It's Spider-Man!
What?
Spider-Man?
Where?
Oh!
I just get so flustered when I meet a celebrity.
I just don't know what to say.
Spider-Man-- one of the most enduringly popular comic book
characters ever created.
His timeless struggle between heroic ideals
and the necessities of daily life
have proven him to be highly relatable to generations
of fans.
And then there's this version of Spider-Man.
Surrender by order of Lord Tyger and the High Evolutionary.
And everything was going so well till now.
The Spider-Man series time forgot.
But, before we get too deep, please
subscribe to the Nerdstalgic channel
in order to keep up with all of our videos.
It's hard to remember a time before Spider-Man
was a box office juggernaut.
However, despite his current cultural ubiquity,
he wasn't always considered the most commercially viable
superhero on the planet.
In fact, it arguably wasn't even the iconic Raimi interpretation
of Spider-Man that put him on Hollywood's, and a generation
of fan's, radar.
It was this version.
Wait here!
What?
But--
I just have to toss out the garbage!
The Fox Kids animated series titled
Spider-Man ran from November 19, 1994 to January 31, 1998.
A total of five seasons encompassing 65 episodes
were produced.
It received rave reviews and high ratings
for the duration of its run.
However, the John Semper-helmed version
of our friendly neighborhood wall crawler
was thought to have aged out of its key demographics,
and so it was not renewed for the sixth season
despite ending on one of the most dramatic cliffhangers
in kid's animated programming.
Well, Madame Web, where to now?
Face front, true believer.
We are going to find the real Mary Jane Watson.
Ostensibly, as soon as the show went off the air, Marvel, Fox,
and Saban--
the production company behind X-Men:
The Animated Series and Power Rangers--
started having conversations about reviving the show
or creating a new incarnation of Spider-Man
to feed the hungry audience pool.
Only there was one catch.
Marvel Comics had just declared bankruptcy
and had sold off all the film rights to their most popular
characters in order to stay solvent, which meant
this new version of Spidey?
It couldn't include anything from the source material.
So what did Marvel, Fox, and Saban do?
Well, at first they discussed making
a motion comic adaptation of the initial 26 Steve Ditko and Stan
Lee issues of Amazing Spider-Man.
But these plans were abandoned quickly, thankfully,
because of all the previously mentioned rights issues.
They next discussed adapting Spider-Man 2099,
a futuristic Spider-Man story about billionaire geneticist
Miguel O'Hara 100 years in the future.
However, this also didn't land on receptive ears
because WB had just launched Batman Beyond.
Avi Arad, the individual behind many of Marvel's initial forays
onto the stage and screen, contacted Will Meugniot--
animation producer, writer, and Illustrator--
to create something wholly new for Spidey's
next animated cinematic outing.
And what we got was, ostensibly, Blade Runner
meets Planet of the Apes starring Spider-Man.
The central plot of Spider-Man Unlimited
is that J. Jonah Jameson's son, John,
is an astronaut who's piloting a rocket to the newly
discovered Counter-Earth.
At the rocket launch, Spider-Man witnesses Venom and Carnage
sneak onto the rocket ship and hitch a ride, eventually
causing the rocket to appear to crash on the alternate planet.
Presuming his son dead, Jameson places a bounty
on Spider-Man's head, who he blames for the accident,
forcing the web slinger to steal a rocket of his own,
upgrade his suit, and make a beeline for alternate Earth
in an attempt to save John Jameson.
However, what Spidey isn't prepared
for is the fact that the entire planet is
run by animal-human hybrids with a dystopian overlord named
the High Evolutionary.
Spider-Man quickly falls in with a ragtag group of human
rebels--
led by John Jameson--
and helps them lead a resistance against a totalitarian
and anti-human governmental regime.
Over the course of the show, Spider-Man
gets a job taking photos at the Daily Bite, Counter-Earth's
Daily Bugle, rents a room from a kindly doctor named Naoko
Yamada-Jones, and consistently has
to balance attempting to help lead the human resistance
and paying rent, just like any good Spider-Man story should
function.
The primary antagonists of this show
are the High Evolutionary's enforcers,
the Knights of Wundagore, four flying, robot horse riding,
anthropomorphized heavies.
Are they as cool as the Sinister Six?
No, not really.
They kind of suffer from the same fate
everything in this show does--
just not enough development.
Despite being a show without any source material,
you can feel that Will Meugniot and writers Michael Reaves,
Larry Brody, and Robert Gregory Browne all have lots of ideas
for where to take this story.
The strangest part of the show, though, is the fact
that it's lightly in continuity with the original 1994
version--
sometimes.
The way the universe of Spider-Man Unlimited works
is that everything about Earth also exists on Counter-Earth,
but just a bit different.
Which doesn't really make sense because it's not
an alternate universe's Earth that has
appeared in our solar system.
It's a planet that has always existed exactly parallel
to Earth, so we've never been able to see it
because of the sun.
The execution of that concept probably wouldn't even
draw attention to that fact if it wasn't for the fact
that quite a few of Spidey's traditional villains
show up on Counter-Earth in alternate form.
The only established Marvel character
that appears in Unlimited that doesn't appear in the '94 show
is Jack Kirby's Machine Man.
And, ironically, this version of Machine Man
isn't that far off from the original in terms of execution.
You know, aside from the fact that Machine Man-- canonically,
within Marvel Comics--
is literally the baby from the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Yeah.
Wild story.
Look it up.
The key distinction between the original show and Unlimited--
animal people aside--
is the art style.
The style of the show, established by Meugniot
and refined by character designers Shannon Eric Denton
and Roy Burdine, has a more angular comic book
inspired aesthetic.
They had large black spots, chunky holding lines,
sharp angular features, and an attempt
at filtering in cyberpunk aesthetics.
The show also used color in an unconventional way for 1999.
All the backgrounds were painted by Kelly Atkins and Philip Kim
and color styled by Jo Meugniot, again opting
for large black areas and also dayglow,
almost watercolor warmth to the cityscapes.
Side note-- it also features one of the best intro credits
in any superhero show ever.
With a near panel for panel recreation of Ditko's artwork.
It's fantastic.
Which brings us to the suit.
Today?
A world populated by a young version of Spider-Man
who's consistently appearing in $200 million
blockbusters while wearing a robotic Spider-Man suit
designed for him by Tony Stark.
The fact that Spider-Man Unlimited
was wearing a robotic suit powered
by nanobots designed for him by Reed Richards
doesn't seem that crazy.
But it was.
This suit had extra abilities, a sleek new aesthetic that
was definitely not ripped off from Spidey 2099,
and a cape made of webs.
And as if all this crazy stuff wasn't
enough to get you to go watch it, the show lasted 13 episodes
and-- wait for it-- ends on a cliffhanger.
Yep.
It only had a few brief moments in the sun
before it was apparently flushed from everyone's memories.
This show is so rarely talked about in fan circles,
they've never even brought the suit back as a nostalgia
play in the comics.
So why did Spidey Unlimited get the axe?
You see, it wasn't actually the ratings that
killed Spider-Man Unlimited.
It was Pokémon.
The pocket monsters we all know and love were such a sales
bonanza that it caused most of the networks to reevaluate
their slates of shows and refocus their development
dollars on new shows aimed at copying, or interpreting,
Pokémon's formula.
Plans for a second season were actually underway
prior to the official cancellation.
Larry Brody, the previously mentioned Spider-Man
unlimited staff writer, actually created outlines and scripts
for numerous episodes and an overall plan
to create 11 new episodes that would
bring the show to a close.
The lasting impact of Spider-Man Unlimited is hard to pin down.
It feels like hardcore Spidey heads really love the show,
but in terms of the wider audience,
it's completely forgotten.
I think part of the reason it's not well remembered
is because the basic setup, while really
interesting at first glance, is shaky.
Is it an alternate universe or just another planet?
Why are there parallel versions of characters we know
and why doesn't Spider-Man react to them?
The other aspect of the show that hurts its rewatchability
is that Spider-Man isn't particularly heroic in it.
He's always reacting to what everyone else is doing.
He's constantly telling John Jameson, this isn't our fight.
People are being oppressed, Spider-Man.
Whatever happened to, "With great power
comes great responsibility"?
I know when I first watched it as it was airing,
I was irate that the show was not
going to acknowledge anything about Spider-Man
The Animated Series' cliffhanger with Madame Web
and Spidey going out into the multiverse
to find his version of Mary Jane.
But after the initial ire wore off,
I really enjoyed the show as it was airing.
And in rewatching it for this video,
I got to say it's a bit clumsy and doesn't exactly
know what it's doing sometimes, but the general thrust of it
rules.
If nothing else, come on, the suit is fantastic.
And that's that for this week.
What do you think?
Is it time to reevaluate Spider-Man Unlimited?
Let us know in the comments below.
And as always, please subscribe to the Nerdstalgic channel
in order to stay up with everything Nerdstalgic.
[MUSIC PLAYING]