I’ve been spinning the dial of the various Spider-Man animated series as a lead-up to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (and reposted my Into the Spider-Verse review here). Mostly because a few of these versions (Unlimited and Spectacular) are in Across the Spider-Verse and with an infinite multiverse everything is canon, even if they don’t appear. So, there are a whole lot of them out there, all varied and wild.

Spider-Man (1967 series): Spider-Man from Earth 67 pops up in the post-credit scene of Into the Spider-Verse where he gets into an argument with Spider-Man 2099 about who pointed first. Probably one of the best post-credit scenes ever, it’s so gold. The ‘67 Spider-Man series is inexplicably not on Disney Plus, probably a rights or contract issue. But it is weird because the credits for Into the Spider-Verse say Spider-Man ’67 is courtesy of Marvel TV (Disney owned) and the DVD set (Which currently goes for about 200 bucks or more on Amazon resale, probably because nobody can find it) is from Buena Vista Home Entertainment, which is another name for Disney and it has the freakin Disney Castle logo on the box art and DVD set. So, no idea why it isn’t available there. But the show itself may lean way way too hard to reused stock footage (it is an over 50 year old show) but it has a certain rudimentary charm. The iconic meme pointing episode is from Double Identity, and some bad guy takes on certain personas and eventually poses as Spider-Man leading the pointing scene. There’s actually only two Spider-Mans in there but the internet just made it three Spider-Man’s pointing which has taken on a life of it’s own of references. Anyway, the theme song for the show is iconic, the character animation and poses look very much like Steve Ditko art, and it’ll always be worth checking out as a curiosity. Just don’t expect to find it anywhere else you own the DVD set.

Spider-Man (1994 series, commonly abbreviated as TAS): This is one of most influential Spider-Man shows for me (as it landed when I was a teenager and got me into regular Spider-Man comic reading) but its influence is still long-standing. Especially in the Sam Raimi movies, the symbiote landing and Peter waking up upside down in the suit is straight from this show. Also in the very awesome Season finale there’s a lot of Beta-version Norman Osborn stuff that showed up in the Raimi flick. Like this scene here:

It’s Norman Osborn talking to his own reflection in the mirror of the Goblin, which was done so perfectly by Dafoe later on.

Also there’s a bit of Norman finding out that Peter Parker is Spider-Man and getting all twitchy as a dinner as he tries to reveal it. But Raimi film influences aside, it’s a great show that works as a tour of the Marvel Universe (there’s a whole lot of different non-Spider-Man characters popping up in here for guest stars) and also being a solid Spider-Man show on its own. The later seasons seem to fall back on reusing flashback footage, possibly to save money and because the show had taken on so much continuity that it needed to constantly reference it. Another interesting thing about this series it that was loosely supposed to be a sequel to the never made James Cameron Spider-Man movie (that’s where the organic webshooters came from James Cameron’s scriptment) so therefore they ended up with a Doctor Octopus who sort of looks and sounds like Cameron’s potential Doc Ock, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

TAS MJs outfit is a bit of an eyesore, I always thought. Like there’s so much going on there, mustard yellow sweater, purple turtleneck, (is she warm under there?) jeans and cowboy boots. Isn’t she supposed to be a fashion model? Of course, I always think of MJ with the “Face it tiger, you just hit the jackpot” black cocktail dress. Anyway, MJ gets turfed into a dimensional portal at the end of Season 3, so  Season 4 means of Black Cat in this season which is good but I’m not a big fan of the whole she has super soldier serum that also causes her to morph at will between normal Felica and jacked up Felicia. It’s kind of odd. But those are minor, minor gripes. This is one of the best Spider-Man animated shows that leaves a long influence on Spider-stuff to come.

Spider-Man (2003 series, sometimes called MTV’s Spider-Man): Really janky animation here, probably too early CGI attempt to do a TV series. It sort of nebulously is in the same continuity as the Raimi films, same suit, same logo, Norman is dead and Peter is in college with Harry, but also totally not. Neil Patrick Harris as Peter Parker/Spider-Man is the best thing about it, great vocal performance. There’s a lot of cool voice actors here, even Michael Dorn (aka Worf from Star Trek) as Kraven. And it totally ended on a Spider-Man No More cliff-hanger (Spider-Man basically accidentally crippled Peter’s new girlfriend!). Interesting curiosity if one can get past the sometimes distractingly bad animation.

The Spectacular Spider-Man (2008 series): Absolutely fantastic series, probably my favourite.

The Sony produced TV series was unceremoniously cancelled when the TV rights to Spider-Man zapped back to Disney. But it never got a chance to get bad!  (Be warned, if watching on Disney Plus the last episode is out of order, it’s supposed to be episode 17). The best episode is Intervention Episode 12 which is sort of a flashback to Spider-Man’s origins (with a heavy dose of the Raimi film influence) but being guided and distorted by the Symbiote and its pretty good twist on the origin flashback where Peter is fighting for his soul against the Symbiote and Uncle Ben support. Also most of it in black and white, very appropriate for Symbiote influenced flashbacks and rather arty. But the whole show is really great overall, while a lot of the Spider-Man shows get a lot out of putting Spidey in the Marvel Universe, this is just Spider-Man and the close focus makes it stronger. Also a great, non-Spider-Woman influenced version of Gwen Stacy that is really heartfelt as the nerd girl who has conflicted affections for an oblivious Peter Parker.

Ultimate Spider-Man (2012 series): This was Disney’s replacement for Spectacular Spider-Man, I avoided it out of bitterness to Spectacular being cancelled. But after my 3^rd watch of Spectacular I figured I would give this a shot (mostly due to a google search if Marvel’s Spider-Man or Ultimate Spider-Man was better). The tonal shift to random anime and Simpsons/Family Guy style cutaway gags in the first three episodes is super-jarring. But they’re okay, if kind of over the top. The story is pretty neat, it opens up with baddies invading Peter Parker’s high school which is very similar to the Ultimate Spider-Man comic (and the first Amazing Spider-Man film) which leads to Spider-Man joining S.H.I.E.L.D. He teams up with a group of heroes and goes to learn the ropes to be the Ultimate Spider-Man. The deep dive into the Marvel universe is appreciated (in the 3^rd episode the crew of young heroes try to take out Doctor Doom with disastrous results) with some returning live action Marvel veterans like Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson and JK Simmons as J Jonah Jameson.

Lego Marvel Superheroes: Maximum Overload (2013 one shot): Speaking of JK Simmons JJJ, I discovered this Lego oddity on Amazon Prime and he pops up here again, even louder and crazier than usual. The whole thing is more Avengers focused (with a side quest bit where it basically becomes Iron Man 3 but Lego) with Loki influencing baddies on Earth to pester superheroes. But the Spider-Man stuff in Lego is pretty fun, there’s a whole bit when Venom gets taken over which is funny to see Venom menace Spider-Man in Lego form.

Spider-Man Unlimited (1999 series): This Spider-Man shows up in Across the Spider-Verse (he’s prominent in the pointing meme shot with the Playstation Insomniac Spider-Man). The show is definitely on the weird side, complete with Unlimited Spider-Man’s look astonishingly similar to Spider-Man 2099. It is pretty out there. It really seems like they wanted to make a Spider-Man 2099 series but didn’t fully commit to it (and having both Spidey 2099 and Spider-Man Unlimited in Across the Spider-Verse could get confusing if they’re in the same shot). John Jameson’s ship gets hijacked by Carnage and Venom and ends up on Counter-Earth, so Spidey (in a fancy new not Miguel’s suit but close enough) goes there (after a quick talking-to from Nick Fury who lets him go). And the High Evolutionary (making this good pre GotGV3 viewing -see review here) has all of his animal people on the top levels while the humans live in the slums bottom levels (which oddly kind of reminds me more of Maestro and Future Imperfect). Also the character designs look a lot like Avengers: United They Stand as sort of anime inspired influence. It seems like its production was cursed from the start. It was a contractual obligation so Fox Kids could keep airing Spider-Man TAS. It was originally going to be an adaptation of the first 25 issues of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s Amazing Spider-Man but Sony getting the film and TV rights for Spider-Man (and turning it into the Raimi movie and the CGI animated series) getting the rights to those stories basically means Unlimited had to turn into something else entirely. And Marvel said they wanted “Counter-Earth, the Knights of Wundagore, John Jameson, Deathlok, Venom” Also apparently it ends on an unresolved cliff-hanger! This is a strange, strange show but at least Spider-Man seems like Spider-Man, Peter even gets a photography job on Counter-Earth so he’s still the same.

Spider-Woman (1979 series): This one is really damn strange, focusing on Jessica Drew the Spider-Woman, ace reporter by day, Spider-Woman in other times of the day. Spider-Man shows up in the pilot episode where people are menaced by alien Mummies. There’s also an episode where Kingpin shows up but he has an invisible ray so the only way the audience can see Kingpin is when he’s eating, so there’s scenes where floating turkey legs and floating cherry pies are saying menacing things about Spider-Woman. Kingpin also reveals Jessica’s ID to the public but then she fixes it at the end by using a robot. The final episode is about a robot alien lady that is putting people to sleep. Throughout the show Jessica keeps saying “Spider-Something” every other moment but actress Joan Van Ark voices Jessica with some perky conviction. Interesting oddity to check out, though. This Marvel compilation video sells the wackiness to expect

Spider-Man (1981 series): This show sort of looks like they grabbed a bunch of animation cells from the 1967 show and repurposed it. Lots of different Marvel characters, you wouldn’t think Doctor Doom would be in a Spider-Man show but he’s all over it. Also he sounds surprisingly like Darth Vader (which is fair, Darth Vader owes a lot to Doctor Doom anyway) There’s a Magneto episode that is interesting to see Magneto do his thing in a Spider-Man setting. This show is on Disney Plus which when you browse over it you get tricked into thinking it’s the Spider-Man ’67 show but it ain’t.

Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends (1981 series): The other 1981 Spider-Man cartoon series, this one has more zip to it. First off, the theme song is just aces, really funky. Also it has an interesting hook where it’s sort of a Three’s Company version of Spider-Man with his roommates and superfriends Bobby Drake aka the Mutant Iceman and the flame throwing Firestar. Once again this sort of jets around the Marvel Universe, with an episode dedicated to Loki (rechristened the God of Evil here not the Trickster God but whatever) and Thor. There’s yet another Spider-Man origin flashback episode but it’s always fun to see the Lee/Ditko classic story. The Amazing Friends get a team up origin episode (it involves saving Tony Stark while Firestar and Iceman torment Peter Parker with extreme hot and cold), narrated by Stan Lee! And there’s an entire X-Men episode which is fun to see the late 70s team reproduced here, although it’s a bit weird at the end where Firestar  basically murders her old college boyfriend turned killer half-robot to save the day. But worth checking out for its groovy late 70s/early 80s vibes.

So, there are quite a lot of Spider-Man animated cartoons out there overall. A lot of them have off kilter vibes, but if anyone can flip around the Spider-Verse with different versions of themselves, it’s clearly Spider-Man. Which is weird because he’s primarily a Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man but seeing the different ways to make each one distinct makes the whole concept of lots of Spider-Powered folks seem comfortingly familiar, even when it goes into extreme differences. Or space, or Counter-Earth, or fights aliens or across the multiverse.