World STAS: What do you think went wrong?

[zeptron]

It was decent, but man oh man it had a lot of problems. My complaints are

- Why was Morbius treated like a major villain? He took up way too many episodes. I mean, look at the other villains we could have - and I think that we should have - seen more of instead of Morbius. Norman Osborn's Green Goblin got three mere episodes against Spider-Man before he went into limbo. Venom got three episodes (or four, if you count his shadowy cameo at the end of "The Alien Costume, part 2"), Poor Mysterio only got four episodes (and was killed off, which sucked). Vulture only appears in three episodes before joining the Insidious Six near the end of the series. Hobgoblin only got five episodes before getting arrested and never seen again. Rhino and Shocker only appeared in the Venom saga trilogy, then the Insidious Six episodes, and never again until near the end of the series. We saw of Morbius than any of those guys. That's just plain wrong.

- The censorship was kinda annoying. Spider-man only threw like two punches in the entire series. They weren't even allowed to use the word "kill" in this show in any context whatsoever. Morbius used his hands to suck "plasma" rather than having the characters call it blood, and the Punisher was horribly toned down as well. The Sinister Six wasn't even called that because they thought "sinister" was too frighting for kids, yet in the X-men cartoon, which was owned by Fox also, Mr. Sinister went by this name. It got even more annoying that they edited things even more after 9/11.

- Electro not being Max Dillion. I don't even want to talk about this.

- The absence of Sandman. WTF? Yeah I know they were gonna make a movie with him which never went through, but even after it was known the movie wasn't gonna get made, I still don't see why they couldn't use him.

- The series ending before MJ could be found. The clone thing was stupid. This really pissed me off.

- The Vulture just somehow randomly getting rid of the spider-disease. An episode on how he did should have been made.

- Way too much Kingpin. he appears in 33 out of 65 episodes, by far the most frequently appearing character other than Spider-Man himself, and the only other character to appear in over half the episodes. He handily beat out supporting characters like MJ, Jameson, etc. and doubled or tripled other major villains. The only villain who even has half of his appearances was Smythe, who only appeared so much because he was Kingpin's lackey for the first half of the show.

Plus, every single damn plot line revolved around him! I'd say almost every villain was either created by him, worked for him, or tried to kill him to take over his criminal empire or whatever. Doc Ock, one of Spidey's top villains, was downgraded into Kingpin's lackey. That's nonsense! Ock would never be someone's lackey in the comics.

Even in storylines that he had no business being a part of, they would find a way to work him into the plot in some convoluted way. Like in the finale episodes where the different Spider-Mans are traveling across different dimensions, Spider-Carnage just happens to find a Kingpin from another dimension (who looks and acts just like the one from the real dimension) and teams up with him to build his device. Woo-hoo. And Kingpin even organized the Sinister Six (well, Insidious here) for some reason, like the other villains were too dumb to do that on their own. An example of how the creators went out of their way to involve the Kingpin in as many plots as possible, or be behind them. The puzzling thing is, Kingpin wasn't even that huge of a Spidey villain at the time - by 1994 he was more of a Daredevil villain and wasn't interacting with Spider-Man as much. And even when he did interact with Spider-Man, he was never anywhere near the level of Green Goblin, Ock, Venom, etc or even members of the Sinister Six like Mysterio or Vulture. I'd say almost all of Spidey's major villains got the shaft in this show in order to feature the fat guy more. Why couldn't Norman Osborn be behind more plots? He's rich and evil, and Spidey's MAIN villain.

My question is: Why the hell did the creators have such a hard-on for the fat man?

 

[Mistah K88]

I disliked the Neogenetic Nightmare saga in that show (with Spidey growing extra arms, turning into man spider and all that) despite a good chunk of them happening in the comics at one time. The Spot's little portal technolgy had a little too much prominence in the series as well.

The censorship really hurt the show. Seeing a Star Wars esque laser fight between gangs was pretty stupid, even on my child eyes. I can see people like Kingpin's men using lasers, but random street hoods didn't really work for me. Looking back at it as an adult only worsened the affect of senslessness of the censorship.

The 90's Spidey adapted a lot of the comics of the 90's...which were pretty bad. Things like Vulture stealing youth was a horrible plot line... This was also why Hobgoblin came first, as he was more popular around the time, so they were forced to use Hobby before Gobby, which made Gobby seem less than he should have. Despite how cool the "Goblin War" episode was, they still had to make Hobgoblin run away most of the time and not be much of a threat in order to make Green Goblin seem cooler.

They did manage to make one of the better Venom origins, and hey they even added the now present fact that it amplifies agression (much like they integrated Harley Quinn from BTAS into the comics canon)...However they STILL went back to do Secret Wars. I heard it was to reunite Spidey with the black suit...but it never happened...

 

[The Villain]

Kingpin way overused in the series.

Having classic baddies Mysterio & Doc Ock taking orders from him was a silly move.

I think Stan Lee wanted it this way but I'm not so sure of this?

The writers must have been pretty desperate for storys since they used Kingpin so much.

Good show despite this small matter.

 

[Chris Wallace]

I think the Morbius thing was to give them an excuse to bring in Blade.

 

[zeptron]

I think the Morbius thing was to give them an excuse to bring in Blade.

I understand, but he didn't need to have so many episodes and take time away from other villains we should have seen more.

 

[Spidey_62]

Yeah, that's true. John Semper said in some interviews that he was a big fan of Blade and he wanted to have him in his Spidey series. I think he went way overboard, though.

 

[GamerSlyRatchet]

Another one I've also talked about previously in another place was the mediocre voice acting. Chris D. Barnes, while sounding OK for Spidey, also overacted his lines, and ended up with a cheesy, forced performance. He didn't even sound like he was from New York!

Mary Jane was also terrible. She sounded like a whiny twelve-year old. Very weak voice, especially for a strong character in the comics. Harry Osborn sounded whiny, and even whinier when he became the Goblin. Norman as the Goblin did not sound threatening at all, and as much as I love Mark Hamill's voice, he was wasted in the Hobgoblin's role. I think only Ed Asner and Roscoe Lee Brown gave excellent performances.

 

[Chris Wallace]

The show was mainly designed to appeal to kids & to sell toys. Period. I find it funny that Spectacular, which is supposedly more kiddie-themed, has a more universal appeal & isn't afraid to have Spidey throw a punch.

 

[spidermanJLA!~]

Lots of things went wrong.

1. Peter talked to himself WAAAAY too much
2. What's with all these chapters? Sins of the Father IV? That will get somebody confused. There should be individual episodes.
3. How does the police have laser guns?! I know it's for censorship, but.. laser guns?
4. I read on wikipedia....no crashing glass?! What's wrong with that? No pigeons harmed? What's that gonna do? Birds get hurt. Flies away. Done deal. Spider-man wasn't allowed to hit anyone with his fist. The show is not spider-man anymore. He fights crime! So all he does is kick and shoot webs? Boring! There are other restrictions, but these are the stupidest I must say.

 

[SuperFerret]

Lots of things went wrong.

1. Peter talked to himself WAAAAY too much
2. What's with all these chapters? Sins of the Father IV? That will get somebody confused. There should be individual episodes.
3. How does the police have laser guns?! I know it's for censorship, but.. laser guns?
4. I read on wikipedia....no crashing glass?! What's wrong with that? No pigeons harmed? What's that gonna do? Birds get hurt. Flies away. Done deal. Spider-man wasn't allowed to hit anyone with his fist. The show is not spider-man anymore. He fights crime! So all he does is kick and shoot webs? Boring! There are other restrictions, but these are the stupidest I must say.

You must not have read many Spider-Man comics then. Your other issues are valid however.

 

[Mace Dolex]

I didn't mind the laser guns and Chris Barnes did a decent job as Spider-Man but what I didn't like was the season long story arcs, it seemed that every episode ended on a TO BE CONTINUED that if you missed an episode you were out of luck.

It also didn't help matters that some episodes aired out of order which can be quite a hassle if your trying to build a nice VHS library of tapes, another thing was that during May sweeps FOX would jump the gun and air episodes from the coming Fall season.

But I still prefer 90's Spider-Man as opposed to the peanut head shaped Spectacular Spider-Man.

 

[Chris Wallace]

Ome big problem I had was, why bring in characters who don't fit the parameters of the show? By this I mean:
Why dring in Punisher if he can't shoot?
Why bring in Blade if he can't use a blade?
Why bring in Morbius if he can't bite?
Why bring in Carnage if he can't...be Carnage?

 

[Blitzkrieg Bop]

Terrible animation
Bad writing
Bad character designs
Cheesy voices for the villains
Too much censorship
Too many bright colors

 

[spidermanJLA!~]

Your right Ferret. Spider-man does talk to himself a lot. So do a lot of heroes.

 

[Chris Wallace]

It's called internal monologue. He wasn't talking out loud. It's a plot device that actually fits him.

 

[Mace Dolex]

Terrible animation

Actually the animation was the closest in terms of coming close to Marvel/Sunbow's studio animation house of the 80's and not having to carbon copy Batman TAS style.

Even the X-Men looked better in STAS than in their own show.

 

[GamerSlyRatchet]

I didn't necessarily mind the internal monologue. It was the fact that he, during the monologue, overexplained things that the audience could have caught on. It didn't leave any subtlety or anything for the imagination. It was just...awkward.

 

[Chris Wallace]

My problem with the animation was the often bad blending of conventional animation & CGI, as well as the many recycled images.

 

[ImWithTeamConan]

Horrible animation, even as a child I thought it was quite bad.

 

[Sam Fisher]

I think the Morbius thing was to give them an excuse to bring in Blade.

I'm surprised they were even allowed to use Morbius, Blade, and Punisher with all the censorship.

 

[Sam Fisher]

, as well as the many recycled images.

True, but it was nowhere near as painfully bad as the 60's show.

 

[Chris Wallace]

I'm surprised they were even allowed to use Morbius, Blade, and Punisher with all the censorship.

I refer you to my previous post; Morbius wasn't allowed to bite, (so why have fangs?) Punisher wasn't allowed to shoot, & Blade didn't wield blades.
And my main problem with the 60's animation was laziness.
Look, the thing about these superhero cartoons is that they are not truly aimed at us. Attempts will be made to appeal to us but they are by & large aimed at children. The series finale should prove that more than anything, as it was just a long toy commercial & didn't make a lick of sense. So should we really be criticizing something that was dumbed down to appeal to an audience of 7-year-olds?

 

[zeptron]

My problem wasn't Spidey just simply talking to himself, but how almost every single action he took needed some explanation. No matter how obvious or mundane. Such as in Turning Point after MJ goes into limbo, he dives in the river looking for her.

"I can't find her! So help me, I can't find her!"

We can see that.

And both of Spidey's two top villains were treated badly. Doc Ock being one of Kingpin's flunkies? No, just no. I mean, if they have a shared interest, sure, he would work WITH Fisk. But Doc Ock is a megalomaniac. He wouldn't cow-tow to Fisk.

Norman Osbourne was a complete wuss in this cartoon. Who lived in fear of the Kingpin. Norman Osborn was not a good man gone bad. He was a bad man gone nuts.

Let's take both Norman's reaction to the Vulture. 90s Norman runs away screaming and whimpering. SSM's Norman is being held hundreds of feet in the air by the Vulture and what does he say to him? "I called you a buzzard. You can't even get the name right." So SSM got him right. The 90s cartoon didn't.

I'll let this video sum up what someone else found wrong with the series. Be sure to turn the Annotations on.



[YT]pMGTC9B7WVg&feature=play[/YT]

 

[Mistah K88]

I forgot about Anna Watson hating Peter to the point she could have become a supervillain. Would you guys say that it was a bad idea in general, or just horrible execution that did her in? There are some times that a parent may dislike the choice of their offspring's lover, so I could definitely understand it, but to her extent?

 

[zeptron]

Anna Watson was an evil shrew for no reason. Did she ever have any moments where she wasn't being a miserable shrew? Any? She was so one dimensional. Even SSM's Sally Avril had her human moments. Anna Watson... nope.