by Jason Sacks

It's hard to be an adult fan of super-hero TV shows these days. The Marvel Super-Heroes cartoons by Grantray and Lawrence are notorious among fans for their super cheap animation. Batman limped through its third season, with its jokes worn out and its campiness turned up past 10 (don't talk to me about the "Joker's Flying Saucer" episode, please!). The new Fantastic Four cartoon is inane, poorly animated and plain annoying.

And then there's Spider-Man. And hey, at least the music in this cartoon is pretty good.

Most every weekend since September (football pre-emptions notwithstanding), we've been granted the pleasure of watching a certain web-head soar through the concrete towers of New York, stalking a never-ending crew of slightly inept criminals while evading the slings and barbs of the editor of the Daily Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson.

Every weekend I perk up when I hear this fun theme song. Seriously, you should pop out to see if your local Korvettes sells the 45 of this song because it (pardon the pun) swings!

Spider-Man, Spider-Man
Does whatever a spider can
Spins a web, any size
Catches thieves just like flies
Look out
Here comes the Spider-Man

Is he strong?
Listen bud
He's got radioactive blood
Can he swing from a thread?
Take a look overhead
Hey, there
There goes the Spider-Man

Oh yes, that gets me on my feet (granted, I really need that cup of Folgers, but still)…

What keeps me on my feet is… okay, waiting for the toaster to pop, but also to see which classic Spidey villain will appear in this episode. As you can see, we've gotten the Vulture, Electro, Green Goblin and many more on screen so far. It's been a delight to see how the production team modify Steve Ditko and John Romita's designs for the villains for the small screen.

Yeah, the designs have been kinda distorted compared to the original comic versions, but the cartoon designs have been fun.

Too bad the stories have been pretty subpar.

One of the few good things about the Marvel Super-Heroes cartoon is that the stories were – quite literally – torn from the pages of the actual comics stories. In this cartoon…less so.

For instance, an episode starring the Sandman as villain has Sandy stealing the largest diamond in the world for some unexplained reason. In another episode, Green Goblin takes up magic as a way of defeating our hero, when magic was never remotely a part of his M.O. Then there's the episode where Electro takes over an amusement park as a way of defeating Spider-Man. We never saw Stan Lee write that story. At least in the episode with Ditko-created villains The Enforcers, they are simply trying to rob a bank. That much makes sense!

I have to admit that despite my whining, the stories do maintain some fidelity to the comics. Just like Stan and John depict each month, Peter Parker is a genius scientist who also has a part-time job at the Daily Bugle, where he works for a nasty brutish J. Jonah Jameson and flirts with the pretty Betty Brant — though Betty is colored with red hair instead of her usual brown, for some reason. Perhaps they mixed her up with Pete's friend Mary Jane Watson).

It's in those sorts of moments, like when we see Peter struggle with his webbing recipe or complain about Jameson not paying enough, that this show becomes the most fun. I also never grow tired of JJJ blaming Spider-Man for every crime the villains commit, no matter how events turn out. You gotta appreciate Jameson's commitment to his own sort of false news! Of course, those moments also echo some of the finest Marvel stories we've seen so far.

There have even been a couple of episodes in which JJJ is basically the villain. In one, he pays for the construction of a suit for villain the Scorpion. Spidey beats Scorpion easily, but at least an effort was made to have Jameson show his hatred of Spider-Man in villainous form. In another episode, JJJ creates a spider-slayer, right out of a classic Ditko issue, but the animation is so awkward and cheap-feeling, that the story just loses its flair.

I guess I'm saying that this show seems cheap. We know from latter-day SatAM classics like Jonny Quest, Herculoids and Space Ghost that a TV cartoon doesn't have to look cheap. But the look at that panel above! You can see the producers didn't even draw in all of Spider-Man's costume, in the interests of saving time and money.

The animators also reuse scenes over and over again to the point of absurdity. If I drank a sip of coffee every time we see Spider-Man swing his web far above any office towers, I might not sleep for a week. The producers seem to have a basket of six or seven specific images of Spider-Man doing his webbing thing which they love to use over and over. I noticed the other week when watching the episode called "The Menace of Mysterio" how the animators will string all six of those images one after the next, then have an inset scene, and then repeat the sequence. I always find myself yawning and reaching for the coffee cup when I see those scenes.Once again, the notorious Grantray-Lawrence studio was behind this quickie cheapie, as they were behind the Super-Heroes show. G-L obviously had a few more dollars to spend on Spider-Man, but twice zero is still zero, and the production values doom this show to be second-rate.

But hey, the theme song and a lot of the incidental music is terrif!

Rumor has the show returning this fall. Hopefully ABC will up the show's budget and G-L will spend a few more dollars on the production of this show. In the meantime, I feel the same mockery for Spider-Man that the Green Goblin shows above. Get on your feet, Spider-Man, and make a fight of it!

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by Gideon Marcus

Don't listen to old sourpuss there. While there are episodes that are less than terrific, there are several which are…terrific. Compared to the concurrently running Fantastic Four cartoon, and certainly to the virtually static Marvel "cartoons" of last season, Spider-Man is nothing less than a revolution.

The voice acting is stellar, with the fellow playing Spider-Man and Peter Parker doing an excellent job of distinguishing the two roles. JJJ is an absolute riot. As for the animation and art, the palette is also stunning, especially compared to the drab FF. And it's absolutely accurate; New York is chock full of pink buildings.

The animation is (for TV anyway) stellar, and the composition stands up to any comic book.

One of my favorite episodes, and a scene so good, it got incorporated into the end credits.

Is it a little goofy? Absolutely, though no more so than Batman, and it the show plays off the silliness with an infectious sense of fun.

Mysterio's true form may have been a tiny bit influenced by another contemporary character…

Alright–maybe The Rhino isn't the best villain.

In addition to the theme, Spider-Man has got one heck of a soundtrack, all boffo jazz like Herb Alpert was the band director.

So, give the show a watch. It's already in reruns on Saturday morning, and it's a stand-out. Would it have been nice to have more Green Hornet than Batman? Maybe. But for a cartoon, it sweeps the competition. If it's not exactly like the comic (which is actually currently the best in the Marvel stable), at least it's its own thing, and it does that thing pretty well.

And that's a headline I'll stand by…

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