BW Media Spotlight

The 1990s Spider-Man from Fox Kids and Saban Entertainment, often referred to as Spider-Man: The Animated Series despite two of the previous three shows with Spider-Man alone in the title ALSO being animated, is my favorite adaptation of Peter Parker and company. It’s too bad “neogenics” didn’t become retconned into the comic origin, though the effect the symbiote had on Peter was, most reinterpretations of the characters were spot-on (why is every so afraid to do Electro properly and what was with Doctor Octopus’ outfit?), and the only thing keeping Christopher Daniel Barnes from being my favorite Peter is Spider-Man Unlimited breaking out Rino Romano. Remember, this isn’t the show I grew up on. I’m an 80s kid. I had reruns of the first cartoon (we never got the 80s cartoon in my area) and Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends on NBC, plus USA Network would do a marathon of the US live-action series (the one without the robot) every Thanksgiving. I miss “Spidermania”.

The show unfortunately ended on a cliffhanger thanks to Sony being a pain in the butt when they got the media license that I assumed was just the movies, but I hear this is what got Spider-Man replaced with Spider-Man Unlimited, which was the better animated show with the best Peter but went in some odd directions to avoid Sony’s issues, a stunt Sony pulled again with getting Peter into the proper MCU. In the show, Peter marries Mary Jane Watson, but it turns out to be a clone created in the manner of Hydro-Man as part of his obsession with MJ. This also would have set up the cartoon’s own version of the Clone Saga (bullet dodged, I guess), but before then the real MJ had fallen through a portal into another dimension. Peter’s quest to find her was interrupted by Madame Web insisting he work with Spider-Men of other realities, with her promise to help find MJ once the multiverse was saved. As Peter leaves on his quest, the show ended.

Fans have always wanted to know how Peter rescues Mary Jane, though I guess today would be the question of if he did. My head cannon has him crossing over to the DCAU for an animated version of a Superman/Spider-Man crossover because I really want an animated Superman/Spider-Man crossover with Tim Daly and Christopher Barnes resuming their roles. I don’t care if they’re alternate comic companies by alternate animation studios both owned by alternate media super conglomerates, if the comics can do crossovers again, I can dream! Well, I’m not getting that, but Spider-Man ’94, a four issue miniseries inspired by the X-Men’s animated return and the cameo with the show’s cast in the finale, does promise to answer whatever happened to Mary Jane Watson.

Except the show’s head writer, John Semper Jr., is not returning.

I certainly have nothing against J.M. DeMatteis. Dude wrote my favorite of the Spider-Man and Batman crossovers and some really good Spider-Man stories. Semper even says DeMatteis did some work for him but I couldn’t find evidence of him writing an episode (or rather Google AI didn’t and looking at the Marvel Database didn’t turn any up). He didn’t even work on the tie-in comic to the show. I see this going…iffy.

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