Original Spider-man - Season 1, Volume 1

I long ago gave up trying to keep up to date with current events in the Marvel universe. It’s all got far too involved and complicated, not helped by endless Big Events for which you need to buy at least ten different titles to follow, and in the end it all seems a bit pointless and not much fun anymore. Things were much simpler back in the Sixties, the Silver Age of comic books when Stan the Man, Steve Ditko, John Romita and the rest were busy revolutionising the whole genre – sure, they weaved a lot of continuity through their different titles, but never so much as to make it a head scratcher, with Helpful Stan even providing the odd footnote to point you in the direction of any earlier stories being referenced. The stories were usually just as good – indeed, as often as not these days it’s those Sixties tales, rather than more recent epics, that Hollywood turns to when it’s planning its next superhero adaptation – but they were also a lot less earnest and more straight forward – you didn’t need to turn to a hefty reference book to remind yourself just why Spidey and the Human Torch hated each other, they were just two teenagers who got on each other’s nerves, and if you missed an issue of the Fantastic Four you weren’t then punished by >having the next Spider-man comic picking up where that one left off. Good times.

But there is one area where this generation has a distinct advantage over their Sixties forebearers, and that’s on TV. I’m not talking about those direct-to-DVD films, like Hulk vs Wolverine, which are awkwardly pitched between the older fanboy market (featuring, as they do, much blood and gore) and the younger viewers (having rather straightforward stories), but rather the mainstream, Saturday morning stuff. Today’s animated versions of the X-Men, Spider-man and so on are far superior to those of twenty, thirty years back – the stories are more sophisticated, and those involved in making them far more in tune with the source material. They understand the comics, and can bring them to screen in a satisfactory way – mainly thanks to (at the risk of blaspheming in a Marvel review) Batman: The Animated Series, which has proved a trailblazer for nearly everything which followed and showed you could have both a Saturday morning cartoon that also had a bit of brains about it.

Viewed today the original Spider-man cartoons from 1967 do not stand up to scrutiny. Their plots are, even by the standards of the time, wafer-thin, the animation very low-budget, the voicework often questionable. But while such comparisons are unfair – no TV cartoon from that period has technically stood the test of time – it’s worth noting that even at the time these episodes would not have been especially creditable. They are let down in several key areas. Crucially, they betray no kind of wit whatsoever – what jokes there are are laboured, while visually the spelling mistake in the opening titles is about as funny as it gets. While Stan Lee was no natural born comedian Spider-man in particular could often be a witty character – indeed, one of the chief complaints of the first Raimi film was that that sharp tongue was not as prominent in the character as it should have been – while the situations Parker got himself into, whether it be missing yet another date with Mary-Jane because of Doc Ock’s latest scheme or forgetting once again to take any photos of his latest battles with the Lizard for the irate Jameson, had a notable strain of irony in them.


One can only conclude that these episodes were aimed at a very young viewership, certainly younger than its source material. At the time the comic book, each issue running to some 20 packed pages, was arguably the strongest Marvel title at the time in terms of plotting and characterisation, but none of that is translated in this adaption which is ultimaley only one step up from an average episode of Batfink. They run along lines of strict conformity: this week's villain, often employed by Jameson, challenges Spider-man, Spider-man win the day, Jameson shakes his first in frustration and takes it out on Parker. Each segment is only ten minutes long, but even these can feel quite long when there’s such a paucity of story. It’s also interesting to note that, this early at any rate, the cartoons never attempt to portray Peter’s life away from the Daily Bugle – there’s no sign of Aunt May, or, with one exception, Peter’s university life, or even Mary-Jane, despite the latter having been introduced two years prior in the books. Instead Peter’s on-off beau is the now long-forgotten Betty Brant, secretary at the Bugle, and she’s as anonymous here as she was on the printed page

Having said that, while there’s much to grumble about, the accusation of low-budget animation is not fair. The look is quite bare – especially in comparison to the Hanna-Barbera stuff that was coming out at the same time – and there is much use of stock shots of Peter getting into his costume or Spidey swinging through the city. But ten years previously George Reeves’s Superman series had been equally guilty of the same crimes, and that is considered a classic of its time. It’s worth bearing in mind now that those images of Spider-man swinging around were the first time his fans had seen him moving at all, and have influenced every subsequent screen incarnation – indeed, thinking once again of the Raimi film, there are a few sequences in these cartoons which directly inspired the director's version. It's not exactly inventive, but the bright primary colours and some reasonably exciting moments mean that it's a shame Grantray-Lawrence, responsible for this season, went bust, being replaced by the even less ambitious Krantz Films who really did pull things down to a bare minimum. Crucially in these early episodes, while not having anywhere like the gorgeous detail of Ditko’s best work, the art replicates almost exactly that of the comic book. All characters are near-identical (Spidey is missing his webbing on his torso, purely because it was less expensive to animate a plainer costume) and if occasionally the screen is a bit static bar some lips moving then there’s still enough movement not to have it descend to, say, the painfully stilted Filmation Star Trek series of a few years later.

It’s just a shame that the attention to detail didn’t extend beyond the art to the rest of the show’s execution. It’s not an entire dead loss – I’m sure the thrill of seeing Spidey and co actually moving managed to redeem its less successful qualities, while Bob Harris’s theme has gone down in history – but it could have been more, even back when it was made. When you have Spidey being voiced by a man (Paul Soles) whose teenage years are very plainly far behind him you know that things could have been better. I can’t imagine, though, any but the youngest of fans would find it an especially interesting watch today however, and in the end, while this first selection of episodes make for an interesting museum piece, if you want a slice of authentic Spidey action from the period, it’s far better to turn to the pages of Marvel Essentials. This never quite cut it.

The DVD

The first six episodes of the first season are presented in this one-disc release. The menus are attractively designed in a comicbook layout, with a large image from each, while there’s also a Play All function. The Video transfer is somewhat dirty, with lots of specks and marks on it, as well as a layer of grain, but the colours are nice and bright, perhaps suggesting some work has been done on them – there’s certainly no sign of fade. The Audio is in the original Mono and has no problems – oddly though, there are no English subtitles, only those for other European countries. Why that should be I don’t know.

There are no extras.

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