· Character Bios
· Episode Guide
· Episode Reviews
· Production Images
· Comic Gallery
· Cast and Crew
· Message Board
· MAA Home Page

Worlds Apart, Part One
Review and Media by Stu

Episode #1 - Worlds Apart, Part One
Original Airdate October 2nd, 1999.

When Spider-Man fails to stop Venom and Carnage tagging along on John Jameson's shuttle launch to Counter Earth, he attempts to fly to the planet himself.

Credits
Written By: Will Meugniot, Michael Reaves
Directed By: Patrick Archibald
Guest Starring: Rino Romano as Spider-Man/Peter Parker, Michael Donovan as Carnage, Tasha Simms as Lady Ursula, Jennifer Hale as Lady Vermin/Mary Jane Watson, Ron Halder as Sir Ram, Richard Newman as The High Evolutionary, Brian Drummond as Venom/Eddie Brock, Kim Hawthorne as Karen O'Malley, Christopher Gaze as Bromley, David Sobolov as Lord Tyger, Rhys Huber as Shane Yamada-Jones, Akiko Morison as Naoko, John Payne as John Jameson and Mark Gibbon as Nick Fury.


Review: With Spider-Man: The Animated Series now finished and basically every other show that Marvel had on TV gone, they went back to the drawing board when thinking of what to do next with their animated properties. From the looks of things, they didn’t stay their very long, as the decision to green light this series was, to be blunt, really, really retarded.

It seems that everyone involved missed having new episodes of Spider-Man: The Animated Series on the air, and they decided they wanted Spider-Man back on FOX. Instead of ordering new episodes, they decided to go with an all-new Spider-Man series, based on his early days as Spider-Man. Unfortunately, the Spider-Man movie was green lighted at Sony, and for some really odd reason, most of Spider-Man’s cast and such were off limits, leaving them with sweet FA to use, other than original characters. They decided to animate Spider-Man 2099 instead, which didn’t actually use any of Peter Parker’s supporting cast (or Peter Parker himself, for that matter). This was scrapped, and the concept of Spider-Man on an eerily similar counter Earth was used instead, leaving us with the cartoon we got.

We did get to see the normal Spidey in the opening of this episode however. Featuring a rather cool red and black Spidey design, it was actually a pretty decent looking version, a notch about the original series, stupid yellow eyes aside. It looked a little weird in animation, as it seemed to move a little slowly, but the character was staged well enough to make it perfectly watchable. As a nod to the original series, as Peter changes into Spider-Man, they use the original Spider-Man TAS theme! Sadly, this was probably the highlight of the entire episode, as it quickly goes down the toilet from this point on.

Spider-Man’s ‘death’ was also utterly stupid. Not sure why they decided that being crushed by bricks was a good choice for a fake death (hello, if he was crushed, there’s a body under the rubble, no body, no death!) as his aliby for those wondering why both Peter Parker and Spider-Man are missing, mainly because Spider-Man explains where he is going, and Peter says he is following him. Only they’re done in exactly the same voice, and you’d have to be deaf not to know Peter is Spider-Man. It was simply cringe worthy…

Now, if you’re reading this, you’re probably more than aware that I love Spider-Man cartoons. Whether it’s the cheesy 60’s show, the excellent 90’s cartoons or the recent 3D series, I enjoy them all in one form or another. After watching one episode of this, I didn’t really want to see it again. It started off promising, and fell, and it fell so fast. Spider-Man: Unlimited is truly a dark period for Spider-Man fans.

Screenshots: