but a good Spider-Man story makes you forget that without losing its ties to the wider world.

It's a bit of a pity, because the writing was pretty solid when it was focusing on the human rebellion or something unique to that world (I'll never forget you, electric eel Electro!) If Spider-Man never travelled to Counter-Earth and the story was instead just about the rebels trying to take down the High Evolutionary, I think we could have gotten a pretty decent series out of it, and there wouldn't have been that lingering sense of "okay but this isn't what I really want to see the protagonist doing." The show's at its worst when it's trying to tell Spider-Man stories - see the awkward attempt at giving Counter-Earth its own Green Goblin mystery, and pretty much everything that Venom and Carnage do - and at its best when it's focusing on its own unique aspects.

I'm feeling conflicted about whether or not to praise the show. On the one hand, when it's bad it's really not worth it, but when it's good it does feel like it's something that you haven't seen a lot of (at least, I hadn't, in terms of the premise. More cyberpunk cartoons, western culture!) It's just...Spider-Man can do so much better, and I'm honestly struggling to think of the moments where it was his actions that really had me enjoying the show and feeling excited. As I said above, this would be a great show if Spider-Man wasn't in it, but he is, so you kind of have to take the good with the bad. Sorry, Spidey; that's just the way it is.

A few final dot points, and then I'll move onto the best and worst episodes so that you, the intelligent reader, know what to look forwards to and what to avoid if you decide to check out this series.

• I didn't talk about them much, but Naoko and Shane were great characters, even if the show seemed indecisive about whether or not Naoko was supposed to be Peter's love interest. They were frequently likable and level-headed.
• I kind of forgot about Lord Tyger until the last few episodes, when he started appearing again, and I also really liked him - he was the only member of the Knights of Wundagore who was somewhat sympathetic to the humans. I realise that it would have killed a lot of the conflict, but I wish that he'd been in the show a lot more than Sir bloody Ram.
• Okay, so maybe I'm undermining myself here since I like the Venom movie's interpretation of Venom, but still, this is easily the worst version of Venom and Carnage I've seen yet. They're boring, inconsistent, significantly changed from the comics version without any sign as to what they can and can't do, and their overall plan is dumb (and also not really explained).
• If you want to do a mystery as to who a character's real identity is, the way to do it is not to drop incredibly obvious hints and then keep playing it up as a mystery. Looking at you, Green Goblin.
• This show's interpretation of Kraven is mostly what you'd expect, but I'm going to reiterate what I mentioned in the review of that episode: the idea that the herbs and stuff he takes are going to lead to an early death but he's okay with that is an amazing interpretation of the character. Seriously, someone at Marvel, please steal this idea and incorporate it into the comics.
• The cast all died in the final episode and you can't convince me otherwise
  

Spider-Man Unlimited: Before Watching

Going into the 1967 series, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, and Spider-Man: The Animated Series, I had a few basic ideas about what they were about and what to expect. For the first time since the 1981 series, I'm pretty in the dark about what Spider-Man Unlimited will be like beyond the general premise, which...man, I don't want to be negative here, but it's not a great premise for a Spider-Man series. (For those unaware: Spider-Man goes to Counter-Earth and...fights the High Evolutionary's beast men, I think? And some of his rogues' gallery are beast men?) I've mentioned before that I'm not a big fan of Spider-Man dealing with concepts that are too fantastic, and between him travelling to another planet and running into the mutated beast men that are there, that sure doesn't sound like it's up his alley.

What was the idea behind this series, really? Was it decided that beast men would make great toys, and Spider-Man was a good way to get kids to watch the show? Was an Adam Warlock show pitched and then someone decided that Spider-Man would be a better fit for the lead? Was everyone high off their minds on drugs at the time? I can understand how any of these ideas would get pitched, but going so far as to be approved and then actually developed feels like a stretch.

I really don't have a lot to say here since the show is so obscure - and given that I haven't heard a lot about it, I'm guessing that as much as I'd like it to be the case, it's probably not going to be a hidden gem - so let's focus on some positives before I do a quick analysis of the opening. Spider-Man's costume for this looks absolutely rad, and from what little I've seen of it there's a lot of moody lighting here, which is a cool stylistic choice. Spider-Man being on another planet is a pretty unique take on the character, so we might see more of a focus on his scientific side, or even just get some cool concepts while there. It's not all hopeless.

Spider-Man: The Animated Series: After Watching

Well, here we are. I can now say that I've watched the entirety of one of the most popular Spider-Man cartoons, and honestly, the general opinion on the show is pretty accurate - there are definitely some bad episodes and ideas here, and more than a few that I'm indifferent to, but of the series I've seen so far (for this blog), I'd easily say that this is the most consistently enjoyable. Part of that is no doubt thanks to the show doing a fairly faithful and consistent job of adapting the comics, but even when it tries its own thing it's often fairly successful - I'll happily call this show's take on Hydro-Man the best out of any continuities, including the comics.

It's not like it's just limited to Spider-Man, either - I was surprised by how much both of the 1980s series ended up using the Marvel Universe cast, but they often felt like they'd been arbitrarily thrown into the episodes they were in (looking at you, Medusa) for the sake of it. Here, whenever we've got a guest star - Daredevil, Captain America, Doctor Strange, and more beyond just them - they're inserted into the episode naturally and they're written in a way that's true to their characters. If this was your first exposure to the Marvel Universe, then I can't say it's a bad one to start with.

I was also quite pleased by the way the show handled continuity, compared to the ambitious but ultimately disappointing attempt of the 1981 series, and the pretty stock-standard take of the other series (ie. assume there's no continuity unless it's being brought up within the episode itself). Unfortunately the writers bit off a bit more than they could chew with the season-long arcs - Neogenic Nightmare was stretched out a bit too long, and Sins of the Father and Partners both tried for thematic arcs which didn't really land - but smaller bits of continuity, like the rise and fall of Alistair Smythe, or Peter's relationship with Mary Jane, really worked well and felt like they paid off if you stuck with them.

So, where were the parts that the show failed, then? I was expecting the somewhat more toyetic nature of it to be something of a failure, but honestly, half the time you don't notice how it's affected the show - if I didn't know that Hobgoblin was added in before the Green Goblin to sell toys, I'd have just assumed that the writers were subverting expectations. When the show fails, it's more by its own faults, such as the above-mentioned season-long arcs, or a bizarre writing choice like making Electro the Red Skull's son.

Some final notes and fun headcanons that I'd like to share:

• We never see Shocker with his mask off, and we also never see him in the same place as Ned Leeds. As far as I'm concerned, it's conclusive evidence that they're one and the same.
• In the one episode when an article is shown to be written by Ned Needs, Robbie is the one who supposedly wrote the article, and is being threatened by Tombstone for it. I figure Ned Needs is his alias for when he wants to write an article but keep his name out of the paper for whatever reason, and it was inspired by the Daily Bugle's top reporter.
• Robbie's also mentioned to have, like, four or five wildly different jobs in his past. He also has contacts in Russia, so I'm assuming that he's secretly been a Russian spy all this time. Those past jobs were either lies he's telling now to explain the skills he got as a spy, or they were cover jobs he had to work to get closer to his targets.
• In spite of Spider-Man promising to do so, he never ended up chasing Shocker to the ends of the earth. 

Anyway, those are some of my overall thoughts on Spider-Man: The Animated Series. I'm going to finish off my thoughts on this series with a list of the top ten and the worst ten episodes, so that you, the intelligent reader, know what to look forwards to and what to avoid if you decide to check out this series.

Spider-Man: The Animated Series: Before Watching

While I've mentioned previously that Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends is the first Spider-Man show I've covered that people seem to still have some memories of and nostalgia for, it's pretty safe to say that for a lot of people, Spider-Man: The Animated Series* is the definitive Spider-Man show. Why? I'm not quite sure, although I can't say I've really heard anything bad about it.

Unlike the other Spider-Man shows I've covered, this is one that I've actually seen some episodes of. Something like fifteen or so years ago, I watched a DVD (maybe even a video) of it which contained all of the Venom episodes, and while my memory's not good enough to remember many details, I do remember liking it, even if I had no idea that Iron Man was an established hero when he showed up in the Carnage arc.

Other than that, there are a few other little tidbits I've picked up over the years about the show, some of which I'm probably wrong about. I'll be interested to see how many of them do end up being true as I go through the show:

• The Sinister Six are renamed the Insidious Six; I think because the word Sinister was considered too scary for kids
• I think that this is the series where Electro is the Red Skull's son? That's a weird character choice to make.
• The show wasn't allowed to show Spider-Man punching anyone, and so there's a lot of censorship. There's also an urban legend that it wasn't allowed to show pigeons being disturbed on rooftops as Spider-Man ran across them.
• Since the show couldn't kill anyone (too scary! Kids don't understand the concept of death!), it instead threw characters through interdimensional portals. I definitely remember this happening at the climax of the Carnage arc, and I'm fairly sure that I heard that it happens to Mary Jane and the Green Goblin in this show's equivalent of The Night Gwen Stacy Died.
• The Hobgoblin is introduced in this show before the Green Goblin, I think. I'm curious as to whether there will be any references to the Green Goblin if the Hobgoblin's origin is touched on.

One more thing that I've been looking forwards to for a while is that this series is starting to draw from more recent contemporary comics - Venom appears, and from the looks of some of the episode titles, we'll also get Hydro-Man, Morbius, the Punisher, and other villains from the post-Ditko and Romita eras. As decent as Spider-Man (1981) and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends were, something that both were lacking in was a good use of characters from the 1970s and early 80s. On the flip side, this show is responsible for the idea of the black suit influencing Peter negatively, which I think has been soft-retconned into the comics by now.

* Technically, the name of this series is just Spider-Man, but I've already got to use years to distinguish between the 1967 and 1981 shows, and this helps to make it stand out more.

Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends: After Watching

Back when I first started watching the 1981 Spider-Man series (the other 1981 series, that is) I questioned whether it being more obscure than this concurrent series was unfair or not. Having now watched the two of them, I'm suprised to say that while there are probably a lot of factors going into its notoriety - among other things, I'm fairly sure that Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends aired at a better timeslot compared to the 1981 series - this series really did end up being the superior one.

Sure, there are some pretty decent episodes in the 1981 series, and there are some bad ones of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. There are plenty of episodes where Firestar and Iceman are a bit superfluous, and let's not pretend for a second that Amazing Friends' Doctor Doom is superior to the 1981 series' version. But ultimately, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends has one big advantage over the 1981 series - namely, that by having Spider-Man on a team of equals, it gives him a dynamic that few other Spider-Man stories explore.

Firestar was a consistently enjoyable character, often being the voice of reason and thankfully bringing as much to the table as the male characters. I've read a bit of Fabian Nicieza's New Warriors from the 90s, and it was good to see that she was just as enjoyable here as she was there. Iceman was a bit more annoying, but there were still some good uses of his powers, and the banter between him and Peter was thoroughly enjoyable. I doubt that there'll be a dynamic between the main characters in a Spider-Man show like this for a while.

Just adding in the team dynamic gives the show a lot more to work in. Suddenly, we can bring in characters from the other members' pasts, or, if we need to pad the episode a bit, can at least give the characters separate tasks to do to disguise it a bit. I wouldn't want Spider-Man to be on a team all of the time, but this series really did manage to pull it off well and make me enjoy what it did.

Ultimately, I think that when this show did falter a bit, it was more often than not due to a sketchy plot than mishandling of the characters. Some episodes are definitely worth skipping, and we're still in the realm of little continuity or ongoing plots, but overall Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends was pretty decent. If you're wondering whether this show is worth watching and can put up with some silly stuff - Spider-Fan, go for it!

With all of the above in mind, I'm going to finish off my thoughts on this series with a list of the top five and the worst five episodes, so that you, the intelligent reader, know what to look forwards to and what to avoid if you decide to check out this series.

Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends: Before Watching

Not to rehash some of my posts about the 1981 Spider-Man series, but Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends is the much better-remembered Spider-Man cartoon of the early 1980s. With the two cartoons airing at the same time, inevitable comparisons are going to be made. Given that Amazing Friends has a fairly positive reception, I'm curious about how much of that reputation it deserves. Does it owe its reputation to nostalgia, or will the show manage to tell competent stories, with the pacing and plot points that have often been lacking from the previous two shows I've seen?

Honestly, it's hard not to feel optimistic at this point. Iceman and Firestar could very well add a good character dynamic to complement Spider-Man, and while the use of them is a little out of the blue, with Firestar having been created for the cartoon, I can think of far, far worse characters to team up Spider-Man with. I like both characters on their own, both thanks to their personalities and powers. At this stage, the main worries I have about this series are that we'll get some formulaic and predictable plots, but I'm hoping that my enjoyment of the three main characters will manage to counteract the worst of it.

Spider-Man (1981): After Watching

The 1981 Spider-Man cartoon is often overlooked, appearing as more of a footnote in comparison to its much more popular sibling, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Having watched the entirety of the series, is it fair? Does Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends hold more of the spotlight because it's genuinely better, or is it unfairly taking attention away from this hidden gem?

Well, I can't answer that, because I haven't seen Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends yet. What I can answer, however, is how this show compares with the previous series, which first aired in 1967. For a start, the exclusion of episodes made up of recycled animation - both from the show itself and other shows - feels like a breath of fresh air. I don't want to be too harsh on the 1967 series, but going into this and knowing that I'm not getting weak animation is an absolute blessing. Something else I was a big fan of was that the 1981 series was experimenting more with the wider Marvel Universe, showing off unexpected heroes and villains from other series. On the downside, I would have been keen to see an episode or two of the 1981 series directly adapting a comic book issue, as happened with several of the stronger 1967 series episodes.

So, the show's got quite a bit going for it when comparing to the previous series. How does it stand up when we're not doing a comparison? Unfortunately, a lot of the episodes are forgettable, or mediocre at best. A lot of them fall into that category of, "Well, it got a lot of stuff right, but it also got a lot of stuff wrong," and so there were few that I really strongly enjoyed. To the cartoon's credit, this might be more due to what was expected from the story of a cartoon at the time, and I can see what the creators were aiming for a lot of the time. The attempt at an ongoing story arc involving Doctor Doom, while ultimately not up to my standards, is encouraging, and I'm glad that the creators tried.

I didn't talk about it much in my reviews, but one of the most fascinating things I found about this show was the character of Mortimer, J. Jonah Jameson's nephew, who is introduced as a rival to Peter, and then proceeds to do absolutely nothing. Who is this character, and why was he created? This feels weird to type, but I'd love to see him show up in a future Spider-Man work, with his character more fleshed out and making more appearances overall. There's potential in him, if you ask me.

With all of the above in mind, I'm going to finish off my thoughts on this series with a list of the top five and the worst five episodes, so that you, the intelligent reader, know what to look forwards to and what to avoid if you decide to check out this series.

Spider-Man (1981): Before Watching

It's hard to sum up my feelings regarding going into the 1981 Spider-Man series, but overall, I'd have to say that I'm cautiously optimistic. It feels like when people think of the Spider-Man cartoon of the 1980s, their minds immediately jump to Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, the show which comes after this (and which, rest assured, I will be viewing after this). Why exactly is that? Is this show bad, or mediocre, in comparison? Was it unpopular, and necessitated a retool into Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends to maintain viewer interest? Certainly Amazing Friends does feature Iceman and Firestar which gives it an identity of its own, but that doesn't mean that this series is necessarily going to be bad.

It's been over a decade by this point since Spider-Man last had a cartoon of his own. In the time in-between, he's gotten two new comic series, failed to save Gwen Stacy, been cloned, proposed to Mary Jane, confronted the burglar who killed Uncle Ben, and much more beyond that. How much of this is going to make it into the show? The 1967 show surprised me with how often it adapted comic issues, including ones which were pretty recent at the time. By now, is Spider-Man enough of a pop-culture juggernaut that a cartoon can't afford to alienate viewers by introducing some of the, shall we say, more out-there concepts of the later episodes of the 1967 series?

Spider-Man (1967): After Watching

It's taken almost exactly half a year, but the entirety of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon has been viewed and commented on. There were high points, there were low points, there were some points of surprising quality and points of wasted potential. Now that I've actually seen this artifact, how does the overall product look?

Well, as I've mentioned several times in the posts themselves, the quality drops notably after the first season finishes. While I wouldn't call the first season the best cartoon I've seen, there were a lot of episodes that fell into the "it's fine" camp when I was expecting them to be forgettable at best, horrible at worst. Episodes directly adapted from comic stories were, naturally, highlights, but there were also some surprisingly good original stories told in all. There's some goofy animation, sure, and some of the plots really shouldn't be thought about too much, but I'd be lying if I said that there was no entertainment value.

Once we get to the second season and third seasons, though...hooo, boy. I'm not going to say that every episode was bad by any means, but the quality of the writing dropped pretty noticeably, not to mention the animation quality. Worst of all were the episodes which recycled animation from another episode but told more or less the same story - I understand why they did it, but that doesn't make the episode automatically entertaining.

To finish off this brief summary, I'm going to present my top ten favourite stories of the series, as well as my top ten worst stories so that you, the intelligent reader, know what to look forwards to and what to avoid if you decide to check out this series. For fairness' sake, I'll be excluding episodes which are adaptations of comic stories, as otherwise the top ten list would probably be just them.

Spider-Man (1967): Before Watching

The 1967 Spider-Man cartoon is a bit of an odd duck. On the one hand, it's the first appearance of Spider-Man in a medium other than comics, and it created the most iconic theme Spidey's ever had (sing it with me, folks: "Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can..."). On the other hand, I can't see it having aged well over the decades, in terms of animation or storytelling. I think it says a bit about the show that aside from the opening theme, its biggest legacy these days is the many memes it's generated.