Spider-Man In Animation - A Retrospective
67 Spider-Man, as it is now referred to as, has to be seen to be believed. The show had absolutely no interest
in taking itself seriously and can easily be described as the corniest, cheesiest and hokey show you’ll ever watch.
The majority of the episodes involve teenage photographer Peter Parker fighting crime as his spandex clad
alter ego whilst his boss, fearless publisher J. Jonah Jameson constantly slams Spider-Man in his paper
The Daily Bugle, much to the chagrin of his long-suffering secretary and Peter’s love interest, Betty Brant. Many of Spidey’s outstanding rouge’s gallery made their first appearance outside the comics in this show, as Spidey tangled with the likes of Doc Ock, The Lizard and The Green Goblin on several occasions. The first season is a comedy cartoon featuring an action hero and as far as laughs go, there’s plenty to be found here. Spidey is at his smart mouth best here, and the often-ludicrous storylines and scenarios will succeed at getting a chuckle out of even the harshest of critics. Just try not to laugh as Spidey makes a fully automated fan and raft out of his webbing! The undoubted highlight of the series is jolly Jonah though, as the series managed to capture the irate publisher perfectly. The first season is either utterly brilliant or a mockery of the character to many but I personally felt the series was hit and miss. Sometimes the comedy simply didn’t work and the villains came across as lame whilst others, you’re simply to busy laughing at the show to notice. 
The second and third seasons however, are an entirely different ball game. The company producing the show collapsed,
and Ralph Bashiki was left in charge, and had no time or money to work with. The problems with the show can’t be blamed
there, however. Instead of concentrating on continuing with the comedy, he attempted to make a straight up
action show, and completely and utterly failed. Replacing Spidey’s classic villains with generic, useless and
for some odd reason, green skinned villains, the show was Spider-Man in name only. His supporting cast barely
appeared, the snazzy jazz scores were gone and Spider-Man himself often found himself in other dimensions and such,
hardly a place our relatable wall crawler should ever find himself in. In short, the revamp sucked, replacing all that was good in the show with bland, basic and tedious stories featuring terrible villains. The once pleasing visuals were now crap, as was the show. It finally ended in 1970 when it’s episode order was complete. The show is best known for it’s super catchy theme song, which found it’s way into both Spider-Man live action movies and was one of the main selling points of the complete DVD set that was released in the summer of 2004 to help cash in on Spider-Man 2. Spider-Man would make his next animated appearance as a guest star on Spider-Woman in the late 1970’s, which is especially notable as it is the only time Spider-Man has ever guest starred on any Marvel cartoon! The episode itself is a little weird for Spidey’s standards, but it was cool to see Spider-Man and Spider-Woman team up. Spidey’s design was more than a little weird, especially the spider on his chest and yellow eyes, but the episode itself was perfectly entertaining. 
The real odd thing about the show came from one of it’s supporting characters, Jeff Hunt was complete knock of
Peter Parker, only without the powers. The show featured an almost entirely original cast, with Jessica Drew
working at Justice Magazine whilst keeping her identity secret from Jeff. Spider-Man appeared in two different
episodes in the show, first in a team up to stop Mummies from taking over the Earth. Spider-Woman was perfectly
likeable, but Spider-Man seemed to be severely powered down here, and constantly playing second female to his
female counterpart. Overall, it wasn’t too terrible an episode, despite its illogical ending (The two Spidey’s
turned the Pyramid’s into squares, forcing the villains to flee. They also managed to break dozens of the laws
of physics whilst they were at it). Spidey made a second, rarely seen appearance later in the show, with a
film director planning to use both Spider-Woman and Spider-Man in a movie and films them fighting creatures
in the jungle. Whilst I haven’t seen the episode myself (the only animated Spider-Man I’ve never watched)
I don’t think it will keep me up at night…It would be over a decade before a new Spider-Man cartoon hit airwaves, with Spider-Man receiving his own syndicated animated series in 1981. Intended to be a continuation of the 67 series, the show would feature designs based on the artwork of Amazing Spider-Man legend John Romita Sr. and would feature a virtually identical set up to the aforementioned show, with Peter Parker struggling in his relationship with Betty Brant due to his constant complications as Spider-Man, whilst his boss, J. Jonah Jameson gave his all into publicly ruining Spider-Man. The show featured many of Spidey’s classic rouges seen the in the previous show, but also introduced villains who had never been animated before, such as The Chameleon, Kraven The Hunter and a few original supervillians with silly names, such as The Gadgeteer and Professor Gizmo. 
The show is unfortunately forgotten about by the vast majority of Spidey fans more than likely due to it’s age and
the fact it was syndicated, meaning it simply didn’t reach as many homes as it would’ve were it shown on one of the
networks. Syndication does have it’s advantages though, as it did not have any broadcast standards to follow, meaning
it could push the envelope a little more in terms of action and storytelling, which was a strict no-no in the 80’s for
animation. The main example here being Spider-Man’s feud with Dr. Doom that spanned throughout the show, with 6 main
episodes focusing on the good Dr and his quest to become master of the world. Some Spidey fans were confused by the
choice to use Dr. Doom, traditionally a Fantastic Four villain as Spidey’s main nemesis. The reason? Darth Vador,
believe or not. Star Wars was still exceptionally popular at the time of the show’s production, and Dr. Doom seemed
to be the best fit to cash in from the Sith Lord’s popularity. But 5 whole episodes dedicated to one story was unheard of
back in the early 80’s. Here’s what Larry Parr, a writer from the show had to say on the subject. "Five of those episodes were intended as a five-part mini-series that originally was going to be cut into a movie and shown in Europe. At least that's what I was told. As far as I know that never happened, and I'm not sure the five Dr. Doom episodes were ever cut together and shown in sequence on American TV as I was also told they would be." 
The show isn’t like a lot of 80’s cartoons in that it’s often quite depressing mainly due to the central
character rarely having too happy an ending. This is how Peter Parker should be though – the loser who never
quite gets it right but optimistically believes it can’t get any worse. Ted Schwartz, the voice actor for Peter
Parker/Spider-Man, spends most of his time being miserable, which doesn’t help the somewhat depressing tone of
the show, but I always found him to be a pretty good Spidey voice. There’s better out there, but I don’t think
he deserves some of the negative opinions people have about his performance. In the end though, the show served
it’s purpose, as it allowed Marvel to get a Spider-Man cartoon on Network TV a short while later, after the network
had their say in matters, of course.
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