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Wait... What the heck is he swinging from?!
This week, we’re joined by Space Captain Steve of Blade Kitten and Hal Hefner of Heavy Metal’s Gates, as we talk about Spider-Man through the ages! We go over pretty much every Spider-Man animated cartoon ever made, and even some of the live action ones. We talk about all incarnations of Spidey, Peter’s love life, and our ideal production of Spider-Man.
In a bonus round, we’re joined by 1UP’s Bob Mackey, where we make a discovery of something that was overlooked in the main part of the show. Could this episode be…TO BE CONTINUED!?!??
Again I ask; considering how far up he is, what exactly is he swinging from?
I got your invitation to be on the show. I’d love to! I don’t know if I’m “qualified” to be on a show talking mainly about animation studios though. I admit that I’m pretty ignorant when it comes to them.
Anyway.
I loooove Spider-Man, so I’m so excited that y’all did this one!
1. I’ll admit it. When I saw the ’94 show at 8-years-old, I was all “WOOOOOW!!!!” when the CG popped up. But I’m taking off the nostolgia glasses when I say this. *ahem* You guuuyyyysss!! Stop picking on the CG in Spider-Man: TAS! It was a 1994 television show for goodness sake, it’s wasn’t going to look like a Pixar feature. Let’s give them “some” credit. Yeah, I know. If you know that your vision is going to be hampered by technology, you either need to make a technological leap or not rely on that technology so much. It was a mistep on their part to have an ENTIRE CGI cityscape when they were only capable of creating cubes with phong shaders, but they did it and for that time period the result wasn’t that bad. … stop looking at me like that. It wasn’t that bad!!
2. I don’t remember what Spider-man it was. He end up on another Earth, or in the future or something? Was that Unlimited? I don’t remember, but I do know that I couldn’t stand it. People try to convince me that it wasn’t that bad but… no. I can’t do it. MTV was worse than that though. There aren’t enough four letter words in the dictionary and Bible combined to describe how much I haaaattteeedd that show.
3. Aunt May. I kinda like the way Ultimate Spider-man is handeling her. She’s a ‘little’ too energetic for my tastes, but I like that she’s not 104 and hates everything that on “that new fangled television thingamajig”. She’s cool, relatable, she’s a positive and active force in Peters life and she has a likable personality. I like the idea of Aunt May finding out about Peter as a series goes on, but Peter not knowing that May knows (at least at first). That could be really interesting.
4. My dream Spider-Man show:
Episode budget: $1.2 – $1.4 million
Producers:
Seung Eun Kim (The Boondocks)
Yeah, ok, I can see Brad Bird too.
Supervising Character Designer/Art Director:
LeSean Thomas (Legend of Korra, The Boondocks)
Animation studio:
Who ever is doing Legend of Kora or Young Justice
Writers:
Dwayne McDuffie (Find a way to being him back to life!!!)
Brad Bird (I’d rather him write than produce if I had to choose. He has a way of humanizing characters that I really like.)
Greg Weisman
Main Voice Actors/Actresses:
Peter/Spidey voiced by Scott McNeil (Duo Maxwell in Gundam Wing, Koga in Inuyasha). Oh come on! It could totally work!
Ed Asner as J. Jonah Jameson
Kari Wahlgren as Felecia/Black Cat (Lady in Devil May Cry, Haruko Haruhara in FLCL)
Tara Strong as Mary Jane
Story points:
– I like the idea of Peter maturing over the course of a series. Start Peter off as a senior in high school and have him go to college in season 2 or something. That transition, if handled well, would be fun to see.
– Whatever the story, there needs to be a set beginning, middle and end to the entire series so we don’t end up with an ending like… well, EVERY SINGLE SPIDER-MAN SHOW!!
– I’m a sucker for Mary Jane and Peter, but don’t screw around with us for 3 seasons only to throw her into another dimension, never to be seen again. Let their relationship evolve and grow or don’t do it! I also like Peter and Felecia/Black Cat. Friends or enemies, they just have a really fun relationship.
– A full story arc for Venom, not just a 2 part episode.
– A full story arc with Spidey and The Lizard.
– I actually like the inclusion of the Kingpin, but I don’t think he should be in the forefront until like season 3 or something.
– Let’s have Spider-Man actually LIVE in the Marvel universe. In Young Justice, there have been like 150 cameos. Let’s so the same in a Spider-Man show. As active as Spider-Man is in New York, he would probably cross paths with other characters/groups like the Avengers, Fantastic Four, X-men, etc. on more than one occasion. I’d love to see him interact with these groups every now and then.
– I don’t really care who it is, but there needs to be a villian who isn’t “clichély evil”. Some people do the right things in the wrong way, or the wrong things for the right reasons. That sort of moral conflict is more interesting to watch than “this super smart man is robbing a bank in the middle of the day like a moron”.
5. You gguuuyyyyyyysss! Stop picking on Iron Spider!!
6. I liked the story arcs in ’94 Spider-Man, but no story arc should go beyond 5 episodes. When you get to “Venom XIX” you’ve gone beyond the point of insanity. That time/money could have been spent developing other storylines.
Glad to have you comment!
Oh, btw, let us know when you have that video response to our Teen Titans episode! We’d definitely link it!
To your points….
1. The argument, I think, we were trying to push is “If the CG isn’t at that level, don’t use it at all”. Some tricks you should just keep in the bag, and this was one of them.
2. Yes, that was Spider-man VERY limited.
3. To me, the most annoying part is back to the 80’s Spider-man cartoon, to the 60’s comics to the 90’s show, Aunt May has one mode: “That HORRIBLE Spider-man!” You don’t have any idea how happy I was Raimi jettisoned that noise in Spider-man 2.
4. I’d like to avoid the highschool stuff altogether honestly. Plus, the animation studio that’s doing most of the really good work now is DR Movie, a korean studio.
5. He’s Spider-man! Not “Iron-Man with Spiderpowers”.
6. The show could’ve been so much better if the producers and writers focused their efforts on good 1 episode and 2 parter stories. That way, they could’ve focused their animation budget far better. Wait! That’s what Bruce Timm did with Batman: TAS!
It’s not the technological limitations of the CGI sequences that bothered me. It was that it just flat out didn’t match the background paintings of the city.
They also employed the CGI graphics in ways that exposed all of its limitations. The CGI in The Professional: Golgo 13 doesn’t take me out of the show as much as this does.
Good show again guys nice to hear so many opinions coming from everyone on one of my favourite superheroes .
With growing up with the 90’s version I have to say that was my favourite bad cg or not but I do very much like Spectacular as well and I think Sean Galloway did a great job of the character design in that show and I don’t know where all the hate comes from you compared it to the UPA style of animation and it may be just myself but I was always drawn to that style.
I wish you would have been able to talk about Ultimate more but from what I have seen so far it reminds me of Deadpool with some Teen Titans thrown in ,not my cup of tea ,and I don’t really know how much input Paul Dini has in the show as a writer or a creative consultant?
I thought live action in episode description would be the Sentai Spider-man with the mech and the one where the guy used a rope web.
The 81 Spider-man had the Doctor Doom saga with ~10 episodes. It was really out of place for a Spidey cartoon and overall its mainly Pete trying to please Betty Brant.
Here are some more of the worst parts of the 94 Spider-man:
Peter Parker the built football player
Electro the son of Red Skull
Madam Web the annoying nag who is on there because she is Stan Lee’s wife
Carnage and Morbius want your plasma/energy
Punisher doesn’t punish
Vulture turns into the Man-Spider
Hobgoblin gets more attention than Green Goblin
Harry stops fighting Pete because Liz Allen is now his friend
I really liked Spectacular Spider-man even if Venom was killed by the power of friendship like in the comics. Took awhile to get used to the designs but is still the best Spidey cartoon out there. Steve Blum as the Green Goblin and John DiMaggio as Sandman had me at the get go.
This was good show, I really didn’t think about the Spider-man 2 with train like that before. It just buggled me to have that not a soul would take a picture or tell someone about. A nit pick over a really good movie anyway.
Also laughing at that one spidermanish guy in Young Justice. He first showed up in the early episode and is back again. I think it was episode 22, whatever it was it started with Green Arrow and Artemis working together to stop him for the first 5 mins. Could not stop laughing. I don’t really have much knowledge in the DC universe compared to Marvel, when is comes to alternate doubles. Like Deadpool and Deathstroke stuff, but even the voice must have been, no it had to be a spiderman voice actor.