Spider-Man: The Animated Series

Spider-Man, also known as Spider-Man: The Animated Series, is an American animated television series based on the Marvel Comics superhero of the same name. The show ran on Fox Kids from November 19, 1994 to January 31, 1998, and ran reruns on the Jetix block on Toon Disney and on Disney XD. The producer/story editor was John Semper, Jr. and the production company was Marvel Films Animation.

Why It Does Whatever A Spider Can

 * 1) It is the first animated Spider-Man adaptation to be extremely faithful to the source material.
 * 2) Lovable and Likable heroes such as Spider-Man, Daredevil, Blade, Punisher, Doctor Strange, and (in a surprising case of Adaptational Heroism) Kraven the Hunter.
 * 3) * and Cool Side Heroes like Black Cat and Michael Morbius.
 * 4) Amazing villains such as the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Venom, Hobgoblin and Carnage.
 * 5) Christopher Daniel Barnes (who voiced Prince Eric from Disney's The Little Mermaid) does a phenomenal job voicing Spider-Man.
 * 6) The show focuses on more serious storylines than the previous incarnations, which were much more comedic in tone.
 * 7) Fantastic theme song, done by Joe Perry of Aerosmith who would later produce his band's version of the iconic 1967 song.
 * 8) Venom makes his first animated appearance.
 * 9) The character designs look much faithful like the comics that were based on.
 * 10) Had a crossover with X-Men: The Animated Series.
 * 11) Pretty solid writing.
 * 12) As mentioned above, Kraven the Hunter is portrayed in a much more sympathetic light towards his obsession with Spider-Man than his comic book counterpart.
 * 13) Ed Asner's take on J. Jonah Jameson is arguably the most recognizable after J.K. Simmons' in the films.
 * 14) This version is considered by many as one the best Spider-Man cartoons ever made.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The writing does get a bit dull as the show goes on.
 * 2) The animation is pretty outdated nowadays, and the CGI web-swinging scenes haven't aged well at all.
 * 3) Some moments of overacting.
 * 4) The show ended on a cliffhanger that was never resolved leaving Spider-Man's journey to find the real Mary Jane is left unknown by then.
 * 5) Gwen Stacy, Spider-Man's original love interest, only appears in the final episode.
 * 6) It has some cliches revolving around dimensional portals.
 * 7) The show was ruined by Fox due to the massive amount of censorship. The worst offender is the fact that Spider-Man couldn't punch anyone. Other things that censorship ruined were Michael Morbius not being able to drink blood and the fact that "kill" cannot be said on screen. To make this worse, Batman: The Animated Series (another Fox Kids show) managed to get away with no censorship (except for the first two seasons), despite the dark themes, so there's no excuse for the censorship of this show.
 * 8) Some of the characterization isn't very good:
 * 9) * Hydro Man is a poor man's substitute for Sandman, who was off-limits at the time for a potential live-action movie from James Cameron that never got off the ground.
 * 10) **In addition, he has a connection of being the ex-boyfriend of Mary Jane Watson,
 * 11) *Electro was also a poor man's substitute of being the son of Red Skull, Captain America's archnemesis than an American electrician.
 * 12) * Mary Jane's Aunt Anna can sometimes be despicable towards Peter, who is her niece's husband like she blames Peter for Mary Jane's disappearance.
 * 13) ** Black Cat can be unlikeable sometimes.
 * 14) * Baron Mordo, Doctor Strange's nemesis, doesn't fit well as a Spider-Man villain and feels more like a distaff rip-off of Mysterio if he had real mystical powers, and just being a generic "evil wizard" wannabe.
 * 15) **He is very rubbish when he kidnapped Mary Jane as one of his brainwashed servants (who are reuniting their lost love ones) to steal the Wand of Watoomb and allied with Venom and Carnage in order to free Dormammu.

Trivia

 * Though she didn't appear until the final episode, character traits of Gwen Stacy were given to both Mary-Jane Watson and Black Cat.
 * The show was originally a tie-in to James Cameron's planned Spider-Man live action film, and the film and TV series would have been released close to each other, which explains why the show doesn't have an episode revolving around Spider-Man's backstory. It also explains why Sandman was replaced by Hydro Man, since Sandman and Electro were supposed to be the villains of the movie.