Anyone else caught the new Marvel's Spider-Man series on Disney XD? The first two episodes premiered today, and there's been a series of online shorts telling the origin story (albeit in a way not entirely consistent with the show proper, since it shows Spidey debuting his final costume right after Uncle Ben dies, but in the show he's in the goggles-and-hoodie costume until episode 2). The origin shorts and the first episode are on DXD's YouTube channel -- here's the playlist. So far I quite like the new show, better than I liked the last one. It's combining a back-to-basics approach to the Spidey story -- no SHIELD team or Nick Fury mentoring this time, just Peter trying to figure out his new powers, school, money, friends, etc. -- with elements from the modern Dan Slott run like Horizon Labs (reinterpreted as Horizon High), Max Modell, and the like (Slott is a producer on the show), as well as with modern characters like Miles Morales and Anya Corazon. I think the character designs are pretty good, with kind of a mild anime influence, and the animation quality is better than the norm for Disney XD Marvel shows in recent years. The humor and the character work are pretty good so far, and the voice cast is pretty good too. (Fred Tatasciore's performance as Max Modell isn't too far off from my head casting for the comics character's voice, which was David Ogden Stiers.) Amusingly, Norman Osborn will be played by Josh Keaton, who played Spidey on Greg Weisman's The Spectacular Spider-Man. I can't think of another instance where an actor known for playing a superhero has gone on to play that hero's arch-nemesis in a later production. The closest thing I can think of is Neal McDonough playing Green Arrow in an animated short and then playing Arrow season 4's big bad Damien Darhk. Or Dean Cain playing a version of Vandal Savage in Smallville, but that was a single-episode villain, not an archfoe. I love it that the show is focused on science-geek kids, and that the online shorts are about Peter using the scientific method to get a handle on his new powers. The idea of a cartoon that celebrates science is terrific, if it encourages young viewers to get excited about learning science. Although the show's grasp of science is a bit iffy so far. There's a flashback in episode 1 where Peter tells Uncle Ben that the clock he's repairing "needs a bit more iron oxide." How would more rust help fix a clock???
And like the first episode of the ducktales reboot, the first episode of this has been posted on the Disney XD YouTube account.
Thanks for that! I like it! They've been struggling to make each new successive Spider-Man show different from the last, but the last couple of efforts have seemed a little contrived. This one is familiar and yet fresh.
The last couple? I agree that the previous one, Ultimate Spider-Man, was a pretty big departure, but the one before that was The Spectacular Spider-Man, which was a terrific show that was killed too soon (as a result of Sony returning the Spidey TV rights to Marvel in exchange for keeping the movie rights or some such thing, and Marvel deciding to cancel SSM and do its own show). Indeed, one thing I like about MSM is that it reminds me of SSM in some ways. It has a similarly cartoony character design style, but in a better way than SSM did (I never much cared for Sean "Cheeks" Galloway's character designs on that show), and it's got a similar focus on high school. It also seems to be using a similar story-arc approach, although that's pretty normal these days.
The first couple episodes are also up on the Disney Channel (no XD) app. I haven't checked it out yet, but I might later this week.
I admit to limited exposure to SSM, but recall not liking the animation style and feeling that it didn't offer anything new or fresh, unlike the new show with it's focus on the science. Perhaps someday I'll have the opportunity to revisit the show from beginning to end and re-evaluate my opinion. Before that was the show with Neil Patrick Harris, correct? Meh.
Oh, yeah. I tend to forget that one. In retrospect, the idea of NPH as Spidey is something that should've been terrific. Unfortunate that it wasn't a very good show. It was trying to be more "adult" than its Fox Kids predecessor, but it made the common mistake of assuming that "adult" means gratuitous violence and sexual themes rather than intelligent storytelling and sophisticated characterization. I found it rather simplistically written compared to the classic '90s series, and had way too much violence and death just for the sake of "edginess." And that's not even getting into the clumsy cel-shaded 3D animation.
And then, there was the show where he was stranded on Counter-Earth. I'm an advocate of each new show trying a new take (and with a mythos as deep as Spidey's it's doable), but that took things a little too far! I don't believe that I even recall how he wound up on CE in the first place or if he ever made his way home.
Saban was originally going to do a faithful adaptation of the early comics, but then Sony's deal with Marvel happened and gave Sony exclusive right to adapt pre-existing stories, so Saban had to come up with something new. They briefly considered adapting Spider-Man 2099, but that was deemed too similar to Batman Beyond, so they changed it. (And what they ended up with was still too similar to Batman Beyond. Throw in Phantom 2040, and you had three shows from the same period about young heroes who operated in cyberpunk worlds and who wore high-tech supersuits that made them nearly invisible.) He got there by stowing away on a space shuttle, in an effort to save John Jameson, who'd been stranded there. The show ended on a cliffhanger, so I don't think he ever got home.
I agree there. "Spectacular" felt like a rehash of old Spidey stories. The Alien Symbiote storyline was a poor rewrite-animation of the 90's series "The Alien Costume".
It's hard to keep up regular discussion of this show, since they keep doling out episodes intermittently. But this morning I found three new episodes on my DVR, basically MSM's own version of the Alien Costume Saga, albeit with the first episode being a Sandman focus, the second focusing on the Vulture and Norman Osborn as much as the symbiote, and the third involving the Stark Expo and Iron Man. (The convention center for the Stark Expo seemed to be modeled on the San Diego Convention Center where the SD Comic-Con is held, rather than NYC's Javits Center, which would've made more sense.) It didn't go as far with the "dark Spidey" angle as the '90s animated series or Spider-Man 3 did, but it was a pretty solid set of episodes. I'm really liking this show -- I just wish it came out more regularly. There was a scene at the end of the second episode, after Spidey had banished the symbiote, where he was swinging through the city at night, and the way the CGI buildings looked and the way the camera moved through them as it followed the 2D-animated Spidey reminded me a lot of the '90s series, with its 3D cityscapes that look crude now but were quite innovative for the time. I haven't noticed if other episodes of this show have done the same thing, but it felt like it may have been a deliberate homage to the '90s show -- which would make sense to do in the main "Alien Costume" episode, since it was the '90s series that debuted the idea of the symbiote turning Peter dark and aggressive (rather than simply draining his life force and taking his body out for spins while he slept, as in the original comics). The same set of episodes will be re-airing on Disney XD starting at 5 PM Eastern today, i.e. less than an hour from this posting, and will be rerun at various times (though not in a single block again) throughout the week to come. The episodes are respectively "Sandman," "Symbiotic Relationship," and "Stark Expo."
This show is back from hiatus, and it returned with a 2-parter called "The Rise of Doc Ock," which was a very interesting and novel take on the Dr. Octopus story -- one in which Spider-Man starts out encouraging Octavius, in the wake of the accident that fused his arms to him, to make something positive out of it and become a hero. It's a fresh take on the character and it was really quite interesting, though I feel the first part was better-written than the second. I heard a rumor recently that Marvel Animation might be shutting down production on all of its current shows for some reason. I wouldn't miss their other shows, but this one's quite good and it's only just getting started. It'd be frustrating to see a second really good Spidey cartoon (after The Spectacular Spider-Man) get prematurely shut down due to some arbitrary corporate decision.
The biggest problem for Marvel Cartoons since Disney bought them is that the guy in charge of Animation...doesn't like cartoons.
False alarm -- the show's been renewed for a second season. https://www.cbr.com/marvels-spider-man-disney-xd-season-2/
Today we got what was apparently the season finale of this show -- it brought the main story arcs to a climax, it was set at the end of the school year, it was episode 26 of the production block (actually the 25th aired episode, but apparently the 6-part online origin miniseries was produced as episode 103), and there are no new episodes on the schedule for the next couple of weeks. They've closed out the season with several big story arcs -- first the 4-part "Rise of Doc Ock," then a 4-part adaptation of the comics' "Spider Island" storyline where everyone in Manhattan got spider powers, and finally a 2-part "The Hobgoblin" -- making this the second animated series (after the '90s FOX show) to introduce the Hobgoblin before the Green Goblin. In this case, it's because Norman Osborn manipulated Harry into becoming the Hobgoblin, and presumably Norman's own debut as Gobby is being saved for season 2. (They came up with a very clumsy justification for the name, with Norman quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson's "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" and trying to tie that to Spider-Man in a way that had nothing to do with the meaning of the quote.) I find it very interesting how this series likes to blur the lines between hero and villain. There are few genuinely evil characters here, mostly just people who mean well but are led astray or altered against their will. Even Doc Ock dabbled with heroism before his ego and sense of frustrated entitlement drove him to villainy. And though Norman has been a Machiavellian manipulator and user throughout the season, waging war against Spider-Man and corrupting others in its service, he did so because he believed he was doing good. He mistook Spider-Man for part of the "spider army" that Raymond Warren/the Jackal planned to create, so Norman sincerely thought he was protecting the city by trying to destroy Spidey. The Jackal was probably the most truly irredeemable villain this season -- other than minor players like Hammerhead, who's his usual gangster self, and Kraven the Hunter, reinterpreted here as a reality-TV star who has no moral qualms about hunting human prey and is somehow able to stay on the air in spite of it. And the complicated relationship between Peter and Harry Osborn has been a particularly effective thread. With no J. Jonah Jameson in this show, Harry took on the role of the character obsessed with Spider-Man as a "menace," and it led to a lot of drama and conflict between him and Peter. It all worked out pretty effectively. This is a smart, well-written show, even if it has kind of rushed into adding new spider-heroes like Miles Morales (and even Spider-Gwen, briefly, during the "Spider Island" storyline). Even the music is better than it was on Ultimate Spider-Man, even though it's from the same composer, Kevin Manthei. I look forward to season 2.
The Marvel Wiki says it's unofficially "Earth-TRN633," but I don't see what that tells you. Apparently that's just a placeholder the Wiki uses (Temporary Reality Number). If you're asking whether it shares continuity with any other Marvel show or comic, it doesn't. Like most TV shows based on comics, it's reinvented the characters and the world in its own original way.
Anyone still watching this? I have to admit that I haven't been able to follow any of the second season. At any rate, it's been renewed for a third season. https://www.marvel.com/articles/tv-...J9nGcnFpjGYrjBf0kMzQFLcXp7AwxYuJoLhxm0rjp_unA