Well without the internet I was forced to travel to a magical land that holds many things from my childhood, a mystic place filled with mutant cricket spiders and spells of forgotten work, a place known as the basement of my old house that hasn’t been sold yet! I found a mighty treasure of a box full of the entire series of the 90s Spiderman cartoon that aired on fox. While watching through the first season I suffered from Nostalgia Overload, and couldn’t see anything wrong with this. If you don’t know what nostalgia is then it’s basically remembering something from you past and experiencing it the same way in your mind or you know rose tented glasses. Once the N.O. wore off then I was able to see it for what it really is.
This show had about 5 seasons with 65 episodes; many seasons after season 1 seemed to be multi-parters. If you are a fan of the comic book series then you are sure to like this as well, but you have to remember that this show lives in a continuity of its own and isn’t that related to the comic book itself. The first season its self is not an origin episode, in fact the origin of this universes Peter Parkers powers isn’t given till a much later episode. Watching this show does bring a few questions to mind that I had with the show when I was younger though that were never answered in the show, such as: Why the hell does J.J. hate Spiderman even though he saves his life on countless occasions? Why do so many people hate him? Why does everybody so quick to turn on him even after he saves their lives? And most importantly why or why can nobody figure out that Peter Parker is Spiderman? It is pretty fucking obvious but I guess those are little things.
The first season also introduces the Venom symbiote, which is in a few episodes as both the black suit and venom itself and isn’t seen again tell a later season in a multi-pater with Carnage and Iron Man. One thing that I really like about this show is now it does the origins of many of its villains, from J.J. creating The Scorpion to Graves turning himself into The Vulture (though to be honest I like Noir’s Vulture better, he eats people). The show has pretty damn good writing for the team up episodes as well when it does so with heroes that had shows themselves at the time like Iron Man, Fantastic 4 and the X-Men. There is nothing good without issues however, for instance: Why can’t you color black people properly? And WHY THE HELL IS THE LAST EPISODE SUCH A CLIFF HANGER? I MEAN WHAT THE FUCK MAN!! But that’s just the nerd in me talking. Over all I would suggest watching this if you haven’t before or watching it again if you don’t remember its awesomeness.
This review isn’t over yet however as I decided to go over the other Spiderman shows that existed before 2004! I’m not sure if any of you know what a henchin show is, but it’s a show where the hero usually uses a device to change into a special suit, and usually has a giant robot, these shows usually come from Japan and oh boy did I find a great one. I found this on Marvels website actually, and it’s from the 70s and it was simply called Japanese Spider-Man and it was freaking awesome. In this version the guy who is Spiderman is not Peter Parker (go figure) but the son of a scientist, when his father is killed searching for a ship that crashed into a mountain (ship called the Marveler) he falls into a hole where an old alien gives him a device that gives him the powers of Spiderman and transforms him into the hero he was meant to be. Of course this show is a bit cheesy but that’s because it’s from the 70s and it’s a henchin show of freaking Spider-Man dude, I really recommend watching this.
The last show we are going to look at is Spiderman Unlimited that aired 1999 to 2001 yet only had 13 episodes. This show had so few episodes because at the time it was competing with Pokemon, and since the show was good at the time, it was doomed to fail. It takes place in another dimension with Spidey sporting a new high-tech suit with new abilities and new art style. I like to think this is where the earlier show was heading since M.J. is back with Peter and they are married but that’s just me. One of my favorite things about this show is the new art direction, it goes away from the CG old art style and takes on a more comic book style. In this world he is there to save John Jameson, because everybody blames him from crashing on counter earth. When he lands on this new world he finds out that it is ruled by beast people known as the Beastials who were created by the High Evolutionary, the dictator ruler of this world. I want to say that there is a message to this story, with the humans being forced to live in the slums and being ruled over by the Beastials but all I can think of really is Robin Hood. This series also ends with a cliff hanger sadly, but there was a comic book that with along with the show, and though that is over as well it still give more story and I recommend both the comic and the show even though they were both unfinished.
Well that is my look at sever of the old Spiderman shows and all are awesome in their own right, kind of makes me thing that there are few things that aren’t awesome that have spiderman in them, but reality still have time to prove me wrong, and no I refuse to even think about Spider-Man 3, that was just shitty.
