The Tragedy of The Spectacular Spider-Man

all right here it is the spectacular spider-man is definitely my most requested spidey cartoon to cover for years people recommended the show to me citing it as the best iteration of the character that's ever hit television and though it did take me a while to finally sit down and get into the show i have to admit they're right this is a damn near perfect spider-man series that not only understands the characters on a fundamental level but also brings genius subversions and developments to characters and storylines we're already intimately familiar with there hasn't been a spider-man

series this good before or since which is also why the show is ultimately an absolute travesty cut short in its prime so let's dive deep into the tragedy of the spectacular spider-man you know one of the most difficult things peter faces the spider-man is balancing his dual lives so many aspects of his day-to-day life just fall by the wayside two find eddie no three right harry nope four by thermals nope i think what he could have really used is today's video sponsor fabulous fabulous is the number one self-care app to help you build better habits

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link and you can get started on your self-care journey today okay so spectacular spider-man premiered in 2008 developed by writers greg wiseman and victor cook in addition to spidey wiseman is probably best known for developing young justice and working on the excellent star wars rebels while cook directed the massively popular scooby-doo iteration mystery incorporated and let me tell you these guys really get spidey this show feels so well structured and executed they really had an excellent plan for the series and though it was tragically cut short it's hard not to appreciate what they were able

to accomplish in these two seasons even the pilot episode is just so judicious in its storytelling the series picks up on peter's first day of school his junior year the first day of school since becoming spider-man so though we aren't treated to the origin outside of a brief flashback in this episode we still get to see the mental and social adjustments peter is making with this newfound aspect of his life he's newly confident from his double life as spider-man but quickly learns that it doesn't necessarily translate to how people see him at school his social

standing still isn't great why in the world do you think i'd ever go out with midtown high's champion geek it's also very shortly after ben dies establishing that mei is struggling to make ends meet and having trouble raising peter as basically a single mother we're introduced to the initial main trio of friends peter gwen stacy and harry osborn in addition to side characters that are ultimately given some incredible depth as the series goes on such as flash thompson and liz allen even more impressive this pilot effortlessly introduces the vast majority of characters who had become

the spider-man rogues gallery arguably the greatest rogues gallery in the history of comics the cold open show spidey foil a bank robbery stopping flint marco and alexander o'hearn characters who would go on to become sandman and rhino we see they're working for hammerhead who is in turn working for a hidden figure later revealed to be tombstone later at oscorp we meet norman osborne otto octavius and adrian toombs who later become green goblin dock and vulture and we even meet both eddie brock and kurt connors at conor's esu laboratory they don't linger on or focus on

many of these characters too intensely in the pilot either they just immediately establish them all as part of the world some are caught up in the criminal underworld some in the capitalistic aspect of science and innovation and others in the purely academic aspect of science and experimentation it's such an effective way to establish not only these characters but all of these aspects of spidey and peter's world that become intertwined in his web the pilot's actual villain ends up being adrian toomes aka vulture who loses out on his research at ozcorp because it's not bringing in

the kind of cash that norman osborne needs i really love the way that the villains from ozcorp are really forged by the capitalistic greed in science and innovation adrian toombs is basically screwed over by his corporate overlords which pushes him into villainy out of revenge you then juxtapose this with characters like the connors who approach science more academically but still have personal stakes i appreciate that the series keeps its focus on science and even when dipping into the criminal underworld it intertwines with science and innovation vulture's vendetta against norman also creates for both some really

cool action sequences flying through the new york skyline but also a huge laugh out loud moment all clear osborne it always kills me how immediately vulture swoops in to scoop up norman here but i also love that spidey's motivation for fighting vulture and saving norman stems from his own trauma and commitment to great responsibility i can't let harry lose his dad the way i lost uncle ben just this simple line tying spidey's selfless actions back to his own personal experience goes such a long way really well executed and on top of that the very end

of this pilot perfectly sums up peter's life in one brief but effective line nothing went as planned today understatement of the year but i'm still spider-man a perfect intro to the character spider-man's life is constantly disrupted and nothing ever goes as planned but he always toughs it out to do the right thing just a brilliant pilot in every sense and the remainder of the first season just systematically sets up his excellent rogues gallery the second episode introduces max dillon and his tragic origin that molds him into electro another thing i really love about this series

is that they effortlessly intertwine all kinds of different characters via their various relationships we learned that peter and eddie brock are actually old family friends but then also get to work together at doc connor's lab the conor's lab is also where this tragic incident that creates electro takes place which gives both peter and eddie a personal connection to the villain it's initially portrayed as this tragedy and eddie tries to support max through it peter doesn't learn about the lab accident until after spidey has to try to stop elektra the first time and then he's forced

to reconcile the fact that he didn't try harder to help this guy that he actually knows personally these small little connections make the narrative richer because they add personal stakes even beyond just peter parker seeing eddie have to console his friend and even doc connor is having to reconcile an incident that happens at his lab it's just good layering this is also what makes the third episode's introduction of lizard so effective we've gotten a healthy dose of curt in the first two episodes and already established his good nature family and relationships to the characters we're

following like peter gwen and eddie so when they all discover the negative side effects stemming from his experiment it hits harder those personal connections make their concern realer more palpable and on top of that this one perfectly illustrates how peter's responsibility as spider-man can massively disrupt his friendships and relationships as peter parker he does the right thing as spidey going out of his way to help the connors and transform lizard back into kurt but it makes it look like peter ditched his friends and mentors to snap pictures for the bugle which loses him his job

and begins the irreparable damage to his friendship with eddie it also starts peter down the path of self-doubt the responsibility of being spidey so quickly harms his everyday life that he can't help but wonder what it would be like if he didn't have that responsibility anymore this ends up being a really nice through line for the entire first season and i like that they approach it so quickly side note how incredible is this shot and animation where kurt grows his arm back so cool okay i'm going to jump around a bit because i think some

of the things i most want to talk about in this series aren't best explored chronologically let's talk villains first because they do such a great job with just about every single one that they introduce into the show i love that the first season basically sets up a new villain every episode vulture electro lizard shocker sandman rhino in the first six episodes important characters in the rogue's gallery for sure but i would say the big three are goblin och and venom who all come into play in the back half of season one it's just a really

nice escalation starting with some great villains but moving up to the most iconic and i think even more brilliantly they don't let any one of these three big bads overshadow one another as they all have incredibly unique roles in the series that challenge peter and the audience in completely different ways doc ock is probably the smartest spidey villain and they brilliantly have him corral all of the previous villains we've seen and form the sinister six nearly immediately after he's introduced i love akk being the real head of the 6. it just feels right in the

90s animated series he felt like a pawn in kingpin sinister 6 and i much prefer him being an intelligent calculating leader when they reintroduce the sinister six in season 2 aux roll is even more satisfying because we as the viewers don't even realize that he's orchestrating everything until they succeed it initially looks like octavius is being kidnapped against his will only to reveal that this was all a part of his plan a genius way for the heat from the six's crimes not to fall on otto himself it's a simple idea but really well executed and

perfectly in line with the awk we grow to know over the series doc ock and vi then effectively become a major gang player in the criminal underworld of new york which to me works so well seeing the sinister six beef with tombstone and his gang as well as silver mane and his empire it's just a fun dynamic for that group to play into there are a few episodes that directly play into this criminal underworld aspect and seeing awk tombstone and silver main vie for power all while dealing with spidey is ridiculously satisfying alright next let's

talk venom another iconic story handled near perfectly in the 90s animated series but given really interesting new dynamics in this iteration first we'll talk about the symbiote suit which i think is handled so brilliantly here from a design standpoint the devil is in the details i love the way that initially the suit looks like peter's spidey suit but black you can see the webbing and details not unlike the raimi symbiote suit but the more the suit takes over and controls peter the more he gives into his hatred the less detailed it becomes the more synthetic

it looks the more like the suit we know from the comics just an absolutely genius design i don't think there are any sequences in the series more iconic than peter's fight with the sinister six while he's wearing the symbiote suit initially when watching i knew something was up because peter was silent that's not very spidey-like but the reveal that peter himself was actually asleep and the suit was basically wearing him for this fight insane the show is just packed to the brim with incredible subversions of what we expect from these stories but this is also

perfectly in line with what we've learned about the symbiote before so now let's get into the venom aspect of the symbiote suit the biggest change in the story here is eddie and peter's previous relationship other stories have them as colleagues at the bugle but this series reveals that they've actually been friends since childhood in fact their parents die in the same plane crash i think there are aspects of this development that both improve the storyline and also some that i have slight issue with but overall i really respect and appreciate the angle they took by

giving eddie the same tragic backstory it really makes spidey and venom perfect foils for each other they've obviously always had similarities especially because the symbiote suit came before venom but to so closely tie the peter eddy relationship and then so thoroughly turned on him in such a revenge driven way it's almost tougher to buy than what we saw in previous shows or in the comics especially because there's the added aspect that venom reveals to eddie that peter is spider-man i understand that the symbiote is then drawing out all of the hate from eddie but that

knowledge also should have contextualized so many of the things that peter did that made eddie angry earlier in the series he thinks that peter is just constantly abandoning his friends but knowing he's spidey he should know that this was never true he was just doing the right thing as spider-man at the very least it feels like he should have come back around to some degree after the initial venomark when he's just eddie again though i cannot deny that the reintroduction of venom in season 2 was ridiculously suspenseful first he starts to frame spidey for crimes

which is a really cool angle i love the way the symbiote changes its look on eddie to look more like spider-man when he's trying to pin these things on peter another really great design but that's also just a really cool villain dynamic he doesn't want to kill peter he wants to ruin his life he wants to frame spidey and make peter pay in his personal life which obviously plays out in a huge way with this mic drop ending of an episode peter parker is spider-man and then to follow this up with eddie persistently trying to

publicly unmask spidey to prove to the world that it's peter it's a different kind of suspense that we haven't seen in any other spidey at least that i know of i do have a few more shows to watch though now wiseman has said that he intended to set up carnage in future seasons which i can only assume would have led to eddie's redemption in teaming up with peter to take down the red symbiote and honestly it's pretty sad that we'll never see that okay now let's dive into green goblin because damn this was one of

the most impressive adaptations i've ever seen kind of a miracle the writers basically bait and switched us but then used that bait and switch as another bait and switch i'm still not sure how they pulled it off in the middle of season 1 we're introduced to green goblin and at the same time we see that harry has started to consume this goblin green drug an experimental performance enhancement from oscorp harry starts to black out because of this drug and he forgets huge chunks of time now as fans of spider-man we all know that green goblin

is norman osborne first and then later harry takes up the mantle but the resolution in season 1 is this huge revelation that harry had been the one causing mayhem throughout new york as the green goblin not norman and i remember when they revealed this i thought oh wow that's actually kind of smart make harry the goblin first and it becomes a surprise for the audience but then the end of season 2 reintroduces goblin and the final episode's revelation is that harry was never the green goblin norman framed his own son they do a ridiculously great

job stringing us along on this mystery we literally see goblin and norman in the same place at the same time it really felt like they were just doing something brand new until bam the norman we were following turns out he's the chameleon and goblin was norman all along i really don't know how they pulled this over on me so effectively like i really didn't see it coming until the moment it was revealed i guess it helps that i thought i was looking at norman and the green goblin simultaneously but still for them to truly and

genuinely surprise me with the reveal that norman osborne is green goblin something i have known since i was a child that is masterful craftsmanship really great storytelling i'm just so impressed by this arc though while the show does a great job with the vast majority of its villains they don't have a perfect track record they did something pretty unique with craven that while i respect i wasn't crazy about personally initially craven's hunt for spidey plays out as you'd expect and this all works really great and i can't possibly deny how hilarious it was when he

used his lion to sniff out spidey tracking him all across new york that's so funny but they basically used doc conor's lab and cross species genetics to turn craven into a lion man i think i would say that i respect the ambition here it's a cool and different take but i think craven is kind of cool enough already in fact he's cooler when he's just using human strength to take down massive beasts that's what makes him so scary but when he has lion strength it kind of undercuts his capabilities but like i said most of

the time they truly nail these villains one of my favorite moments is in season 2 and it involves sandman there's this incredible fight sequence that takes place on an oil tanker when sandman realizes he's putting tons of innocent lives in danger he makes this beautiful sacrifice concealing the explosion and turning into glass it's such a damn cool idea and a beautiful beautiful moment they do show that sandman actually survives this which kind of undercuts the moment a little bit especially because we never actually see sandman again after this it seems like he probably would have

returned as spidey's ally allah spider-man 3 but the return could have been more satisfying if it were a surprise but i guess since the show got cut short that doesn't really matter but it could have been a great follow-up or ongoing story honestly in general the show does a great job with its ongoing stories the show is absolutely episodic but it doesn't shy away from serialized elements at all it starts laying down breadcrumbs for future stories pretty much immediately and it isn't afraid of a good cliffhanger alright this is gonna sound weird but spectacular spider-man

might be the best shipping show out there it's jam-packed with so many interesting match possibilities between characters even besides peter there's a lot of fun high school relationship drama with liz and flash gwen and harry mj and mark allen the show features so many of peter's comic book love interests including gwen mj and black cat but also really fleshes out liz allen and shockingly makes her my favorite match for peter in the series in fact this might actually be something i have to consider a negative they make me love liz and peter together to the

point where i was actually upset when they break up and look i know gwen and peter are sort of a foregone conclusion and i love peter and gwen in the comics and in the amazing spider-man movies but i think maybe the small mistake they made with this series is that they went to such great length to sell us on peter and liz's connection and it sort of overshadowed his connection with gwen they basically start setting up peter and liz in the second episode of the show when he's forced to tutor her in science when the

series starts liz looks down on peter for being a geek like the rest of the jocks and cheerleaders do but in the second episode he starts to win her over and it works so well there's this great moment where liz isn't taking the tutoring seriously so peter just bails look this tutoring thing is something you need not me so when you're ready to learn let me know it's a nice moment where peter stands up for himself in front of liz and it clearly impacts her and shifts her perception she initially thinks she's doing peter a

favor by being seen with him which is obviously not how he feels about it later in the episode there's this great moment where peter sort of shows liz the wonders of science at the conor's lab and i don't know how you can't love their chemistry here everything's connected as scientists we explore and expand upon those connections maybe as people we should do the same and the way liz holds on to peter when electro attacks i mean come on and i'll never get over the way liz calls him petey it's so cute petey petey hi petey

petey happy new year petey edie just such a perfect slow burn building into their eventual relationship she grows to respect peter moore and starts to become his friend as her relationship with flash starts to go downhill so many great little moments like when she wishes him luck when he tries out for football but it's down to you harry and hobie brown good luck there's this great reaction shot when peter brings mj to the school dance all of the jocks are shocked that mj would go with peter but liz just has this really sweet look of

pride because she knows peter is great how the heck did puny parker land her pete cleans up well she even invites petey to coney island while she's still dating flash and they just end up having a cute date basically which ultimately leads to liz and flash breaking up i'm generally not a fan of love triangles but the way they handled it with peter gwen and liz was incredibly effective in this show we know gwen is into peter throughout the series and at the end of season one the actual cliffhanger is that she finally makes a

move and kisses pete it's a nice moment and we also know that pete likes gwen here but before peter and gwen get a chance to talk about it in season two liz slowly starts to get closer to peter and like i said before i'm team liz not because i don't like gwen but because i just really like peter and liz together there's this really great moment where peter shows up for liz after flash gets hurt playing football liz is waiting at the hospital but calls peter for moral support i know you two aren't exactly close

but if you just sit with me actually the way they finally end up together is just so well executed on a dramatic level peter and gwen are finally set to spend some time together on new year's but she's kidnapped spidey ends up saving her but it prevents her from actually hanging out with peter that evening so peter calls her around midnight while he's waiting for captain stacy to finally give gwen her phone back liz shows up at pete's place see i want to be with you right when gwen gets on the phone too that is

some cold cold drama gwen eventually starts dating harry while peter dates liz and there are all kinds of these great dramatic moments born from it um and you you and peter make a a great couple too yeah we do one thing i wish they hadn't done was the sort of gwen glow-up plotline that further pushes peter to pay more attention to her we know he likes gwen obviously and i don't have anything against her getting a makeover but i'm a little over that type of a plot point in media i'd much rather have seen peter

and gwen have some sort of connected experience together that brings them closer give me something to really buy into that connection in relationship because when they finally admit that they have feelings for each other and peter breaks up with liz i was really just bummed out about the end of that relationship and i didn't have much excitement about the beginning of the new one but it did set up an amazing and sadly unrealized plot point with harry which i'll touch on when i talk about the end of the show more but let's talk more about

side characters because they really do such a great job with everyone first let's talk mj i really love the way they utilize her in the series because she's such a cool person and also just a great friend they established that she has really good chemistry with peter but also you don't necessarily root for them to be a couple yet because honestly she's kind of just too cool for him i love the idea that they would remain close friends for years and eventually fall for each other they also did a good job with her relationships showcasing

that chemistry with peter and even hinting that she and flash could have a thing one day she also starts dating liz's brother mark which overall is a really sad story but the characters have undeniable chemistry even flash gets fleshed out in really impressive ways initially just starting out as peter's bully he slowly starts to develop in his own right there's a storyline i love where he's trying to impress this smart girl shashan but he's so far out of his element but shashan eventually comes around when he forfeits the football team's state championship because he learns

harry was using goblin green as a performance enhancer title's meaningless if it's not one fair and square i like that the show moves flash past a lot of the jock stereotype and gives him real development he's got strong character and shashan sees this i like you for who you are an honest guy who stands up for what's right then dance with me that's such a good moment i never thought i'd be stoked on flash as a character speaking of adding quality layers to characters we've known for years they do some really great stuff with jonah

jameson without sacrificing what makes his character so fun in the first place he's always his cranky jj self but there are moments of real humanity we see in him which i love in one rhino shows up looking for peter parker since he takes photos of spidey and jonah refuses to throw him under the bus oh never met the guy no address either only makes contact by email this actually plays out a lot like the scene in raimi's first spider-man where goblin demands the same thing but i think my favorite jj episode is 109 the uncertainty

principle this one depicts the dangerous space shuttle landing the shuttle being flown by jj's son john jameson for one the drama and personal stakes of the sequence are just so palpable jj is usually just cranky screaming at the top of his lungs but in this episode he's just a quiet ball of anxiety while this all goes down there's this really good moment where he tells his reporter not to sugarcoat it nasa will likely lose contact whatever happens faswell you give it to me straight and i particularly love this not just as a character moment for

jj but also as a device for creating drama in the show compare it to the same events in the 90s animated series they opted to make the shuttle land wildly off course landing on a bridge in new york city they amp up the action in danger which totally works in that context but i think i prefer the character drama and personal stakes here the suspense isn't born from some big action set piece that puts people in danger it's from a very real personal relationship and the fear that this poor guy could lose his son another

great example is how they handle black cat's story here honestly she wasn't utilized quite enough in the show but there's a great episode where peter and cat are trapped in the vault prison and cat is attempting to break out her father william hardy but as they go to help him out peter realizes that william hardy is the one responsible for killing uncle ben while i could see some people having an issue with how they changed the source material here i thought this worked shockingly well and added a great layer of personal drama and they do

a great job showcasing a character who feels immense regret over his mistake so much so that he insists he should stay in prison and instead helps cat and spidey escape the way they play this out works so well too because peter has to be careful not to reveal his personal connection to ben parker just really smart character conflict in general this show just does such an incredible job taking stories characters and ideas that we're familiar with and makes them feel fresh and new without fundamentally altering what makes them important to the series one thing that

i really love about spectacular spider-man is how they treat peter he absolutely struggles to maintain balance between his life as spidey and peter but it's not a constant barrage of misery like it can be in other iterations peter actually gets big wins in his personal life at school and in his career but when he gets those big wins the changes to his life often introduce new conflict with his life as spider-man the 90s animated series in particular seemed intent on just beating peter down every step of the way it's still wild to me that he

lost mary jane like three times over that show but here they show how everything is a constant adjustment his victories create more things that he has to struggle to balance with his crime-fighting life it helps give the character and the show a sense of progress without eliminating that core facet of the character that his personal life will always struggle because of his great responsibility and ultimately this all just comes back to these creatives truly understanding peter and spider-man on a fundamental level everything they change or mold for their adaptation is always in service of the

character and world they manage to make everything about spider-man feel fresh and exciting and comforting and familiar which is what makes this series such a genuine tragedy because due to the disney marvel acquisition the rights to animated spidey tv shows got swept up causing the series to be prematurely cancelled and man that sucks the original vision for the show would allegedly have had it take place over 65 episodes through the remainder of peter's high school career and we sadly only got 26 episodes total they even had plans for tv movies that would take place after

the series ended chronicling peter's time in college and eventual marriage to mj they had plans to introduce more villains such as scorpion hydroman hobgoblin carnage mr negative and morbius and it's so clear that they were setting up exciting new storylines in the second season that we sadly never got to see play out for one as i mentioned before we probably would have gotten eddie brock's redemption through the upcoming carnage storyline and given the extra layering to his relationship with peter this truly could have been one of the most satisfying arcs in the series it doesn't

help that the show ends on an incredibly unsatisfying cliffhanger either the final episode reveals to harry and peter that norman was the green goblin which clearly starts to send harry spiraling we get a little hint that he holds spidey responsible at the same time harry learned that peter and gwen were planning on getting together and he guilt-trips gwen after norman's apparent death into staying with him leaving peter alone and gwen in a worrisome situation plus they reveal that norman hadn't died at all but fled the country paving the way for goblins eventual return it's hard

to know exactly how this would play out but i have to expect they would have considered doing the death of gwen stacey storyline eventually though it was still a kids show so maybe that wasn't their exact plan but they probably would have adapted it in some way it's also clear that they were setting up harry to actually become the green goblin it just sucks that we'll never actually get to see how this brilliant show would have managed to bring new spins on these iconic storylines because while this series is in my opinion far and away

one of the best adaptations of spider-man it fully leaves you unsatisfied with his ending and knowing it was cut short knowing what could have been knowing the series was screwed over because of corporate it almost overshadows the show itself which is an absolute shame there's probably more i should have talked about with this series because it's nearly flawless and there's just so much to gush about but i hope i did it service there have obviously been petitions and plenty of fan outcry for the series to get a revival but it's all a major long shot

disney didn't actually acquire the rights to this show specifically interestingly enough which makes a revival a bit of a rights nightmare it isn't even available anywhere to stream which is a genuine shame i'm glad i bought the blu-ray which seems to only be going up in price if this is a show you want your collection i recommend maybe buying it now because i have no idea when it will get another blu-ray i won't say it's impossible that the show won't get a revival because wilder stuff has happened especially with spider-man i mean no way home

bringing both andrew and toby back into the mix is still insane to think about so maybe we'll get another miracle and this incredible show will return to our screens one day i guess if that's something you really want we probably shouldn't shut up about it tweet sign petitions you know the drill at the moment marvel is working on an animated series called spider-man freshman year that will take place in the mcu and i'm actually really looking forward to that they've got a great creative team so i'm optimistic but maybe when that wraps up we can

revisit the greatest spider-man cartoon of all time the spectacular spider-man [Music] bye