Spider-Man: The Animated Series

Spider-Man: The Animated Series

"Spider-Man! Spider-Man! Radioactive Spider-Man!"

Genre:	Action Adventure Drama Superhero
Running Time:	21 minutes
Country:	United States
Release Date:	November 19th, 1994
Network(s):	Fox Kids
Created by:	Stan Lee Steve Ditko
Distributed by:	New World International
Starring:	Christopher Daniel Barnes Ed Asner Jennifer Hale Sara Ballantine Roscoe Lee Browne Linda Gray Julie Bennett Gary Imhoff Rodney Saulsberry Mark Hamill Hank Azaria
Seasons:	5
Episodes:	65

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 Rocks

It is the first animated Spider-Man adaptation to be extremely faithful to the source material.
Likable heroes such as Spider-Man, Black Cat, Michael Morbius, Daredevil and (in a surprising case of Adaptational Heroism) Kraven the Hunter.
Awesome villains such as the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Venom, Hobgoblin and Carnage.
Christopher Daniel Barnes does a great job as the voice of Peter Parker/Spider-Man.
The show focuses on more serious storylines than the previous incarnations, which were much more comedic in tone.
Fantastic theme song, done by Joe Perry of Aerosmith.
Venom makes his first animated appearance.
Had a crossover with X-Men: The Animated Series.
Pretty solid writing.
As mentioned above, Kraven the Hunter is portrayed in a much more sympathetic light than his comic book counterpart.
Ed Asner's take on J. Jonah Jameson is arguably the most recognizable after J.K. Simmons'.

Bad Qualities

The writing does get a bit dull as the show goes on.
The animation is pretty outdated nowadays, and the CGI web-swinging scenes haven't aged well at all.
Some moments of overacting.
The show ended on a cliffhanger that was never resolved.
Gwen Stacy, only appears in the final episode.
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.
Hydro Man is a poor man's substitute for Sandman, who was off-limits at the time for a potential live-action movie that never got off the ground.
Mary Jane's Aunt Anna is a despicable character.

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 a cancelled 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.