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John Semper- Hero or Menace?
In atonement for not researching the 1994 Fox Spider-Man cartoon thoroughly, we bring you Spider-man: The Truth. This special episode, we explore the foundation of lies on which this cartoon rests. We also explore the one man who is the biggest source of information about this show and… why you probably shouldn’t listen to him.
Topics Covered
It’s NOT Spider-Man:TAS. Stop Lying
Mostly TMS? HAH!
John Semper cries cancer curing tears
The reason why Bob Richardson still gets work
And what do you get when you drain Elvira of hotness AND Humor? CREEPORIA!
Now you saw it. You cannot un-see it.
References
The Wikia article in all it’s… glory
Semper… master of the bus throw
John Semper’s current project
I find it amusing you guys have the will to still talk about Fox Spider-man. I was good on the second episode, but it is nice that you looked more into the background. Not sure if it was good idea. Like knowing how hot dogs are made or something. At least hot dogs still taste good.
I have admitted before on the show that it’s better in hindsight. But the show did cover a lot of stories and didn’t rush through character development. Micheal Morbius did a good handful of episodes before becoming a monster. The Mutation saga took like a whole season leading up to Man-Spider vs. The Punisher.
The show recycled animation from the first episode to the last. Every explosion had a pumpkin bomb in it somewhere and colours often had mistakes. I could care less about the behind the scenes of these shows. To me it’s about the content and how I liked it, or still like it. Bruce Timm makes great stuff but at the end of the day I could have no idea who he is and still enjoy the work. But I never claimed to be a aficionado.
He showed up in two episodes for 30 seconds each before they vamped him. I feel a lot like this is similar to the whole “Terra was really developed!’ argument. And just because you stretch somethng out doesn’t instantly equal development. This is like saying Peter Jackson is the greatest director ever because his movies are 3 hours long. Development is like what Timm did with Barbara Gordon, by introducing her as Barbara Gordon.
What Semper did was string along a plot to the point where even fans were making jokes about the long roman numerals. Leonard Part 6 jokes too. The mutation saga was mostly a joke, because it couldn’t stop, and wouldn’t stop. The results was an unwatchable mess that can’t be re-run very well. And to me, the behind the scenes stuff is the most interesting, because it lets us know WHY bad shows ARE bad shows, and WHY good shows ARE good shows. If Semper and co. focused their energy on really really good single and two parter stories, they might’ve had something, and might’ve better focused their animation budget.
They didn’t. Hell, if Glen Kennedy could’ve nailed down a contract with them, with the way they never sent animation back, we might’ve had the most whacky Spidey ever.
Ben I think you have this way of attacking of things that’s just not right. I even started by saying “yeah it wasn’t that great in retrospect” I’m just saying the show tried to cary a story that it’s 12 year old audience could follow. Keep in mine I watched this show when I was 8 and I found it hard to follow if I missed an episode.
To me, I never liked “For X year olds” because it’s an easy way to excuse lack of quality. The show was a mess, and I think knowing WHY it’s a mess is absolutely fascinating.
I”m not saying the show didn’t have problems I’m saying that story wise the show was pretty good for having continuity, for a show yes aimed at children.
Stop using that or I will summon Brad Bird.
I think Venom had better character development through the series with Eddie Brock being there from the first episode and being working side by side with Pete and being humiliated by Spidey. They clearly had venom in mind since episode 0 since you always end up with Venom on the title screen. And the black cat, they took some sweet time before making her Black Cat (with her own messy origin, but let`s face it, she`s been rewritten so many times by now…) Morbius on the other hand… I don`t think they had ever thought of including him before his episode showed up.
I think one of the things that bothered me the most was the whole “I dated you twice, but you`re the love of my life” which is a card that they`ve played more than once in the show…”and then they just walk away…”
I don`t think the show is THAT bad if you stick just to the show`s writing, but on the animation side of things, it was too bad. But when you compare it with other series that were around the same time like Batman TAS or even X-men, it doesn´t measure up as a whole. Still beats the first seasons of Fantastic Four and Ironman with both hands tied to their backs though!
Comparing the 90’s Spiderman and X-men shows, it really feels to me like X-men tried to be a good show, but failed. While Spiderman just didn’t try.
It’s like the Spiderman crew knew that a new Spiderman show was guaranteed money, so they just phoned it in and expected people’s love of the character to carry the show.
That’s would certainly explain why the “writing style” they used most of the time boils down to “what was a popular story in the comics? Take that and stretch it out into 30 episodes.”
I gotta totally agree with this stance. At least on the animation side of things.
“It´s spidey, they`ll love it, why try harder?” While with X-men they actually tried hard to make it work with mixed results but with a more solid show because they had to make people care about characters that had never been on TV before.
You give so much credit to TMS… TMS contributed to some good shows, but most of their quality work was done when they were handed instructions from other studios. Their independent work and their work for lesser studios is nothing to write home about. Even their quality work suffers from the assembly-line they-all-move-the-same feeling of outsourced animation.