Spider-Man

The music, the mood, the voice acting - everything was great, and some of it is timeless. Some of it is dated, true, but it is the best cheesy fun out there! I can't think of the voice of Spidey or JJJ without thinking of this show - which had AMAZING music - very moody and fun! Try it and love it!

The thing that really made this show special was the music. Bachelor pad band leader Ray Ellis composed, and conducted a wide range of dramatic secret-agent-style cues for the first season, and these bits got reused to good effect in the following seasons. Bob Harris and Paul Francis Webster contributed the theme song with its frenetic off-kilter drum riffs. Starting in season 2, the creators began dipping into the KPM music catalogue bringing to light ice-cool jazz gems such as Syd Dale's "The Hell Raisers" and David Lindup's "Stand By." Some of the same cues would later pop up in TV shows such as "Dallas." Paul Kligman's J. Jonah Jameson and Paul Soles' Peter Parker voice work was absolutely wonderful. It's hard not to imagine their voices when reading the comics.

The animation art is fairly dynamic, and resembles the work of John Romita who served as a consultant. Comic artist Gray Morrow even worked as one of the animators. Ralph Bakshi who would later become famous for "Lord of the Rings" and "Fire and Ice" took over as director in the second season. The most obvious mark of his influence was the dark multi-coloured clouds that appeared as backgrounds in some of the more psychedelic episodes.

Overall one of the more interesting animated series' of its time.

The problem with comic books today, is that they are waaayy too sophisticated for most kids to comprehend... I read Spiderman when I was 6 and 7 years old (I read it when I was older as well, but I will get to that) and I could follow the stories to some exent, but mostly I read it because the cartoon was soooo cool (much cooler than any later Spiderman incarnations)... the animation was quirky, the voices were very Shatnerian (I think I just invented a word, and I will now use it frequently), but it was fun and it made sense to a young mind.

Now, don't get me wrong about comic books, I really appreciated the more sophisticated stories when I was a teenager, but I have no idea how the medium will gain new fans when you cannot hope to get involved with them until you are at least a teenager (when such things are uncool)... and a lot of the material is too intense for young eyes anyway... maybe a line of comics for younger fans would be good. I dunno, but I feel bad that my kid will likely not have comic book heroes in his life to any meaningful degree... I just wish that cool shows like Bakshi's Spiderman were still on the air to fill in the gaps.

The animation was not great by present standards, but through the age of 12 or so this series hit the spot. Further, though they leaned heavily on repeating with stock footage, most of it was pretty good and represented the action and strength of the character well. Every once in a while they turned the background sideways or something and achieved a startling effect without using new elements.

I love that Peter Parker sounds like a boy and Spidey sounds like a man. It's the uni, don't you know.

They best part for me is the theme song, one of the best of all time, and all of the incidental music (even the bulk of the special effects). Crime jazzy and dark. All of the episodes had great, swinging musical textures and overtones.

The Bakshi stuff is stellar. Really idiosyncratic and daring. Spidey ends up removed to different dimensions and levels of the earth, battling the supernatural than the super- villainous. The humans are generally pawns caught in a cosmic battle between good and evil and Spidey comes through, natch. The oft-referred to backgrounds (black, dark blue, purples, fiery reds, etc., were awesome, as were the castles and thorny, leafless backdrops (ala Sleeping Beauty). The color schemes were sickening (purple and off greens with splotchy reds and hints of bruisy yellow. Brilliant. The music also took a further leap from poppier crime jazz and soda stand teen rock to psych-out freak rock interludes, darker crime jazz, and even odd sci-fi and kraut-rockish stretches. Watch the first episode on disc 3 or 4, the one with the Mole Men. The music is absolutely incredible.

My two kids, 3 and 5, respectively, love these Spider-Man cartoons. They hold up for me, as well.

OK, so I'll admit maybe it could've included Liz and Flash and maybe it could've had have some more Aunt May. But as far as complaining about the animation and the fact that Spider-man "doesn't have all webs on his costume" is just ridiculous as the show had a very limited budget. Although.... One thing I didn't like was the voice acting, really no excuse for that Jameson was good, Betty Brant was decent but, that was really it. Spider-man sounded like an a man in his mid-30s so it definitely didn't deliver, and I want that "energy" from that Spider-man. The kind of energy that just gets you excited a good voice actor can do that, Mark Hamill's Joker did that. But in the end I actually thought the makers did a pretty good job with what the had to work with. It could've been a LOT worse. And also, this show gave us the classic Spiderman theme song that pretty much everyone knows. So all in all it pretty decent especially the 1st season, It's kinda a either you "Love' it or you "Hate" it show. However, I'm sure nostalgia could be maker true haters rate it higher