After watching the X-Men: Animated series, I figured, "What the hell, I'll watch that Spider-Man: Animated Series from the same era." This decision was also supported by a blink and you'll miss it cameo of Spider-Man from X-Men '97. I read speculation that seeing Peter and Mary Jane meant that Peter had found "the real MJ." I read that and was like, "What are people talking about? I don't remember that at all." I think it was because by the time the late 90's came around, I had jumped off the bandwagon for that show.
I can say now that I have watched all five seasons in it's entirety, I made the right call. For as much shit as I gave X-Men, that pales in comparison to this show. This show is remarkably bad. I'll get into my reasons for thinking that of course, but I didn't want to waste too much time before I got into my feelings on it. I will inevitably pull in comparisons to the X-Men show to prove my point.
One thing I distinctly remember as a teenager when both this and X-Men were on is that X-Men had a Y7 rating and Spider-Man had a Y. I didn't fact check that, but my point is that the X-Men was the mature show and Spider-Man was for younger audiences. That is stark in the action that is presented. There's less hand to hand stuff and more laser guns misfiring like it was a GI Joe cartoon. X-Men sometimes stumbled into some cool action sequences, whereas all of Spider-Man's action sequences feel very boring. Spidey leaps out of the way of stuff, that's expected, but he plays so much defense, we don't see a lot of good offense.
I was annoyed at the amount of stuff he literally threw. Either tossing bad guys or tossing stuff at the bad guys. Never any hand to hand combat, my bread and butter. To make things worse, throughout it's five seasons, this show repeatedly uses the same couple of clips of explosions, generic web swinging or Spidey shooting his web. They could be in the forest, something explodes and it's a shot of a city building having an explosion pop out. Maybe all the money in their animation went into the 3D backgrounds they tried to deploy. Even in 1994, those 3D backgrounds looked astonishingly bad.
While I'm railing on this show, let's talk about the animation a little more. This was some of the most safe and boring animation style that I've seen. It's colorful, but it doesn't feel colorful. I know that doesn't make a lot of sense, so what I'm trying to say is the coloring wasn't dynamic. This lead to some weird character design choices like Venom, who had a blue and red hue to him at all times. I get that if he is all black, it's hard to shape him and his movement, but it just looked so weird. When they bring in other characters such as the X-Men, Daredevil, the Fantastic Four, Doom, etc. they all just look bland and simple. X-Men at least used shadowing at times. I don't think this show ever heard of shadows.
There were also wild character choices made for this show. I feel like Spider-Man has a wide enough gallery of characters that he didn't have to stray too far out of his comfort zone, but they tried to anyway. They brought in the Punisher, Morbius, Blade and even the X-Men from the superior show as guest stars. Each appearance was watered down versions of these characters. Again, I know it's a kid's show, but maybe you don't shoe horn in more violent characters into this show and sanitize them to the point where they don't feel like a threat. Also, Black Cat's origin is truly bizzare as it is fueled by Super Soldier serum and the ability to just...change at wll.
One thing I can't harp on enough. Spider-Man/Peter Parker is a real asshole through the majority of this show. He constantly whines about the state of his life, is rude to fellow heroes, blows off friends in weird ways and does this while constatnly chirping to himself and to anyone that listens. Spidey's whole thing is how much he jokes, but a lot of it is very annoying here. Marvel has put Peter Parker through the ringer, but I don't remember him whining about it as much as he did in this show.
This show is caught between being a kid's show, but trying to have adult themes. I think it failed at both. His relationships with Felicia Hardy and Mary Jane felt weird and forced and I don't see what they want with the guy. There's cringeworthy plots with Hydro-Man, MJ's ex showing up and being super possessive and jealous.
A final note. The stories this show tells. Boring. There's a watered down Secret Wars, there's some stuff with Golden Age heroes, Carnage shows up and a lot of Kingpin and Alastair Smythe stuff. Oh! Hobgoblin shows up before Green Goblin and Green Gobline is only Spider-Man's greatest archvillain. But no, let's shove Venom in here. The only thing I will respect about the show is each season had an arc that they stuck to. I can admire that kind of commitment to an idea, even if it's a bad one.
All in all, this show was an absolute chore to watch. I did it because I'm a masochist. Do I recommend anyone else watch this? Hell no. But if you're like me, you're going to do it anyway.
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