Spider-Man (1994 TV series)
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| Spider-Man: The Animated Series | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Genre | Animated |
| Starring | Christopher Daniel Barnes Jennifer Hale Edward Asner |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| No. of episodes | 65 (23 single episodes), 14 two-parters, 3 three-parters and 1 five-parter) (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Stan Lee Avi Arad |
| Running time | approx. 22 minutes/episode |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | FOX (Fox Kids) |
| Original run | November 19, 1994 – January 31, 1998 |
| Links | |
| IMDb profile | |
| TV.com summary | |
Spider-Man is an American animated television series featuring the Marvel Comics superhero Spider-Man, which ran for five seasons (65 episodes) starting November 19, 1994 and finishing January 31, 1998. The producer/story editor was John Semper, Jr. and produced by the Marvel Films Animation.
The series tells the story of a nineteen year old Peter Parker at his first year at Empire State University, and his alter-ego the Amazing Spider-Man. As the story begins Peter has already gained his powers, is single and a part-time photographer for the Daily Bugle. The show features most of Spider-Man's classic villains, including the Green Goblin, The Lizard, The Scorpion, Doctor Octopus, Mysterio, The Rhino, The Kingpin, The Shocker, The Vulture, and The Chameleon, as well as more recent villains such as Venom, Carnage, and The Hobgoblin. Over the course of the series the single Peter Parker contends with the romantic interests of Mary Jane Watson, Felicia Hardy and her alter ego, The Black Cat. (Gwen Stacy does not feature as a potential love interest, because she was dead in the comics. She eventually appears as Peter's wife in an alternate reality.)
While Marvel's earlier animated series during this time, X-Men: The Animated Series, was produced by Saban, this series was produced by newly formed Marvel Films Animation, and the only series that in-house studio produced. This show is the second longest-running Marvel show ever created, after X-Men: The Animated Series, which lasted for six years, five seasons and 76 episodes.
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[edit] Creation
Stan Lee, Avi Arad, and Bill Kerstetter are the executive producers of the show. Lee, co-creator of Spider-Man claimed to check "every premise, every outline, every script, every model sheet, every storyboard, everything to do with putting the show together".[citation needed] He and producer/story editor John Semper recruited writers who had experience from the comic books to work on scripts, among them was Gerry Conway and Marv Wolfman.
Producer Bob Richardson desired to give the show a "contemporary live-action feel" by merging CGI and traditional animation. Richardson described the outcome to be more "NYPD Blue than The Smurfs".[citation needed]
One of the obligations of working with Fox was to make the show educational by introducing resolvable, child-appropriate social issues. Semper said he believed Spider-Man to be particularly good for this because the show takes place in real world New York making it able to tackle problems "closer to home".[citation needed]
[edit] Animation
To reproduce the New York's style background illustrators undertook a large amount of visual research, using photo archives from above New York, particularly rooftops. Maps were consulted for references and buildings were faithfully reproduced. It has been reported that when the animation cell depicting Manhattan's Pan Am Building were scrapped after being complete it was because the California-based art staff learned the Midtown landmark had gotten a new sign more than a year earlier.
The animation staff were directed to populate the city with cars and crowds on the street level. Semper believed[citation needed] that was one of the limitations of earlier Spider-Man animated projects.
Originally Marvel Films planned to make the backgrounds completely CGI while Spider-Man 'webslinged' around New York, yet due to budget constraints were forced to use traditional cel based animation while occasionally using CGI backgrounds.
[edit] Censorship
By 1994 heavy censorship was being enforced by Fox because certain shows like Power Rangers were being banned for excessive violence in some countries. So in a bid to make Spider-Man: The Animated Series as politically correct as possible, the producers of the show were instructed to abide by their extensive list of requirements.[1] Among the notable restrictions were:
- Not mentioning "Death", "Die", "Kill" or other words with a strong negative meaning. Death was to be avoided, leading Semper to skirt around the issue, killing characters off-panel or in unrealistic ways, and "destroy" and "destruction" were frequently employed as synonyms. For example:
- Mary Jane and the Green Goblin fall through an interdimensional portal instead of falling to their deaths.
- It is stated that the Punisher's family was "caught in a crossfire between rival gangs", and the same applied to the wife of the Destroyer.
- At one point, when the Goblin returns after seemingly perishing, Spider-Man says, "You?! But I thought you were-" and the Goblin cuts him off with, "I'm not.. but you'll soon be!"
- Many realistic guns were not allowed, and no firearms could shoot bullets, so instead they fired lasers complimented by 'futuristic' sound effects. This often led to preposterous scenes in which ordinary policemen wielded bizarre, futuristic pistols. However, in Episode 3.09, Robbie Robertson's son Randy finds a real-looking gun in his father's desk, though it is never fired on screen, and in Episode 56, when Keane Marlow is telling the story of how he lost his wife, the bank robbers are firing a pistol and a semi-automatic.
- Spider-Man was not allowed to hit anyone with his fist, with the sole exception of Episode 39 (The Spot) in which he used his spider-sense to guide a punch through a dimension portal and knock out the Spot.
- No crashing glass was allowed. However, in Episode 43, when Spider-Man and Doc Ock were battling in Felicia and Anastasia Hardy's home, Ock accidentally smashed a glass window with one of his tentacles.
- No children in peril.
- No vampires were allowed on the show. This created complications with the use of the characters Morbius the living vampire and Blade the vampire hunter. Consequently, Morbius only drained victims through suckers on his hands, rather than by biting them in the traditional vampire style on the neck, and rather than blood, his sustenance was referred to only as "plasma." However, the word "blood" is used regularly.
- Spider-Man was not allowed to harm any pigeons when he landed on rooftops.
- Cletus Kasady a.k.a. Carnage was not a serial killer in the series, he was just a madman. Carnage never actually used his symbiotic blades to harm anyone, he was either stopped or dodged. He also absorbed people's energy rather than killing them outright. However, he has made a few references to attempts to murder. For instance, when Baron Mordo stated to him that he needed a few more life forces, Carnage said "Only a few? Too bad!". He also referred to his process of draining life force as "feeding".
There are, however, notable exceptions to these rules. Examples include:
- When Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson confront Hydro-Man in Episode 2.03 for the last time, Hydro-Man vaporizes when he touches hot ground, and never returns.
- Due to the unstable DNA structure of the clones of Mary Jane Watson and Hydro-Man, they vaporized and died.
- An alternate-reality Spider-Carnage commits suicide by jumping into a black hole.
- Several other characters, including Mysterio, Green Goblin and Hobgoblin were implied to have died in explosions or off-screen.
- It should be noted that the restricted words were sometimes mentioned regardless of Fox's censorship. For example, in "The Insidious Six", Scorpion states that he'd "kill to work for the Kingpin" (a common exaggeration used by many). Another variation appears in "Hydro Man", where a waitress says the word in pig latin to Mary Jane.
After the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks, ABC Family heavily edited the episode "Day of the Chameleon" to remove the World Trade Center buildings, parts of the New York skyline, and a helicopter crashing into a building, exploding, and falling to the ground below, among other shots. This resulted in the first scene being virtually implausible to comprehend as it was originally intended. Dialogue was re-looped to match the new, shorter version. Some production credits from the episode are missing as well, due to their being on screen during the omitted footage. They also removed the last two episodes of the second season since one of them featured the two buildings. Another noticeable edit can be view in season three's "Enter the Green Goblin" episode. In the original, the Goblin Glider slams into a building with Spider-Man riding on top. In the newly edited version, the scene is cut, and Spider-Man emerges from a hole in the side of the building. It is believed this scene paralleled the September 11th events far too much for a modern audiences' tastes. Another, albeit subtler, edit occurs near the end of episode 21, when it is revealed that Kraven and Punisher's last battle with the "Man-Spider" was in fact inside the parking garage of the WTC, and that Kraven had deduced the location by smelling some webbing left at a previous battle and detecting remnant soot in it from the terrorist bombing of the early 1990s. The whole sequence of Punisher finding out where they are (he'd been temporarily coccooned by Spidey) and Kraven's explanation of how he knew where to look for them was cut, though the battle scenes within the garage are left intact, since obviously they could belong to any parking garage until the final revelation.
[edit] Release Availability
Spider-Man was one of the most popular shows on Fox Kids, ranking with and even above other hits such as Power Rangers, Digimon, and X-Men. Even after the series ended, it still had an impact on the entertainment industry, boosting sales of myriads of Spider-Man merchandise and popularity.
Despite the fact that this particular series was produced over a decade ago, the success of the Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 movies has sparked more interest in new fans, allowing it to continuously run in reruns thanks to its new owners: Disney. Notably the episodes air in their chronological order, not Fox's original air dates. Therefore, the reruns are all in the correct order.
Some episodes have been released on VCD by Magnavision Home Video.
Others have been released on DVD by Walt Disney Home Video:
- Further information: List of Spider-Man (1994 animated series) episodes#DVD Releases
- The Ultimate Villain Showdown released 30 April 2002 during the run of the Spider-Man movie.[2]
- The Return of the Green Goblin released 29 October 2002[3]
- Daredevil vs. Spider-Man released 11 February 2003[4]
- Spider-Man vs. Doc Ock released 29 June 2004[5]
- The Venom Saga released 7 June 2005[6]
Prior to Disney's releases, Marvel Films did release many two episode DVDs in 2002.
Bootleg DVD's of the show have become popular amoung fans due to lack of official DVD releases. The bootlegs feature all of the episodes despite having lower video quality. Some argue that buying bootleg DVD's this and any other show is unethical, others argue that if Walt Disney Home Video didn't want fans to buy bootlegs they would make all of the episodes avalible on DVD.
[edit] Awards
Writer / Producer John Semper Jr. won an Annie Award in 1995 for Best Individual Achievement for Writing in the Field of Animation for the episode "Day of the Chameleon". Spider-Man: The Animated Series was nominated for 1 1996 Image Award for Outstanding Animated/Live-Action/Dramatic Youth or Children's Series/Special.[7]
[edit] International syndication
Spider-Man: The Animated Series was the top-rated animated show in Germany, Portugal and Spain.[citation needed]
In the UK, the premiere episodes averaged 2.5 million viewers.[citation needed]
In early 1996, the show was launched in Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, Israel, Mexico, Russia, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and South Africa.
In Bulgaria the show was also aired on bTV, Nova Television and Evrokom.
[edit] Characters depicted
Main Article: Spider-Man Characters List
[edit] Credits
[edit] Cast[8]
Produced by
- Bob Richardson - Supervising Producer & Director
- John Semper - producer / story editor / lead writer
- Michael Knowles - producer / writer
- Avi Arad - executive producer
- Stan Lee - executive producer
Original Music by
- Shuki Levy
- Joe Perry - theme
Art Department
- Michael Swanigan - storyboard
Sound Department
- Elliot Anders - supervising dialogue editor
- Jay Bolton - music editor
- Mark Ryan - music editor
[edit] Trivia
- This marks the first time Venom and Carnage appear in a Spider-Man cartoon.
- The series is notably lacking an origin episode at the outset to explain how Spider-Man got his powers. This was done because the series was expected to premiere alongside the Spider-Man feature length film in 1994, written by James Cameron. The film script included an origin story and, to prevent redundancy, the Animated Series did not include it. In part to make up for this, a third season episode, Sins of the Fathers, Chapter II: "Make a Wish", contains an extended sequence in which Spider-Man explains his origin, although there was an earlier episode, "The Menace of Mysterio", where Peter remembers why he became Spider-Man.
- The Cameron movie was intended to feature the villains Electro and Sandman, and so as a result they were completely left out of plans for the series. When the movie eventually fell through Electro was added to one of the later episodes, but the Sandman remains one of the most prominent members of Spider-Man's Rogues Gallery not to appear in the cartoon.
- The original character design for Peter Parker was quite close to his comic book counterpart, right down to his hairstyle, a collared button-down shirt and vest sweater. But the concept artwork was junked in favor of a bulkier design, where Peter exhibits a more muscular physique and wore a green, white, and purple short-sleeved rugby shirt. After the second season, his clothing changed to a purple T-shirt and jacket, but the character design remained the same. Some fans have commented on the similarity between Peter's character design for this animated show and Nicholas Hammond, the star of TV's live-action "Spider-Man" in 1978-1979.
- The character Madame Web is voiced by Stan Lee's wife, Joan Lee.
- In episode 3.02 "Make a Wish," the little girl, named Taina, asks if Spider-Man is from a dying planet whose parents sent him as a baby on a little space ship, to which he responds, "I think you have me confused with someone else." It is clearly referencing DC Comics character Superman. The episode was loosely based on "The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man," from Amazing Spider-Man #248 (1984) The Superman reference may not have been coincidence as the episode was written by long time Superman writer Elliot S! Maggin.
- Voice actor Julie Bennett replaced Linda Gary as Aunt May after Linda's death.
- Martin Landau was the initial voice actor for The Scorpion, but after winning an Oscar he was no longer available for later episodes, and was replaced by Richard Moll, who some fans found better to take up the role as Scorpion.
- In one episode, when many Spidermans from parallel universes fight toghether, one of them is only an actor who plays Spiderman in our dimension. At the end of the story, Spiderman visits Stan Lee in our dimention.
[edit] Merchandising
Three comics were produced on the Spider-Man: The Animated Series;
- Spiderman Adventures
- Adventures of Spider-Man
- Marvel Adventures
A number of video games were also produced:
- Spider-Man: The Animated Series for Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo.
- Spider-Man Cartoon Maker by Knowledge Adventure.
Electronic versions of classic Spider-Man comics were released by Marvel that included narration by Christopher Daniel Barnes and featured animation and theme music from this series.
Novelisations of select episodes were also released.
A extensive toy line that ran over 8 series and included a staggering amount of play sets and vehicles.
There was a wide variety of themed merchandise produced such as lunch boxes, cereals, clothing etc.
Also, McDonald's produced a themed line of Happy Meal toys.
[edit] Episode Guide
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] References
- Marvel Animation Age Presents: Spider-Man: The Animated Series
- Spider-Man: The Animated Series
- Interview with John Semper about Spider-Man:The Animated Series
- Animator John Cawley official site
- SpiderFan.org (fan site)
- DRG4's Spider-Man: The Animated Series Page
[edit] External links
| Spider-Man | ||
|---|---|---|
| Publications | Main continuity: Amazing Fantasy • The Amazing Spider-Man The Sensational Spider-Man (vol. 2) • Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man • Astonishing Spider-Man • Spider-Man Family Other continuities: Ultimate Spider-Man • Marvel Adventures Spider-Man • Spider-Girl • Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane Spider-Man: Reign |
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| Television | Spider-Man (1967) • Spidey Super Stories (1974, live action) • Amazing Spider-Man (1978, live action) • Supaidāman (1978 - Japanese) • Spider-Man (1981) •Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981) • Spider-Man (1994) •Spider-Man Unlimited (1999) • Spider-Man: The New Animated Series (2003) • The Amazing Spider-Man (2008) | |
| Films | Spider-Man (2002) • Spider-Man 2 (2004) • Spider-Man 3 (2007) | |
| Other topics | ||
| Fictional history of Spider-Man • Spider-Man supporting characters • Spider-Man villains • Spider-Man's powers and equipment • Video games • Alternate versions of Spider-Man • Spider-Man in other media |
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Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with large trivia sections | Animated television series | Spider-Man television series | X-Men television series | 1990s American cartoons | Fox network shows | Marvel animated universe | Marvel Comics animation | Iron Man television series | Fantastic Four television series | Jetix | ABC Family shows | Television shows set in New York | 1994 television program debuts | 1998 television program cancellations
