World "The Spectacular Spider-Man" Appreciation Thread (possible spoilers) - Part 1

And "Spectacular Radio" finished it's double-sized finale interview with Greg Weisman and Victor Cook. At present, the release schedule is as follows:

December 7th: "Subtext" interview with Greg Weisman and Nicole Dubuc (Episode Writer).
December 14th: "Subtext" Fan Panel.
December 21st: "Opening Night" interview with Greg Weisman and Jennifer L. Anderson (Talent Coordinator)
December 28th: "Opening Night" Fan Panel
January 4th: "Final Curtain" interview with Greg Weisman and Vic Cook.

The final fan panel has yet to be recorded.

You can find it all here: https://spidey-dude.com/category/pod...radio-podcast/

SLIGHT Correction. We will not be publishing anything from Dec 22nd-Jan 3. So, Opening Night will be Jan 4 and Jan 11th, with Final Curtain coming Jan 18th.
 
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Pleasant surprise to see Netflix in Canada has just added the show. The first season anyway.

Both seasons of Spectacular are now available on Netflix in some other countries...UK, Germany that I know of so far!

I hope it comes to the US also. We need to binge the show as much as possible. It's the best chance the show has at a revival. With solid viewing numbers the execs at Disney and Sony might do a deal. It's still a longshot but having the show on a streaming service brings hard data into the mix and not just a bunch of fanboys clamoring on the internet and signing petitions.
 
I'm surprised Disney+ didn't pick it up. But Netflix is better, it'll give it a chance to stand out. If we're lucky we'lll see the same support we saw for Young Justice and ATLA in a series revival.
 
Happy New Year!

It’s The Spectacular Shakespeare Podcast! Greg, Greg Weisman, and Jennifer L. Anderson discuss their fondness for the Bard’s work, favorite plays, and how “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was integrated into the penultimate episode. Following that, they discuss elevating Walter Hardy to a much more influential figure in Spidey’s life, and their own experiences on stage.

Spectacular Radio Episode 49: “Opening Night” With Greg Weisman and Jennifer L. Anderson - Spidey-dude.com
 
It’s finally here! The final interview. The Final Curtain. Zach and Greg are rejoined by Greg Weisman and Victor Cook in their longest interview yet discuss in detail the final episode of the series, but also discuss the way the backgrounds tell the story of each home or office, how they kept the reveal to be as satisfying as it was, the difference between a cliffhanger and open-ended storytelling, and definitively… the reason there was no season three. A MUST-LISTEN for any fan of the series. There’s a lot packed in here that I don’t mention, but trust us, there’s a ton here.

NEXT EPISODE: We will be playing your voicemails, and reading your emails. Special guests from the past may show up, but we will be throwing the biggest finale party yet.
Email is [email protected]
Voicemail line is 818-925-6631

Spectacular Radio Episode 51: "Final Curtain" with Greg Weisman & Victor Cook - Spidey-dude.com
 
It’s finally here! The final interview. The Final Curtain. Zach and Greg are rejoined by Greg Weisman and Victor Cook in their longest interview yet discuss in detail the final episode of the series, but also discuss the way the backgrounds tell the story of each home or office, how they kept the reveal to be as satisfying as it was, the difference between a cliffhanger and open-ended storytelling, and definitively… the reason there was no season three. A MUST-LISTEN for any fan of the series. There’s a lot packed in here that I don’t mention, but trust us, there’s a ton here.

NEXT EPISODE: We will be playing your voicemails, and reading your emails. Special guests from the past may show up, but we will be throwing the biggest finale party yet.
Email is [email protected]
Voicemail line is 818-925-6631

Spectacular Radio Episode 51: "Final Curtain" with Greg Weisman & Victor Cook - Spidey-dude.com

Thank you Greg!

Been listening to this podcast since the beginning and it's been great. There's been so much good info from Weisman and Cook and everyone else that was a guest on the show. Lots of great insight into the production of Spectacular that any fan of the show can appreciate.

I haven't listened to the final episode yet but thank you again for all your time and effort in putting this together. It's greatly appreciated!
 
After looking at more recent adaptations of Spider-Man I must ask if Spectacular's Peter didn't put as much of an emphasis on Peter being interested in "SCIENCE!" as future adaptations. Watching over some early episodes in the series, I noticed that while Peter was gifted enough to be selected with Gwen as an intern for Empire State University's lab, he seemed more interested in how much it paid than just being excited to work with these renowned biologists. Even when noting that Norman Osborn was a scientist to Harry, Peter was mainly talking about how wealthy the Osborn family was because of Norman's occupation rather than gushing about how brilliant Norman was (then again, I suppose Peter found Norman rather creepy in this series, so it may have been hard to ignore that creepiness to praise Norman's scientific achievements). When it came to father figures, in this show Peter seemed to connect more with a police captain like George Stacy (as Spider-Man) than he did with scientists like Norman (who he found creepy) and the Connors (the relationship there seemed more business like).

Even Peter's web shooters were kind of just there rather than us witnessing the conception (though it was said that there would be a focus on them in the future, probably done in flashback ala Uncle Ben origin story). We see Peter use a scientific thought process to take down Silvermane by recognizing the sounds the suit made and realized that heavy suit of armor had a power source, however it isn't as on the nose as Peter thinking in equations to stop criminals like we've seen in the most recent cartoon.

People even forget that Peter's high school in this series was a magnet (so far as even having "magnet" in it's name), thinking that adaptations like the MCU took from Miles Morales when Peter going to a specialized school was introduced in this series. It might be because Midtown Manhattan Magnet wasn't specifically a science school and had other fields of study (criminology, drama, etc) and thus had students who weren't scientific geniuses (Glory, Flash, Mary Jane, etc) that people forget that it was a specialized school.

While the universe wasn't shared due to restrictions on what could be used in a Sony based universe, even ideas of Ben Parker having an attic full of Captain America memorabilia implied that it would steer Peter to idolize a heroic figure like Steve Rogers more than brilliant minds like Norman Osborn, Tony Stark, Reed Richards, etc.

So I must ask, did Spectacular downplay Peter's interest in science too much?
 
Man, I've been getting a lot of mileage posting this:



Thank you for posting this Greg. Anytime someone posts a petition about bringing the show back, I'll just reply with this lol. It sucks that we didn't get more of this show but its a lot more complicated than what some fans think.
 
The Marvel Action: Spider-Man comic series from IDW and Marvel relaunches next week with a new direction and the art by Philip Murphy looks very Spectacular/Sean Galloway inspired. The artist works in a lot of styles so this is definitely a deliberate choice to make it look this way.

I'm surprised Marvel didn't shoot it down because while it's not one-to-one it's pretty easy to see what it looks like lol. The Peter and Spidey look even closer to the earlier rejected Galloway designs from the show. I dig the ponytail on Quentin Beck, that reminds me of the 90s show.

So yeah, not exactly Spectacular Spider-Man comics but I'll probably pick these up cause I like seeing something kinda along those lines spiritually at least.

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Yeah its not exactly like it, but I definitely get SSM vibes from it.
 
Ed Asner died today. He was 91. He had many roles over the years but I'm thankful for his exceptional, heart warming performance as SSM's Uncle Ben. RIP, sir.
 
Ed Asner died today. He was 91. He had many roles over the years but I'm thankful for his exceptional, heart warming performance as SSM's Uncle Ben. RIP, sir.
My favorite episode in the entire series.
 
This show is another absolute banger that’s up there with BTAS, Daredevil, and The Wire for my favorite shows of all time.

Spectacular Spider-Man delivered one of, if not the definitive Spider-Man. The level that the creators of SSM understood the characters of Spidey’s mythos is honestly mind boggling.

So glad we got a BTAS level of quality show for Spidey after the 90’s animated series.
 
Though this show is better written, I strongly prefer the designs and general look of TAS to this show. The designs hinder my enjoyment of this great series, and I think the perfect Spider-Man show lies somewhere between SSM and TAS.
 
Though this show is better written, I strongly prefer the designs and general look of TAS to this show. The designs hinder my enjoyment of this great series, and I think the perfect Spider-Man show lies somewhere between SSM and TAS.

To be fair, Spectacular didn't have a very big budget. And the creators wanted the characters to move more fluidly so they went with more simple and stylistic designs. This also helped them provide pretty good action sequences for the show.
 
To be fair, Spectacular didn't have a very big budget. And the creators wanted the characters to move more fluidly so they went with more simple and stylistic designs. This also helped them provide pretty good action sequences for the show.

And it was all the better for it too. The show may have had "simplistic" character designs but it allowed them to have the best animation and fight scenes we've ever had in any Spider-Man cartoon.
 
The animation was more fluid but I hate the designs on SSM. I think the art style just does not work for me at all. Spider-Man TAS designs were far more spectacular,
 
To be fair, Spectacular didn't have a very big budget. And the creators wanted the characters to move more fluidly so they went with more simple and stylistic designs. This also helped them provide pretty good action sequences for the show.
Yeah, I kind of like that it gives the show it's own identity as well. Then again, I'm the weirdo who liked a majority of the stylized designs of things like The New Batman Adventures (save for Joker and Riddler).

I'm actually surprised that not too many small references have carried over into other properties. The 2017 Spider-Man cartoon carried over the Pumpkin Bomb design from the Raimi movies.

After watching the series recently, I noticed that Sandman and Rhino were created under the LTL Body Shop. I'm assuming that stands for Lonnie Thompson Lincoln. Now I wonder if he started as a mechanic.

You know, I was thinking about the Green Goblin’s little electric finger lasers (do we call them sparkle blasts?). Has he ever used them as much as he has in this show? As I go through other adaptations I don’t see them used as much if at all. Thinking about how the Hobgoblin improved Green Goblins abilities in the comics (which once again doesn’t make sense for Kingsley, Ned, or anyone who was a suspect), I’m wondering about what would have stood out about the alterations to what we know about what the Goblin used. Sure there’s the pumpkin bombs, razor bats (which also had a pumpkin theming), the finger lasers, and the “gobwebs” (the latter I wonder if that was an attempt to bring those ghost things into play by changing it to an adhesive slime[slime is still Halloweeny right?]). What would have been different about the Hobgoblin’s gadgets and abilities? I feel they found a way to explain the Goblin formula’s alteration, but I can’t think of the other things that Hobby did outside of the identity crisis.

One thing I find interesting about Kingsley in this show is they had Norman screw him over at the end of the sole episode he was in, essentially cheating him out of 500 million dollars. This if anyone would want to give Osborn the middle finger, it’d be him, Vulture, and Octavius… Did Kingsley’s Hobgoblin work well with others? I want to say Macendale kind of did, but he was kind of all over the place. The Goblin Glider being pretty much the same machine as Vulture’s harness I can kind of see him working with a Hobgoblin.
 
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I do prefer the character looks of TAS but Spectacular is pretty fine for a later alternate. Kind of sad that not long after TAS ended traditional animation pretty much ended, angular/really stylized, computer animation or not, became very predominant, glad we were able to get TAS in the era we did.
 
After looking at more recent adaptations of Spider-Man I must ask if Spectacular's Peter didn't put as much of an emphasis on Peter being interested in "SCIENCE!" as future adaptations. Watching over some early episodes in the series, I noticed that while Peter was gifted enough to be selected with Gwen as an intern for Empire State University's lab, he seemed more interested in how much it paid than just being excited to work with these renowned biologists. Even when noting that Norman Osborn was a scientist to Harry, Peter was mainly talking about how wealthy the Osborn family was because of Norman's occupation rather than gushing about how brilliant Norman was

did Spectacular downplay Peter's interest in science too much?

I much prefer that Peter have more concern about money than interest in science in itself.
 

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