Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Saturday. I'm here to talk about the 1994 animated series, Spider-Man. Specifically the three episode introduction to Venom, which happened late in the show's first season. I got the original 1996 VHS release, which has the episodes edited together into a 60 minute movie. There will be spoilers, because this is an almost 30 year old show, and there's stuff I want to talk about. So let's get into it.
"The Alien Costume" starts with John Jameson's space shuttle crashing onto the George Washington Bridge after they accidently brings what turns out to be the Venom Symbiote back to Earth after a mission. They'd brought back a powerful rock known as Promethium X. Naturally, the Kingpin hires the Rhino to steal it so that he and Alistair Smythe may sell it to the highest bidder. Typical criminal empire stuff. However, Spider-Man ends up melding with the symbiote, giving him the famous black costume that he used for a good portion of the '80s in the comics. Only difference is, here, he never makes an actual black costume once he separates himself from the symbiote.
I actually remember watching these episodes in reruns on YTV when we moved from the log house and into a place where we had cable, and had access to YTV again. Honestly, this was one of my favourite shows in the era that Power Rangers Zeo was airing in. This, and reruns of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, which were both on YTV. The '67 cartoon was on late in the day while the '94 series was on on Saturdays. Which makes sense since Fox Kids aired the show on Saturdays, with reruns sometime during the week, if I remember correctly. I mean I remember these three episodes so clearly, because this was my introduction to the character of Eddie Brock/Venom.
I didn't read Spider-Man comics very much when I was a kid. I had a total of three of them, all three of which I still have in my collection today, and that was it. So I had no idea who Venom was, until he showed up on this show. It threw me for a loop when he appeared too, because not even Batman had an enemy who was the exact opposite of him, right down to his costume. Of course, I didn't know about the Wrath at the time. Nor did he have a villain who had been him previously...because I didn't know about Batman's fight with Jean-Paul Valley in KnightsEnd. But still, the fact that Venom had been Spider-Man previously, knew everything about Peter Parker, and directly threatened him was crazy to me back then, because I had no clue. Especially because I didn't know about the Green Goblin at the time either.
Something that I totally forgot about this show is that Flash Thompson appears, and is still the bully of Peter Parker. This was the thing that introduced me to Spider-Man's supporting cast from Aunt May and Mary Jane to Flash Thompson and J. Jonah Jameson, so the fact that I forgot that he was in the show tells me that I haven't seen most of this show in almost 30 years.
While the animation in this show doesn't hold up nearly as well as it does in Batman: The Animated Series or X-Men: The Animated Series, what does hold up is the storytelling. Unlike most cartoons in the '90s, Spider-Man had alot of two-part episodes and season long story arcs. While season 1 only has two multi-part episodes, this one, and the next one, "The Hobgoblin", storylines carried over from episode to episode, as did characters. For example, Eddie Brock was first introduced in the first episode of the series, "Night of the Lizard", and he popped up in a few more episodes before culminating in him becoming Venom in "The Alien Costume Part 3". That kind of thing had only happened in Batman: The Animated Series with Harvey Dent/Two-Face, and with Talon in Gargoyles, and maybe a character or two in X-Men: The Animated Series (I haven't seen the whole series yet). But generally, serialized storytelling wasn't common in animated shows in the '90s, outside of Anime.
One of my favourite scenes is in part 2 where Spider-Man, still wearing the black costume, is fighting the Shocker and is getting ready to kill him when he remembers Uncle Ben and his words "With great power comes great responsibility" (which is where that version of the iconic line comes from, if I remember correctly), and finally gets rid of the symbiote, which falls onto Brock, but, y'know, gotta create Venom somehow. That scene is super powerful because it establishes why Peter became Spider-Man in the first place.
Most Spider-Man shows and movies these days start with Peter in high school, either with the origin story, or after, but still in Spidey's early days, but this show starts with Peter in college, and working at the Daily Bugle, and I think we only get his origin story in flashbacks or memories, or just in the opening theme sequence, because explaining a character's backstory in the opening title/theme sequence is something that cartoons liked to do in the '90s too.
The voice cast of this show is fantastic. Christopher Daniel Barnes voices Peter Parker/Spider-Man. Though to be honest, I actually thought it was Will Friedle who voiced Spider-Man for the longest time, just because his Terry McGinnis from Batman Beyond sounds alot like Barnes's Spider-Man in this show and I just thought it was the same person voicing both. With him are a whole slew of supporting voice actors like Jim Cummings, Ed Asner, Roscoe Lee Browne, Majel Barrett, David Warner, and many many others, including Mark Hamill and Hank Azaria. Of course, Jim Cummings is a legendary voice actor, who did a bunch of animated shows, and movies, for Disney, as Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, and other characters, and his voice is pretty recognizable so I immediately knew that he voiced Shocker. Hank Azaria voices Eddie Brock/Venom, which is weird, since I'm used to hearing him as the voice of Moe on The Simpsons.
Ed Asner voices J. Jonah Jameson and I actually didn't know that he voiced that character too. I mean he voiced Hudson on Gargoyles, so it was a bit startling to find out that Jameson and Hudson have a similar voice to one another. Saratoga Ballantine voices Mary Jane Watson for the few minutes that she's actually in the episode. The Kingpin is voiced by Roscoe Lee Browne, who voiced the bulldog, Francis, in Oliver & Company. Majel Barrett and Dave Warner aren't in these episodes, but Majel was Christine Chapel, Una Chin Riley, and the Enterprise computer voice on Star Trek, Lwaxana Troi and the computer voice on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and the computer voice on Star Trek: Voyager and the 2009 movie, Star Trek. David Warner has played a ton of characters over the years. Too many to list here, but the short of it is, he played St. John Talbot in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI, and a Cardassian in the TNG season 6 episode, "The Chain of Command".
Overall, this is a pretty great show. Like I said, the animation does not hold up, especially because they kept doing the Filmation thing of reusing stock footage for certain shots. Like, there's one of Venom swinging through New York and they reuse that shot three times in that final episode, with the exact same buildings in the scene too. However, the storytelling is solid and the cast is fantastic. If, for whatever reason, you've never seen Spider-Man I recommend giving it a chance, because, despite the animation, it's a decent animated series from the '90s. Nowhere near as good as Batman and X-Men, but still a pretty great show.
Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for this week. I'll be back soon with more reviews of movies, TV show episodes and seasons, and comic books. With a whole lot more coming your way. So until then have a great rest of your weekend and I will talk to you all soon. Take care.
.jpg)
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment