Introduction:
Spider-Man: The New Animated Series is the animated series starring Spider-Man the super hero. (This should be obvious from the title.) the series was developed by Brian Michael Bendis, Morgan Gendel, and Marsha Griffin.
The series ran from July 11 to September 12 2003, for total 13 episodes on MTV.
Few interesting things to note. This show is the loose continuation of the Spider-Man film of the 2002, which is the first movie of the Spider-Man trilogy, making it for the first time for me that I’ll be watching an animated series which is related with the movies.
Other thing to note is that, this series is entirely new for me. I have never watched a single episode of this series, which is very different for any other Spider-Man series from 1994. Of all the animated shows since 1994, this one is the only one which I have never watched.
Plot:
Set shortly after the events of the 2002 film, Peter Parker, and his friends Mary Jane Watson, and Harry Osborn start attending Empire State University together. Peter and Mary Jane try to establish a relationship without much success. Peter’s superhero duties, and later his involvement with Indira Daimonji, interfere with his romance with Mary Jane, while Harry continuously blames Spider-Man for the death of his father Norman Osborn. Peter faces an assortment of other villains including the Lizard, Kraven the Hunter and Electro while trying to maintain a job and his studies. He faces two psychic twins that ruin everything in the wallcrawler’s life, causing Peter to give up being Spider-Man and try to live a normal life.
My watching experiences:
The first episode starts out normal, but it soon takes a darker tone as one of the students at Peter’s college has enough of bullying, and thus becomes Electro.
That’s fine and all, but the maddening thing is, where is the sound of Spider-Man’s web! This is the sort of thing which you might take for granted, but it is important, especially if you got a viewer like me. How am I suppose to know whether the web slinger is swinging around the city, when his web doesn’t make any sound!
Also, from the very first episode, we’re headed towards the very hated love triangle between MJ, Harry, and Peter. Sigh, why I can’t have nice things? Like no love triangles!
The Kingpin is back, and maaaaaan! He has a deep voice this time. Though he does not sound anywhere sophisticated as he used to in the 1994 series.
Still strong as hell though.
Conclusion:
This series is on a weird place. On one hand, it is certainly darker than any Spider-Man series you may have watched, but on the other hand, its plot could not be compared with either the 1994 series, or Spider-Man unlimited.
For whatever reason, the original comic book characters are replaced by the original characters, this includes most of the villains. Outside of the Kraven, Kingpin, Electro, (Whose origin was changed anyway,) and Lizard, (who is a jerk in this series,) most of the villains are original, and they fail to impress.
Perhaps being aired on the MTV was also a damaging thing for this show in the long run. Not only the network burned through all the episodes quickly, they also snarled at whatever original ideas the writers had. The network also doesn’t like the old people, that is why you don’t see Jameson, or even aunt May in this series.
I suppose the network also hated the web sound. Because I watched the entire series, and there is no sound of Spider-Man’s webbing in the entire series!
So, with that, I’ll say that give it a watch if you’re curious, otherwise, avoid it.
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