Marvel's Spider-Man - An Introduction

What do you see when you look at the title logo? I see a fifth cartoon titled simply as Spider-Man, but it has the Marvel logo above the character's name. Here is a list of Spider-Man animated series so far (the year of debut is obviously not part of the title):

1. Spider-Man (1967)
2. Spider-Man (1981)
3. Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends (1981)
4. Spider-Man (1994)
5. Spider-Man Unlimited (1999)
6. Spider-Man (2003)
7. The Spectacular Spider-Man (2008)
8. Ultimate Spider-Man (2012)
9. Marvel's Spider-Man (2017)

Number 4 is famously known as the Animated Series, some people dub it the Amazing Spider-Man, but the official title is simply Spider-Man.

Number 6 is known as the MTV Spider-Man, or known as Spider-Man: The New Animated Series, but like the 90s cartoon, it's official name is simply Spider-Man, no extra word added.

Adding the logo does not look like part of the title for me. Sure it's known as such, but do we really need this as part of the title? We all know who Spider-Man is, we all see the Marvel logo attached to this character wherever we go on all merchandise. If their goal was to tell us that they made the show, that it is an in house production, it's not like we expected anything different considering how Marvel's animation has been basically in house production since 2012, they even had their hands on the second half of season 2 of Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Getting over that, news of this surprised me considering the info that this was meant to be released this year (2017, if you don't read the date of this blog entry, or forget the year of this show's debut), they chose to release it the same year their previous show; Ultimate Spider-Man, ended. I did not love Ultimate Spider-Man, but I did not hate it either. Despite it having some bad episodes in the first and second seasons (Awesome and Hawkeye are episodes that jump to mind as highlights of terrible), annoying 4th wall breaking constant jokes, annoying 4th wall breaking timing that breaks momentum of action and drama, Spider-Man is often dependent on team-mates, J. Jonah Jameson being reduced to a large screen basically yelling "SPIDER-MAN SUCKS" most of the time, Drake Bell's delivery of jokes, 4th wall breaking recap of stuff in the past... what I liked about it kept me interested enough to look forward to seeing more episodes week in week out, and I thought it improved notably with the 3rd season.

Then we got news of this show, and some bits like this promotional picture below

Warned us against expecting another solo series, they wanted us to know ahead that it will be another team-up series, with more focus on spider characters. Personally speaking; a multitude of characters with the same ability is not that interesting.

I have to admit though, news that Dan Slott was hired as creative consultant intrigued me, as I personally enjoy the stuff he wrote for the character prior to his run on Superior Spider-Man, and I do include Spider-Man/Human Torch: I'm With Stupid 5 issues mini series in what I read of his work and enjoyed. Amazing Spider-Man 700 is where I stopped following Spider-Man comics, not because I was bored, I looked at it as the death of Peter Parker, and thought it was an appropriate time to drop the title. I heard favorable things about his run on Superior, but a far less favorable reputation of his stuff once the Superior title ended, with a lot of focus on how he treated Spider-Man as an immature man child viewed as an idiot by his fellow Avengers, and by Mary Jane Watson. There is also the matter of his newly created spider character that is somehow more developed as a Spider-Person who can easily kick Spider-Man on his gluteus maximus, despite being trapped most of the time, and then there is the sudden attraction between her and Peter just cause they were bitten by the same spider, the one that originally died immediately after biting Peter, and no one else before him.

I filtered the bad junk out of my mind, and still thought this show could deliver some goodness the previous show failed to deliver... it was a disappointment I did not prepare myself to accept.