Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Spider-Man: 1960s cartoon

I've been watching my cartoon videotapes lately. Whole series, back-to-back, plus various odds and ends. SPACE GHOST. THUNDERBIRDS 2086. ULYSSES 31. THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN. BUGS BUNNY (courtesy of a "June Bugs" marathon). COBRA. TINTIN. SUPER DIMENSION FORTRESS MACROSS. JONNY QUEST. FANTASTIC FOUR (1967). Well, today I pulled out the cartoons I've watched over and over the most since I taped them about 23 years ago... SPIDER-MAN (1967) !!!

I understand back in '67, a lot of fans were very apprehensive when it was announced that Grantray-Lawrence was going to do a SPIDER-MAN series. After all, they'd done the (infamous) MARVEL SUPER-HEROES SHOW, where they took actual panels of Marvel Comics and-- ahem-- "animated" them (and I used that word loosely). Those cartoons' reputation have turned around of late, I think, judging by a growing amount of (nostalgic?) positive comments I've read online. Me, I haven't seen one of them since 1966, and my memory of them isn't too sharp. Oh well.

But THESE things-- WHOA!!! Steve Rude once talked about how, while Hanna-Barbera's "A-team" of animators had done SPACE GHOST and HERCULOIDS, it was their "B-team" who did FANTASTIC FOUR in '67. Much lower budget. The show still had, in my view, the best writing of any Saturday morning series, owing mostly to doing a majority of them as "adaptations" based on the original Lee-Kirby comics-- sometimes, with the story structures improved over the originals. If only the animation was up to par with the stories and the designs.

However, Grantray-Lawrence apparently threw EVERYTHING they had into the SPIDER-MAN show. I've read they didn't make any more money by spending more money. They were, I think, hoping the IMMENSELY increased quality of the shows would lead to further success. It ALMOST worked!

The animation in the early episodes may be some of the SMOOTHEST ever done for any Saturday-morning show in the 60's. These things looks GREAT!! And you have to get some weeks into the season before there's any really noticeable reuse of shots (something that became a problem in later episodes).

To this day, the voices on the G-L cartoons are what I "hear" in my head when I read the characters in the comics-- particularly Peter Parker/Spider-Man (2 distinct voices, just like the Bud Collyer Clark Kent/Superman radio shows and cartoons), Betty Brant, that LUNATIC publisher, J. Jonah Jameson, and several of the villains. I think it's criminal that there's been so MANY Spider-Man cartoon series over the years, and these actors have NEVER been brought back. (Imagine Bugs Bunny WITHOUT Mel Blanc and you see the problem.)

Most remember the incredibly upbeat, catchy theme song by Bob Harris & Paul Francis Webster. But, like Monty Norman on James Bond and Neil Hefti on Batman, they "only" did the theme song. The rest was an original jazz score done by Ray Ellis-- which gets my vote for the BEST music ever done for a Saturday-morning show. I've been a member of a Yahoo Group dedicated to "Spider-Man Jazz Music" for 2-1/2 years now, and so far, the original tracks of this score (without the cartoons soundtrack, voices, etc.) have NOT turned up. In many ways, one of the great "unreleased" scores in tv history!!!

The "pilot" episode is notably darker and more intense than most of what followed. "THE POWER OF DR. OCTOPUS" is not based on any comic story, but it manages to capture the personality of Spidey's most DANGEROUS enemy perfectly. The exagerated mannerisms in his speech remind me of a Shakespearean actor gone mad. When bragging about his machine that can destroy half the city, he says, "It will give me POWER to RULE the UNIVERSE!" The word "megalomaniac" seems to have been coined for this guy.

Betty Brant in these cartoons is one of my favorite female characters from the 60's. She's just so NICE-- good friends with Peter, on almost as good terms with Spider-Man, somehow managing to tolerate her madman of a boss without getting fired. I was disappointed when I saw Betty in the comics-- I NEVER liked her as much as I did in these shows.

Jameson is PERFECT. A self-assured raving ego-maniac who almost never seems to be right about anything. Countless residents of Peter's neighborhood have their lives put in danger, JUST because Ock sent a letter of warning to Jameson-- and he failed to pass it on, thinking it was "just a crank"! JJJ only really works as "comic relief". The comics' increasing mistake over the years (and decades) was foolishly trying to treat him like a "real" person. By taking him "seriously", but not having him face up to all the hateful, destructive things he's done over time, he became completely intolerable. Here, in these more "light-hearted", action-oriented stories, he's a much better fit.

The 2nd half of the series opener was "SUB-ZERO FOR SPIDEY", about a group of icy aliens from Pluto seeking the help of "Professor Smarter", a character who reminds me of a guy from the SUPERMAN tv show. At times, I often thought the cartoon Spidey was tackling menaces WAY outside his "weight class". Oh well, that's tv for you!

John Romita was credited as one of the "consultants" on this show, and indeed, it more reflects his brighter, more "upbeat" era than it does the darker, creepier Ditko era before it. A discussion at the Kirby-L Yahoo Group has pointed out how Jack Kirby was involved in the creation of Spider-Man before Ditko was recruited. Much of Kirby's contributions were not used; Ditko came up with not only the costume, but the look of the entire supporting cast, and over 3 years he would slowly take over the book more and more. But it appears the "happy-go-lucky" costumed Spider-Man persona was one thing of Kirby's that did survive. It's possible in this cartoon it lives more than it ever did in the comics!

Ep.2

"WHERE CRAWLS THE LIZARD" was the 1st of the adaptations. It took its name from ASM #44 (Jan'67) but was really based on "FACE-TO-FACE WITH... THE LIZARD!" from ASM #6 (Nov'63). As with most Hollywood adaptations, they changed a lot. The villain looks more human in the face than he did in the comic; he's referred to as "the Lizard-Man" instead of "the Lizard"; and he was the result of research into a cure for "swamp fever", there's no mention of Dr. Curtis Connors trying to apply lizard physiology to help REGROW a missing arm. Plus, any scenes with the supporting cast, other than JJJ & Betty, are gone. But for the most part, it actually does translate the story fairly well for a "kiddie cartoon".

"ELECTRO, THE HUMAN LIGHTNING BOLT" is the 2nd adaptation, based on "THE MAN CALLED ELECTRO" from ASM #9 (Feb'64), and like the original, starts out with Spidey interrupting the baddie who's robbing Jameson's apartment! Naturally, JJJ blames the wrong guy, and goes so far to as accuse Peter of faking a composite photo when he tries to show him who the real baddie is. This episode marks the 1st time Spidey's wanted by the cops. While it never became the painfully recurring theme it did over the years in the comics, it did crop up here from time to time. The finale takes place at Coney Island, and is a real blast. If there's one thing that bugs me (if only in retrospect), it's Electro's voice sounds very "cartoony"-- it's difficult to picture anything like it coming from the guy UNDER the mask who was sometimes seen in the comics.

Ep.3

"THE MENACE OF MYSTERIO" is the 3rd adaptation, and the first of only 2 "full-length" episodes made during this season. As such, it benefits from much better storytelling, much as the Hanna-Barbera FANTASTIC FOUR and JONNY QUEST shows did, and makes me dearly wish ALL the shows this year had been like this one. For the 2nd time, Spidey's wanted by the cops-- this time, he was seen robbing a museum, and even Peter begins to wonder if he's developing a split personality. A full third of the story is taken up with the cops chasing Spidey, and the sheer amount of story, action & characterization really makes all the "full-length" episodes of the 2nd season seem lame by comparison (as most of them were longer simply from excessive "padding"). The villain, who looks like a refugee from a Steve Ditko DR. STRANGE story, is captured perfectly in this cartoon, though most of the detail is left off his costume (even as most of the webbing is left off of Spidey's-- gotta keeps costs down somehow!).

The two major set-pieces of the story are the fight on top of the Brooklyn Bridge (a location revisited, sometimes to tragic effect, in later comics), and the showdown in the TV studio. While Mysterio is supposed to be a special effects man (posing as some sort of sorcerer, presumably), in the cartoon he's shown as a stuntman, working on a sci-fi series (his hair & makeup UNDER the dome makes him rather suspiciously resemble Mr. Spock!). Not long ago, while re-reading the early comics, I was struck by how drastically different the comic and cartoon were-- despite the cartoon being the CLOSEST of all the adaptations to the original! All the soap-opera bits with the supporting cast are missing; yet lengthy action scenes were added, including the 2nd half of the climax, when Spidey & Mysterio duke it out on the set of a TV western, while the director yells for the cameras to keep rolling. It's hilarious! Maybe because I've seen the cartoon dozens of times (and only read the comic twice), I much prefer this to the original. This gets my vote as the single BEST Spider-Man cartoon EVER made!!!!

Ep.4

"THE SKY IS FALLING" is the 1st Vulture story. Back in the 60's there were 2 Vultures-- the skinny, frail-looking old bald original, and the younger, tougher, yet nowhere-near-as-smart pretender from the Romita era. The guy in the cartoon wears a helmet like the 2nd one, but his voice, a high-pitched, shrill sound, doesn't seem right for EITHER version (it actually reminds me of Jay Robinson's Caligula from THE ROBE and DEMETRIUS AND THE GLADIATORS). This story seems largely inspired by Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, as "Vulture-Man" (like The Lizard, they couldn't get his name right) uses a sonic device to control birds and terrorize the city. Irrational as ever, JJJ keeps insisting Spidey's the villain, and "What's his name" only a sidekick of sorts. You can tell different people worked on different episodes, as this one looks more "cartoony" than the previous ones.

"CAPTURED BY J. JONAH JAMESON", the 4th adaptation, is the only one to use the actual story title, from ASM #25 (Jun'65). Once more, supporting characters & sub-plots were out while the action scenes greatly increased. One major omission was how in the comic, Peter actually ENCOURAGED Jameson to take up Dr. Henry Smythe's offer of using the robot to capture Spidey-- then dearly regretted it. One scene that made it into the cartoon intact was when Jameson finds out Spidey has escaped. "What did you do to his HEAD?" "Nothing-- he-- he hasn't GOT a head!!" (It was just a stuffed costume.) For the 2nd week in a row (as far as the show goes), Jameson has deliberately gotten involved in a scheme to bring down Spidey-- though, considering Betty goes to the cops to get Spider-Man some HELP, one can only wonder exactly what Jameson expects Spidey to be arrested for!

The music in this one is fantastic (as usual), and most of the animation continues to be new-- though anyone who's seen the rest of the series will surely recognize which bits got reused later on-- over and over and OVER again.

These are cool Prof! I'm interseted in them now, as I've never seen them before.

I hoped you'd enjoy these. I'm surprised, what with your having read every single Spider-Man comic ever published (or close to it) that you've never seen these. This is a good time, as they were released on DVD about 3 years ago. (I still don't have a DVD player; I'm watching my 23-year-old videotapes.)

Ep.5

"NEVER STEP ON A SCORPION" is the 5th adaptation. Unlike the others, this actually COMBINES 2 different stories: "THE COMING OF THE SCORPION!" (ASM #20 / Jan'65) and its sequel, "NEVER STEP ON A SCORPION!" (ASM #29 / Oct'65). For the 3rd show in a row, Jameson gets directly involved in a scheme to bring about Spider-Man's downfall. This time he actually finances Dr. Stillwell, one of those "mad scientist" types, whose "creation" (they talk about him as though he's not human under that costume) turns out to be more dangerous than either of them anticipated. After an initial battle, The Scorpion turns on Jameson, and winds up in jail thanks to Spidey. Then, he ESCAPES jail, and goes after Jameson AGAIN! How Jameson never got charged with endangering inoocent lives after this is beyond me.

I only realized this story combined 2 separate comics when I re-read the originals recently. It seems a bit absurd, cramming so much action (and so little explanation and sense) into a single cartoon, when each of the comics could easily have been adapted into a "full-length" story-- had they wanted to.

One strange sidebar of this episode is the amount of genuine Steve Ditko poses that turned up. In the 1980s, some editor realized the 2nd comic had never been reprinted before, and discovered the stats were missing. They hired outside help to recreate new stats so the story could finally be reprinted (which it's been several times since). Re-reading the editorial, I came to the realization that Stan Lee must have "loaned" the stats for that issue to G-L to help in the making of the cartoon. But when G-L went belly-up LESS than a year later, I'm guessing the stats went missing!

"SANDS OF CRIME" was the only time this classic Steve Ditko villain turned up on the show, yet like so many others, this story is not based on any of his numerous comics appearances. (Sandman fought Spidey multiple times in the Ditko era; somewhere along the way, he also had run-ins with The Human Torch, then almost by default became a Human Torch villain. This in turn, led to his joining 2 other Torch baddies when The Frightful Four came together.) Spidey puts his foot in it this time, foolishly checking out the security at a museum, then getting caught "in the act" when the place is robbed by someone else. The fact that the ransom note is signed "S" only confirms JJJ's usual rantings about who the culprit is. The coming attractions for this one described Sandman as Spidey's "most dangerous" foe. Seriously, some of the guys Spider-Man went up against on this show (and in the comics), when you compare rogues galleries, kinda made Batman look like he had it easy.

Ep.6

"DIET OF DESTRUCTION" is one FUN cartoon! This is another one that looks like it stepped out of a DC Superman comic-- or else, some Japanese giant-monster show. A giant "metal-eating monster" (robot) with a blast furnace where its stomach should be and a pair of electromagnets for hands is on a rampage. For something made out of metal that doesn't talk, this thing seems to have much more intelligence and expression of personality that you'd think would be possible. Meanwhile, the show's imaginative use of Spidey's webbing continues unabated, an example in this one being when he creates a web-"dome" to protect himself from a huge pile of falling automobiles. How something so elastic and sticky can ALSO be stronger than steel is really pushing believability past its limits. I guess as long as you have a sense of humor, it's not a problem!

"THE WITCHING HOUR" is the first of 3 appearances of The Green Goblin. Like Cesar Romero's Joker, I could never take this guy seriously, and was really surprised to learn that in the comics, he was supposed to be one of Spidey's "arch"-enemies! Never mind the costume-- which, unlike the feature film, was AUTHENTIC to the comic. This guy's VOICE is on the kooky side, and when I got around to reading about Norman Osborn in the books, I could not believe the guy on the cartoon could possibly be the same person. (No way!) One very odd thing about this and its follow-up is that you had 2 stories with the Goblin that involved genuine "supernatural" goings-on. One gets the feeling whoever wrote these shows didn't bother reading the books at all.

Another intriguing aspect of this story is the appearance of "Grandini The Mystic", a psychic whose powers are real, and whose house is full of genuine magic artifacts. It's easy to see this guy as an alternate-universe version of DR. STRANGE-- making this, in a way, a psuedo-team-up of Steve Ditko's 2 most famous characters. (Sort of.)

Ep.7

"KILOWATT KAPER" features the first "returning" baddie for the show (if you don't count Scorpion's jailbreak 2/3rds into his debut story). I suppose one could rank Electro as the cartoon Spider-Man's deadliest enemy-- though that voice continues to grate and he's just not the smartest guy around by a mile. The TV Spidey is clearly in good with the law (for the most part) as he turns up at the State Prison trying to warn the warden of Electro's imminent escape due to a lightining storm. Twice Electo fails to kill Spidey, yet never sticks around to make sure the job's finished. At the climax, the cops aren't sure whether to arrest Spidey or not, though I'd say stringing a gigantic web all over Times' Square would be considered a nuisance. (Good thing it worked!)

"THE PERIL OF PARAFINO" might confuse some viewers, because you had 2 stories in the SAME show that opened with a jailbreak! In this case, it's killer "Red Dog Melvin", who finds an unlikely (and somewhat baffling) place to hide. This story seems to take its inspiration from the films "MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM" / "HOUSE OF WAX", while it's villain, Parafino, also borrows a bit of his M.O. from that equally-whacko Torch baddie, Paste-Pot Pete! Parafino makes Doc Ock seem sane by comparison, as he spouts such classic lines as "Why Spider-Man! How accomodating. You have FOUND your OWN pedestal!" ...and... "Then you will wait-- FOREVER!" Sometimes it's tough to come up with a rational rationale when your bad guy's just plain NUTS, but this doesn't explain why "Red Dog" would willingly let himself be turned into a statue (in "suspended animation", so the explantion went). For the 2nd time in the series, Betty gets put in danger looking for Peter. You'd think, considering how dangerous his job is, the next time Jameson sends her looking for Pete, she'd just go down to a coffee shop for an hour or so. It'd be a LOT safer!

Ep. 8

"HORN OF THE RHINO" is the 1st to introduce a purely John Romita-era villain, the 2nd full-lengther, and marks the 1st appearance of Aunt May! Though not based on any existing Rhino story (there had only been the one 3-parter in the comics by this point) the opening scene of him smashing headlong into a speeding train was later reused by that diehard TV & cartoon fan, Len Wein, in INCREDIBLE HULK #218 (Dec'77). Len was also the first comics writer to ever use the cartoon trademark note for police, "Compliments of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man" in ASM #152 (Jan'76). Can't be a coincidence!

Spidey foolishly sticks his neck in trying to help protect national security, and sure enough, when a top-secret weapon is stolen while he's on the scene, HE gets blamed for it! A running series of skirmishes see Spidey repeatedly fail to stop The Rhino from getting his hands on the 2nd & 3rd components of-- whatever it is (it looks like kids' toy blocks, but Betty described it as a "bomb"). For a guy who's clearly not very bright and whose power consists purely of being monstrously strong and unstoppable, this baddie sure causes a lot of trouble.

On the "human" side, Pete catches a bad cold, and not only has to stop the baddie AND keep out of the hands of the cops until he does it, he also has to fool dear, sweet, wonderful, caring Aunt May, who insists he stay in bed and keeps feeding him one horrific cold remedy after another. Unlike the frail, close-to-death Aunt May of the Ditko era, THIS May seems very healthy, strong-minded and strong-willed. One of the best lines is when she infuriates JJJ by telling him over the phone, "It seems to me if you knew your job, you could take you own pictures." Being the NUT that he is, Jameson actually winds up taking her suggestion-- but makes the mistake of doing it "in disguise"-- and naturally, gets arrested for being a SPY! On the phone, Pete has to console a distraught Betty, while pretending not to know what mess JJJ really got himself into.

Ep. 9

"THE ONE-EYED IDOL" steps into TARZAN territory-- sort of. While Kraven The Hunter never turned up on this show, here they introduced Oli Clivendon-- your stereotypical Australian 'unter an' poacher and awl-aroun' criminal toyp. (Yes. With that accent.) Think of him as a mean-spirited bad-guy version of Crocodile Dundee. Jonny Quest had 2 run-ins with guys like this. He has a native sidekick who never speaks and somehow is able to scale a building just like Spidey, and his uses a hypnotic "idol" to hypnotize Jameson into robbing himself. My favorite bit is when, after capturing Spidey, Clivendon tells him, "Don't worry, Spider-Man! It won't be a weapon they can trace to me. Oy assure you your demise will look like an accident!" "Now that takes a load off my mind!" Now, somebody tell me how someone bound hand and foot and hanging in an elevator shaft could possibly be interpreted as "an accident" ???

"FIFTH AVENUE PHANTOM" introduces the TV Spidey's own low-rent version of Dr. Doom-- The Phantom! An evil scientist who wears a hood to hide his face (2 twinkling lights are the only hint we see of his eyes), he has a squad of gorgeous female robots (disguised as department store manikens) doing his bidding, and an assortment of weapons including a shrinking ray to reduce objects for easy take-away for resale later, all to raise money so he can build "an army" of robots to "take over the world"!! A pretty cool set-up, and I dug the deep, mysterious voice they gave this guy.

One odd bit I discovered only recently, it seems "The Phantom" was actually based-- loosely-- on an IRON MAN villain called "The Phantom", who appeared only ONCE, in TALES OF SUSPENSE #63 (Mar'65). I never noticed it because I'd only read the comic once back in the late 70's, the personality and M.O. were completely different, and he really only LOOKED like the guy on TV in ONE panel!! Another case-- maybe-- of the TV people skimming the comics for ideas without actually reading them? Sure seems like it.

For some inexplicable reason, all thru the 70's, these 2 stories were reversed. When the show turned up again in the early 80's, someone had reinstated the original running order.

Ep.10

"THE REVENGE OF DR. MAGNETO" brings us one of those classic "mad scientist types", an inventor who goes berzerk because the "Science Hall Of Fame" has failed to recognize his genius. But now, he'll show them all!! BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!! Among Spidey's escapades this time, he uses his belt-light to help guide a ship in a storm to safety when a lighthouse is put out of commission (seriously, how powerful could a tiny thing like that be?); and, he stops the statue of Promethius from Rockefeller Plaza from crashing to the ground after it's magnetically lifted into the sky and dropped. Instead of creating a net to catch it, he shoots upward, creating a web-"spring". This is so wrong on so many levels, but the pace of the story insists we just take it in stride.

"THE SINISTER PRIME MINISTER" has Pete uncover a kidnapping & masquerade plot while sneaking into a foreign embassy to snap a photo for Jameson. Naturally, Spidey gets accused of assaulting the Prime Minister of Rutania, and Jameson, who's against giving loans to foreign nations, gets taken in by charming promises of how "little children will sing praises of your name" if he helps swing the loan. When told he'll probably get a statue in his honor, Betty thinks, "The pidgeons will love it!"

For one skinny guy with a bad accent and a cane, this guy sure gave Spidey a LOT of trouble! I guess it helps when the cane has more improbable gadgets crammed into it than Matt Murdock's. In the end, we find he's really "the actor-- Charles Cameo!" I suppose he's the TV cartoon equivalent of Spidey's recurring foe, The Chameleon. In all the years of reading the comics, this was one baddie (along with The Puppet Master in FANTASTIC FOUR) who I found extrememly annoying, more each time they turned up again-- and again-- and AGAIN. In the case of The Chameleon, did we EVER see the guy's real face or find out who he REALLY was? Or WAS that blank white thing with the eye-slits supposed to BE his "real" face??

Ep.11

"THE NIGHT OF THE VILLAINS" has Spidey fighting villains from history-- Blackbeard the Pirate, Jesse James & The Executioner of Paris. Or at least, that's how it looks... Incredibly, Parafino becomes the 2nd villain to make a return appearance on the show, with no clue as to if he broke jail, etc.

"HERE COMES TRUBBLE" feels like a variation on a theme, as in this one, Spidey fights a centaur, a cylcops, Diana (goddess of the hunt), Cerberus, and Vulcan-- all beings from Greek mythology. Like the previous story, they're all (more or less) under the control of one person. In this case, it's spinster, bookstore owner and mythology expert "Miss Trubble", who reminds me of Margaret Hamilton and falls into the "Dr. Magneto" catagory for loopy criminal motivations. She wants to force JJJ to hire her to write a regular column for his scandal sheet (the way he edits it, it seems a fair description), and unleashing supernatural forces is her way of getting his attention. Both halves of this double feature aren't among my faves this year, but they're still watchable.

Ep.12

"SPIDER-MAN MEETS DOCTOR NOAH BODDY" features a scientist who's invented a means to become invisible. Like Dr. Magneto & Miss Trubble, he's also got a grudge-- against JJJ personally, for his having riduculed his theories in his paper. The fact that Jameson says he's never heard of the guy only confirms he's probably using an (obvious) alias. Jameson is framed for crimes-- twice!-- and blames Spidey for his predicament, naturally. Peter seems to treat his antagonism with JJJ as a game in some of these. I'd never have the patience for it! This marks at least the 2nd appearance of Police Sgt. O'Malley (I believe he was the one Betty talked to in the Dr. Smythe story), who asks Peter, bailing out his boss, "What makes an outstanding citizen turn to crime?" Pete replies, "Noah Boddy knows the answer to that!"

"THE FANTASTIC FAKIR" introduces a middle-eastern baddie, who appears to have genuine supernatural powers. (Other than his meetings with Dr. Strange, didn't Spidey's villains in the comics generally stick to scientific M.O.s?) With his flute that causes all sorts of magical things to happen, The Fakir reminds me a bit of DC's Flash villain, The Pied Piper-- only more interesting. This one has some really fun & memorable bits in it, including Spidey opening a door that smashes right into a guard, a scene where a guard slices another door in half with a huge scimitar, and a bit where Spidey is pursued by a trio of trained crocodiles in New York harbor!

Ep.13

"THE RETURN OF THE FLYING DUTCHMAN" has Spidey investigate reported sightings of a floating ghost ship. The culprit behind it turns out to be Mysterio, the 3rd villain to make a return appearance, who's picked up a a pair of henchmen this time and is apparently involved in some kind of smuggling. Mysterio's voice is a bit harsher this time, but not too different from his 1st appearance; sometimes the (few) actors on this show seemed to have trouble keeping voices on returning villains consistent. Considering the number of stories this guy appeared in in the comics, it seems clear at this point the show's producers favored original plots over adaptations. That said, the M.O. of scaring away locals from a spot where a submarine is lurking parallels the 1st Johnny Storm solo story in STRANGE TALES #101 (Oct'62).

"FAREWELL PERFORMANCE" is a real change-of-pace story. An old stage theatre scheduled for demolition appears haunted. Spidey discovers one of its former stars, Blackwell The Magician, is behind it. A lengthy duel between the two ensues, though I have a very hard time believing Blackwell isn't using REAL magic during the course of it! (Once again, real magic seems commonplace in the TV Spider-Man's world.) The ending is amusing as Spidey uses reverse psychology to get Jameson to change his tune, as JJJ's hatred (and jealousy?) of Spidey overrides all other considerations.

I've always preferred the first half-season of cartoons to most of these later ones, but even so, I find these "minor" stories are more watchable than 90% of what was ever made for Saturday mornings!

Ep.14

"THE GOLDEN RHINO" brings back the TV Spidey's "strongest" villain, the 4th to return. This time he's stealing gold bullion-- so he can make a statue of himself! "No Michaelangelo he, but talk about a king-sized ego!" Once again, halfway thru Spidey's chased by cops, and escapes using a stunt The Sandman used in an issue of FANTASTIC FOUR-- rolling himself into a web-ball and "bowling" over the policemen. The absurd use of webbing continues, as one scene has Spidey create a web "umbrella" to protect him from a ton of collapsing cinderblocks. Wile E. Coyote could have used this stuff...

"BLUEPRINT FOR CRIME" is one of my faves from this season's 2nd half. It introduces 2 more baddies from the comics and a new one-- "Cowboy" and "Ox" (of The Enforcers-- no sign of "Fancy Dan") and "The Plotter", a sort-of evil cross between The Chief (of The Doom Patrol) and Professor X (of The X-Men) who more than anyone, really reminds me of the "The Collector" (Henry Woolf) from the DOCTOR WHO story, "The Sun Makers". Cowboy & Ox steal a set of blueprints for some top-secret weapon, while from his HQ in a run-down house on a deserted island, The Plotter watches every move-- presumably via hovering remote-control cameras (which are NEVER seen or mentioned, mind you, but how else can one explain it??).

My favorite sequence is when the pair take refuge in a Greenwich Village coffee shoppe, complete with beatniks & a poetry reading ("Dig the Moa..."). It really "dates" the cartoon more than perhaps any other episode, but I see it as a slice of history. Another fun scene is when The Plotter and Cowboy discuss unloading the documents. "I can sell these to the highest bidder." "Why don't ya sell EACH of 'em a copy?" "Why, Cowboy, that would be dishonest!" In order to draw the villains from hiding, for once Spidey deliberately makes himself look crooked with a forged photo. Later, Jameson wonders where Pete managed to get the pic!

Ep.15

"THE SPIDER AND THE FLY" introduces a sort-of evil counterpart of Spidey, The Human Fly (no relation to the Archie Comics hero), who manages to duplicate several of his powers thru mechanical means, in service of a growing string of penthouse robberies. A chase leading to the Brooklyn Bridge appears to be the demise of the crook, but on returning to "the scene of the crime", Spidey finds the place was being robbed WHILE he was chasing the guy. Of course, it's not until the next robbery that the "obvious" becomes clear... and the showdown has Spidey chasing TWO Flies down at Coney Island, marking 2 locations that were reused from earlier episodes in one story.

"THE SLIPPERY DOCTOR VON SCHLICK" features another somewhat-variation on Spidey, with an "oil"-based baddie to whom Spidey's webs won't stick. After setting a refinery fire and somehow making off with countless gallons of oil, we find the baddie in an underground hideout, explaining the plot. "I've succeeded in converting oil into the most powerful element known to man-- Thenium 0 0 7. The power of this concentrated pellet, combined with my secret formula, can give me power to control the WORLD! And NO one can stop me-- NOT EVEN Spider-Man!" (Gotta love these egomaniacs who love the sound of their own voice.)

Ep.16

"THE VULTURE'S PREY" marks the 5th baddie to return. It starts out with another series of penthouse robberies (are they running out of plots here?) but gets strange when Jameson stumbles onto The Vulture's clock-tower lair (JJJ was fuming that nobody fixed the thing) and he winds up a prisoner, feeding info about important "appointments" to the baddie. Next thing you know, the guy's riding a miniature rocket (the show's producers must not have thought much about him just having wings), stealing uncut diamonds, and going after a top-secret military laser gun (I'd love someone to explain how Jameson knew about something so "top secret").

"THE DARK TERRORS" brings back The Phantom (6th returning baddie, and the 1st to return who was created just for the show). This time he's somehow created "living shadows" that can move, attack, steal, etc.-- but not be touched or harmed. This seems a bit inspired by "The Shadow Thief" from the 60's HAWKMAN comics, making me wonder just who's comics the producers were reading for ideas. One noticeable oddity this time out is the voice of The Phantom is quite different from his previous appearance-- this time he sounds like he's either got a lisp or a severe nasal congestion problem (or both). This is odd considering there's only 4 actors doing ALL the voices! You'd think they could keep the same character consistent between appearances. One of the "shadows" sent to attack Spidey is a tank that winds up driving right up the side of a building-- a scene rather similar to one in ASM #160 (Sep'76) involving that dune-buggy called "The Spider-Mobile" (writer Len Wein strikes again!). The scene with a giant cat shadow making off with jewels was also mirrored in one of the 2nd-season episodes... which I'll get to before long.

Ep.17

"THE TERRIBLE TRIUMPH OF DR. OCTOPUS", at last brings back Spidey's REAL arch-enemy (returning baddie #7), as he steals a new weapon-- "The Nullifier"-- from Dr. Smarter (previously seen in "Sub-Zero For Spidey"). This 6th and final adaptation of the season was LOOSELY based on the (at the time) VERY recent "Enter: Dr. Octopus" from ASM #53 (Oct'67!). The Nullifier-- a device which can shut down any kind of machinery or electronic equipment-- has been altered to a "mere" miniature anti-missile missile. When confronted, Ock threates to DROP it on the city, causing Spidey to say, "He's JUST the guy who'd DO it!!" If anyone had doubts that Ock was Spidey's most dangerous enemy, here's all the proof you should need.

Ock's voice is QUITE different this time out-- more menacing, I think, but less "Shakespearean" (I think I preferred the earlier version). Spidey tracks Ock to not one but two different lairs, and like Electro before him, Ock finds a spider-tracer and uses it to set a trap. Later, we find Ock has "sprayed" his glasses, after having had that awful gook clogging them up twice before. Compared to the complex 4-parter in the comic (that ended on a cliffhanger), this episode wraps things up surprisingly fast.

"MAGIC MALICE" brings back The Green Goblin (returning baddie #8), and for the 2nd time in a row, a stage magician with real powers and his home is part of the plot. (As a kid, I often got confused over "sequels" like this that were too close to retreads.) In this case, it's Blackwell The Magician (from "Farwewell Performance") whose house is looted for magic equipment the Goblin uses to pull robberies. One hilarious scene has him park his "bat" in front of a bank, then drop a coin in the parking meter. "Mustn't break the law.", he laughs. Some of the drawings of The Goblin are so detailed, with heavy shadows, similar to the episodes of JONNY QUEST when Doug Wildey worked on them, you can tell different people worked on different episodes here.

Ep.18

"FOUNTAIN OF TERROR" continues the returning character syndrome, as we see Dr. Connors (from "Where Crawls The Lizard") captured by what appears to be a Spanish Conquistador, while none other than Oli Clivendon (returning baddie #9) from "The One-Eyed Idol" turns up in search of "Connor's million-dollar mystery". Perhaps fearing The Lizard's return, Spidey hops a jet to Florida and winds up the recurring target of Clivendon, who seems more murderous than most of Spidey's baddies-- not even hesitating to put children in danger, in the form of Connors' young son, Billy. Comparing the show's continuity to the comic's, it's interesting that the TV producers opted for an original sequel instead of the the one from the comics (where The Lizard turned up in New York City).

"FIDDLER ON THE LOOSE" has millionaire eccentric Cyrus Flintridge (one of the penthouse robbery victims in "The Vulture's Prey") as the target of a villain-- "The Fiddler"-- who's another addition to the list of crackpot motivations. He hates "that rock and roll rabble" and tries to extort a huge sum of money "so he can build an conservatory of his own" and "restore the true beauty of classical music". (I guess you'd have to have lived the 60's to understand... heh.) Once more, a "new" villain on the show seems --ahem-- "inspired" by a classic DC Comics baddie.

Ep.19

"TO CATCH A SPIDER" marks the 1st season finale, and brings back no less than 4 villains: Electro, The Green Goblin, the Vulture, and the ring-leader, Dr. Noah Boddy (returning baddie #10). It's curious that the invisible "Dr." describes himself as Spider-Man's "ARCH-ENEMY", considering it's only his 2nd appearance, while the others-- reduced virtually to hired help this time out-- are all making their 3rd appearance apiece. I guess it just shows how egomaniacal the guy is, as in his previous story, he'd told Spider-Man, "From now on I shall use my powers ONLY for EVIL!!" What a nut. As has been noted, super-villains in the TV cartoon universe don't seem to have "real" identities, and spend their times in jail IN their costumes-- at least, until Dr. Boddy frees them (we never see how HE escaped jail, of course).

Comics artist Mike Royer talked having worked on this particular episode, though he described it as being one of the "full-length" stories. Faulty memory, or was it shortened at a late date? Royer also talked about how most of the animators "played around" too much in the office, and he preferred working at home. This led to some crossed wires, as he was getting the required work done in half the time, but was told he "had" to put in for a full 40-hour week, because he was "making the others look bad". (This is something I could REALLY relate to from my years in drafting!) Also, as he was working at home, the producers told him he had to do it uncredited-- which is why his name wasn't listed on the show. Turns out this was a violation of some union rules. (He could have called them on it...)

"DOUBLE IDENTITY" brought back "The Actor, Charles Cameo" (returning baddie #11) from "The Sinister Prime Minister", and much more than before, he's really standing in for "The Chameleon" from the comics, though I must say I find Cameo's 2 cartoon stories MORE watchable, interesting & entertaining than every "Chameleon" comic-book story I've ever read combined! With the help of his neanderthalic chauffer, "Brutus", Cameo commits crimes while impersonating Peter Parker, Jameson, artist "Salvadori Fricasso", a gallery manager, and finally, Spidey himself! After being grazed by a bullet, Spidey tells a real gallery manager, "Those two were imposters! I know Jameson hates me, but even HE wouldn't SHOOT me!"

It's always struck me as odd how few Saturday morning shows are ever renewed for another season. I often question, just how do "ratings" work for the kiddie shows, when EVERYTHING on all 3 networks gets cancelled? At any rate, this series must have made a huge impression with the public, for while the Hanna-Barbera FANTASTIC FOUR show was cancelled, SPIDER-MAN was renewed for a 2nd year. WHO KNEW disaster was waiting right around the corner???

After the full season's worth of episodes were over and reruns started, I remember I switched channels (standard practice for me at that age) and got hooked on ARCHIE, which had just started that year. Once I saw every one of those, I think I switched back to SPIDER-MAN. No way to know where I walked in on the reruns, but it sure explains why I only saw the earliest episodes ONCE apiece, for quite a few years. For some reason, when the show went into syndication, I'd keep missing the SAME episodes over and over (anyone else run into this strange phenomena?). But back in September 1968, the show began it's 2nd first-run season on ABC-- same time slot.

Ep.20

"STING OF THE SCORPION" continued the trend of the 2nd half of the 1st season with returning baddie #12, as The Scorpion breaks jail and swears revenge on J. Jonah Jameson AND Spider-Man! (One could get easily confused, the episode opens with the IDENTICAL shot that opened "To Catch A Spider", which also featured a jailbreak.) For whatever screwy reason, the 1st Scorpion cartoon had combined BOTH his 1st & 2nd comioc-book appearances in one episode. As a result, here, they wound up doing an "original" sequel. Dr. Stillwell sets a "trap" (which fails), and refuses to hand over the formula to recharge Scorpion's powers. So he drinks some random chemicals-- goes berzerk-- and then, before Spidey's eyes, grows to a height of 20 feet! It's then time to play "King Kong" as he climbs up the side of The Daily Bugle building and grabs Jameson righht out of his office. Betty tells Spidey, "You've got to save him!" "Which one-- Jameson or the Scorpion?" "That isn't funny!" (Yes it is...!) For some reason, half the characters in this episode have long, protruding jaws (almost like Dudley Do-Right), making me wonder who did the art on this one.

"TRICK OR TREACHERY" has The Human Flies as returning baddie(s) #13, who start out swiping Mysterio's gimmick of pulling a robbery dressed as Spider-Man to frame him for it. Once he learns they're out on parole (time must pass at strange rates in the cartoon's universe) he says he can't believe they'd go back ot their old hideout, but sure enough, they're back at Coney Island, as if they WANT to be captured! After planting a Fly-tracer on Spidey, the Flies commit a string of robberies, while the cops chase Spidey instead of them. He uses his technical expertise to turn the tables once he finds the "bug", and soon has things wrapped up (in more ways than one).

It appeared the show was ready to continue just as it had been going-- but THEN...!

Ep.21

"THE ORIGIN OF SPIDERMAN" marks the 7th adaptation , retelling and slightly updating the events from AMAZING FANTASY #15 (Aug'62). Pete isn't so much a total outcast here as aloof and focused, but gets really angry when someone calls him a "bookworm" (he turned down a chance to hang out with some girls in favor of a science demonstration). This cartoon was actually my 1st exposure to Spider-Man's origin, and while it left a lot out (the constant put-downs by others, the pro wrestling match) it does a surprisingly accurate job bringing the comic-book story to life. Aunt May makes her 2nd appearance on the show, seeming a bit more frail than she did in "Horn Of the Rhino", while Uncle Ben seems even older. Spidey really cops an attitude when a security guard yells for him to stop a criminal. Soon, he PAYS for it. The scene where Spidey, in the darkness of an abandoned warehouse, confronts his uncle's MURDERER is really gripping, better than the original comic I think! At the end, he sees how the powers fate threw his way are there for a purpose, which can't be ignored.

I wasn't sure what to make of this. I figured it was a "flashback", but it goes further than that.

It was about 15 years before I found out what happened, and another 20 after that before I got the rest of the story. Grantray-Lawrence had always been a low-budget studio. The SPIDER-MAN show was a major upgrade in their production standards, but they weren't getting paid more despite the cartoons costing more to make! It turns out, after the show was renewed for a 2nd season, they did ONE new episode... and went BANKRUPT! Geez. For the longest time, I figured they'd just spent too much on the animation. Then I read it was something else. They had a staff of about 5 or 6 writers on the show. I suppose normally, different writers would submit and work on different stories. That's NOT what was going on here. June Patterson, wife of one of the 3 producers, was the show's story editor. It seems she was getting all her writers to submit different versions of the SAME scripts-- and picking the best ones to film. This explains why the writing was so good. But this was also precisely what SANK the studio!!! Good grief. Mike Royer talked about getting a call to come in and "take home" anything he wanted. I'm betting a lot of art (and original comic-book stats, on loan) went missing when that happened.

Meanwhile... Krantz Films, the distributor, had already been paid by the network to deliver the 2nd season's worth of episodes. And apparently, they didn't want to give the money back! They decided to set up their own studio, on a shoestring budget, and knock out a 2nd season as cheaply as possibly to fulfill the contract. They hired Ralph Bakshi (fresh from THE MIGHTY HEROES) as producer, and he hired comics artist GRAY MORROW to do designs & storyboards. Somehow, for decades, I never connected Morrow's name in the credits with all those comics of his I'd read. Anybody who's seen Morrow's work might think his moody, "realistic" style would be almost impossible to animate. CLOSE! But that didn't stop them from trying.

While the 1st season had a very bright, clean, "slick" look, the 2nd season was dark, moody, bizarre, full of weird, psychedelic colored backgrounds, and all the returning characters looked completely different than they had before. Or, at least, they would have... except to really keep the budget down, the new cartoons reused a TON of old designs & animations wherever possible. Unlike the 90's FANTASTIC FOUR cartoon, which I understand had 2 different production teams (and 2 completely different "looks"), the 2nd season of SPIDER-MAN was a unique, "hybrid" show. About HALF the art & animation was new-- HALF was reused from the 1st season. As the 2 styles were so COMPLETELY different in every possible way, it's a very bizarre experience seeing them slapped together the way they were.

I thought the "Origin" might just be a flashback. The following week, it got even stranger.

Ep.22

"KING PINNED" is one of my fave episodes from this year. The 8th adaptation is based on ASM #51-52-- "IN THE CLUTCHES OF THE KINGPIN!" and "TO DIE A HERO!" The 1st thing that surprised me was, rather than picking up where they'd left off before the "Origin", this story picks up RIGHT AFTER the "Origin". In effect, the entire 2nd season takes place (in theory) BEFORE the 1st season! As you can imagine, this has confused a LOT of casual viewers over the years.

To help Aunt May (her 3rd app.) Pete gets a part-time job at night as a "copy-boy" at the Daily Bugle (talk about re-writing history!). While sitting at his desk, he overhears Jameson discussing a "fake medicine racket". Later, he overhears reporter Foswell talking on the phone with the head of the racket-- The Kingpin. The scene in his office is a fave of mine. Kingpin lashes out in rage, smashing his desk with one hand, then says, "I either need to control my anger or my strength. I lose more desks this way." Soon, he & his 2 thugs turn up at Jameson's office and pull a kidnapping. Spidey follows.

Up to now, all the music (that I could tell) was reused from the previous season's score by Ray Ellis (itself dotted by re-arrangements of Bob Harris's theme, similar to what happened with the 007 films and the BATMAN tv show themes & scores). But after the 1st commercial break, all of a sudden we hear entirely NEW music-- much of it organ-based, and some of it making the earlier music seem tame by comparison. When I was a kid watching these first-run, it was quite jarring. First the art changed drastically, now the "comfortable" music was being replaced! What was going on here??

In recent years I've found out the "new" music was all "stock" or "production" music-- tracks recorded on the cheap for producers with little money-- from the "KPM" (Keith Prowse Music) Library-- in England, of all places. A variety of artists' compositions began turning up here, including Johnny Hawksworth, Syd Dale & David Lindup just in this episode alone. Syd Dale's "The Hell Raisers" is a standout track, used when Spidey makes his appearance at the Kingpin's "castle" (penthouse apartment).

"I give you five seconds to KILL your ridiculous story..." threatens the baddie, before a knock at the window interrupts. "Then there IS a Spider-Man!" yells JJJ. A fight ensues, but Spidey gets gassed. "COCKROACH! I could have crushed him with my bare hands but that would have been messy. Gas is much NEATER for bugs." Kingpin suggests Spioder-Man would make a better story. One of his thugs says, "Should I take off his mask, boss?" "No, we can do that later." JJJ shouts, "Why not NOW, fat man? Are you afraid of what you'll SEE?" All these years, I'm still wondering what the HELL Jameson meant by that!

Kingpin orders them put "in the tank"-- but Spidey recovers, punches out both thugs, is almost caught by an exploding elevator, then pursues Kingpin across half the city, hanging under a helicopter, until he realizes the Bugle is about to get blown up by a time-bomb. Halfway across the city again, he saves the press room from destruction. But the villain GOT AWAY-- the 1st (only?) time on this show that ever happened.

The "talky" scenes, despite their strange style, work very well-- but the "swinging" scenes are so long, so extended, so protracted, as a kid I was getting frustrated & bored really fast. It seems clear this should have been a 10-min. episode, but it was STRETCHED out to fill 20! As a result, as I've come to feel over the decades, these shows actually work better if viewed as really bizarre "jazz music videos" than as "adventure shows". (For the 2nd week in a row, even the actual "Spider-Man Theme"-- vocal included-- was used IN the cartoon itself, to help pad the thing out. Sigh.) I suppose any hopes I had that the show would return to its original style were dashed by the end of this one. Who knew? The strangeness was only beginning!!!

Be honest-- you KNOW you've been waiting for these...

Ep.24

"CRIMINALS IN THE CLOUDS" opens with the narrator telling us "Everyone gets girl trouble..." Pete's got it bad for a blonde named Susan, but she only has eyes for Roy Robinson, the school's football star whose rich father owns a big chamical plant that gets a lot of government contracts. One could view Susan as the show's version of Gwen Stacy (she's even got the same hairstyle as both Gwen & MJ), while Roy seems a cross between Flash Thompson AND Harry Osborne. Sitting in the coffee shoppe, Pete thinks about how he has to work after school to support Aunt May (her image in his drink being her 3rd appearance in a row). He decides with his powers, HE could be a star on the team, and decides to try out. We meet the football coach, who tells Pete, "You? Don't make me laugh!" He then offers Pete a job as a water boy...

Meanwhile, high over the city in a zeppelin hidden behind an artificial cloud, The Sky Master, looking like something out of WW1, plots to rule the skies and show all those miserable Earth-dwellers who laughed at his schemes (boy, HE fits right in with Dr. Magneto & Dr. Boddy, doesn't he?) His men kidnap Roy, to force Roy's father to turn over his "secret invisibility serum". On hearing the news, the coach blurts, "What about the team? He'll miss the BIGGEST GAME of the season!" Isn't great to know this guy's priorities are straight?

Spidey finds his way aboard the zeppelin; HAVOC ensues; anyone who's seen MASTER OF THE WORLD knows how it ends... And THEN, Spidey helps a very stiff Roy win the big game, the whole time feeling like a sap.


Ep.23

"SWING CITY" raised the level of menace to OUTRAGEOUS proportions! But first, Pete & Rodney Rogers are shooting baskets in the gym, Rodney suggesting they cut class to play another game. Pete has science class next, but more, a short-haired redhead named Sonja is in that class, and Pete says basketball comes second to staring at her. The coach, so abbrasive before, compliments Pete on his ability. Sonja-- no brain she-- asks Pete for help studying. He agrees. Are things looking up?

NO! Some certified NUTCASE calling himself "The Master Technician" takes over the city's brand-new nuclear power plant, ranting "They laughed at me! But now I'll show THEM!" (Hey, haven't we seen this before?) Spidey comments, "Why do they ALWAYS insist on asking for things they KNOW they won't get?" And then-- the INCREDIBLE happens. The loony scientist uses the radiation to RAISE the entire island of Manhattan INTO THE SKY!!! This is REALLY getting outside Spider-Man's range of menaces to battle, isn't it?

Pete calls Sonja, who accuses him of being with another girl! Spidey thinks, "That rotten Technician! He messed up my DATE. Now I've got a SCORE to settle with him!" Right-- never mind the lives of everyone in the entire city-- Spidey's gonna tackle this guy over a GIRL. It adds a sense of the absurd on top of the already insane situation.

Spidey swings UNDERNEATH the city-- which the badguy was somehow expecting. He used more radiation to weaken Spidey (having guessed it was the source of his powers), but thru sheer detemination, Spidey takes out the guy, and-- just barely-- saves the city from crashing, while the villain shouts, "I'LL TAKE YOU WITH ME!"

In the end, Pete discovers Sonja called up Rodney-- and HE came right over. Dozens of times I've seen this thing, and it only now hits me, the IRONY that the guy who was MORE interested in shooting baskets than girl-watching wound up getting the girl! Sheesh.


Now, if anybody's wondering about the numbers, it's not my mistake. I'm convinced these eps.23-24 were run in the WRONG order-- and have been ever since. Here's why. From the "Origin" to the "Kingpin" to "Sky Master" to "Master Technician" there is an upward curve in the level of menaces Spidey faces. But if you put the Master Technician 3rd, it throws the whole thing out of kilter. A guy who lifts Manhattan INTO THE SKY is just TOO BIG of a menace for the guy to handle that "early" in his career. (Then again, there's little after "KING PINNED" that definitely states the rest of the 2nd season all takes place before the 1st... but this is confusing enough.)

Also, I'm no sports expert, but doesn't football season come BEFORE basketball season? The scene with the coach in "CRIMINALS IN THE CLOUDS" definitely seems like his "introduction", even if viewers saw it 2nd. The narrator's big deal about "girl trouble" also comes in "CRIMINALS", why, when "SWING CITY" was aired first? While the nuclear reactor appears in the backgrounds in "CRIMINALS" 3 times (!!), indicating "CRIMINALS" was made after "SWING CITY", I believe "CRIMINALS" was probably written before "SWING CITY", and should be seen 3rd, not 4th.

And there's another thing, which I never quite noticed before. In this season, "KING PINNED", the 2nd episode, is the 1st appearance of Jameson, just as Jameson appeared in Spidey's 2nd comic-book-- ASM #1 (Mar'63). ASM #2 (May'63), the 3rd comic, featured an airborne villain-- The Vulture-- just as the Sky Master is (according to my figuring) the 3rd cartoon of the season. Which fits PERFECTLY, because when I re-read my early Spidey comics, it suddenly hit me that "SWING CITY" is somewhat of an ADAPTATION of ASM #3 (Jul'63), "SPIDER-MAN VERSUS DOCTOR OCTOPUS". In that story, a scientist whose specialty is radiation is involved in an accident, goes COMPLETELY insane, and takes over-- wait for it-- a nuclear power plant!!! I'd only read the comic once before, and never connected it with this cartoon!

But "SWING CITY" is ALSO an adaptation of another comic-- a 4-part Captain America story that appeared in TALES OF SUSPENSE #88-91 (Apr'Jul'67), that featured the Red Skull. In that, he got his hands on "The Cosmic Cube" for the 2nd time-- and used IT to lift Manhattan INTO THE SKY!!! (Sound familiar?) What turned out to be the show's 9th "adaptation" may well be one of its most memorable, despite its wild variance from the original source material.

By the way, it's also taken me quite a few years to notice just how much storyboard artist Gray Morrow was influenced by old movies. In quick succession, the show had villains who appear based on Sidney Greenstreet (The Kingpin--yes, I know John Romita created the guy, but the cartoon version looks MORE like Greenstreet than he does the guy in the comic), Gregory Peck (Sky Master) and (I had to look this one up) Rudolph Klein-Rogge (The Master Technician). The latter guy played the mad scientist "Rotwang", who endangered the lives of everyone in the city (and the city itself!) in Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS!


The crazy thing is... they were still getting warmed up here!

Speaking of Spider-Man cartoons, I found this last night -- a webpage devoted to the most obscure Spidey cartoon, which also happens to be my favorite one:

http://www.spider-man.toonzone.net/

And now, 3 of my favorite music videos... er, episodes!

Ep.25

"MENACE FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD" has the show go completely off the deep end. It starts quiet enough, as we meet "Hammond", a smart-alec Bugle reporter (who reminds me a bit of Steve Lombard from the SUPERMAN comics). He's investigating a building that disappeared. Peter-- who, between episodes, is suddenly taking pictures for Jameson, is assigned to "interview" Dr. Orloff, who's picking up strange radio messages. Pete thinks he's a "kook", but somehow is able to make out messages Orloff can't-- indicating whoever's sending the messages are the ones who made the building disapear-- and are planning a repeat performance. Spidey speeds across town, and arrives just in time to see a building vanish before his eyes! Taking a closer look, he finds a hole in the ground that goes down... WAY down. As a crowd races toward him, Spidey figures the best course to take is to go DOWN the hole! What follows is a psychedelic panorama that may have left some of the younger viewers wondering what the HECK they were watching.

Spidey finds the building intact, atop a gigantic elevator mechanism, and decides to find out who's responsible. After encounters with a swarm of devil-bats and a giant "guard", he arrives at an underground city, where its ape-like inhabitants (that Charlton Heston movie was awful popular the year this was made) have captured a small crowd of people from one of the buildings they stole, and plan to make slaves of them. Their leader sneers, "Who's gonna stop me?" "Did I hear my cue?" replies Spidey. BIG fight, followed by the revelation that "The Leader" is actually "Mugs Riley", a bank robber and escaped con. It's never explained how he found his way underground, or moreso, conned the Molemen into making him their leader, but when they find out STEALING is is only motivation, they quickly turn on him.

For years, I thought this was a really bizarre remake of the Stan Lee-Jack Kirby story from FANTASTIC FOUR #31 (Oct'64), "THE MAD MENACE OF THE MACABRE MOLE MAN", which had been adapted into an FF cartoon the year before as "RETURN OF THE MOLE MAN". But no! Turns out, it was really based on "ONE OF OUR SKYSCRAPERS IS MISSING", a Joe Simon-Al Williamson story from THE ADVENTURES OF THE FLY #2 (Sep'59). This was reprinted recently, and the sequence of The Fly, on his own, descending down, down, DOWN the hole, and his confrontation with the story's villain, and even the resolution where the underground dwellers promise to return the buildings to the surface and dismantle the mechanisms, is almost IDENTICAL! How wild is that-- a Spider-Man cartoon based on a Fly story!

The music this time out gets really wild, and includes such gems as "Latin Gear" by John Hawksworth (the title sequence), "Mods And Rockers" and "Diskothik" (Spidey swings to the bank, Spidey swings underground), both by Bill Martin & Phil Coulter (the SAME 2 guys who wrote The Bay City Rollers' big hit, "Saturday Night"!) and "L.S.D." (Spidey goes down the hole) by Alan Hawkshaw, which also turned up on an anti-drug public service commercial.

Apart from everything else, the pacing of this story is better than most, balancing talky scenes with the swinging ones, serving to make this my favorite of all the Bakshi-Morrow episodes. Many of the animation sequences appear to have been assembled completely out of order-- including both the "down the hole" bit and Spidey's arrival at Mole City (he gets to the giant door only after wandering around inside the city for some time). But at this point, the way these things were being assembled, I suppose it's a miracle some of them made any sense at all!


Ep.26

"DIAMOND DUST" continues the "sports" theme of 2 earlier stories, this time out Pete is trying out for baseball as a pitcher, and doing quite well. But crime rears its ugly heads, in the form of a gang of APES (there's that Heston movie's influence again-- or maybe it's the DC Comics thing about how "apes" always sell). In reality, it's a bunch of near-illiterate goons DRESSED in ape suits, led by the suave, smooth-talking "Shakespeare, The Prince Of Thieves" (himself patterned after Basil Rathbone, looking like he stepped out of the movie LOVE FROM A STRANGER!).

Shakespeare plans to steal "The Optimo Gem" from the "Cosmopolitan Museum". To do this, he has one of his goons open a gorilla cage at the zoo, creating widescale panic! Spidey races to the scene and tackles the gorilla. After which, Shakespeare's "gorilla gang" wander the museum, anyone who sees them thinking they're the genuine articles. At the ballpark, Pete is stuck in the bullpen (and gets some heavy sarcasm about showing up late dumped on him by some unnamed blonde floozy). When the games goes very badly, the coach realizes he'd best put Parker in, but sends him to find a lost ball first. Doing so, he runs into a museum curator who tells him of "apes-- browsing thru the gem collection!" Before long (sort of), Spidey confronts the gang, and Shakespeare is in the hands of the cops. Then it's back to win the ballgame, during which he realizes he FORGOT to return to stolen Optimo!

This one's almost a flip-side to "MENACE...", as we have down-to-Earth baddies instead of a really wild sci-fi menace, and the pacing is much worse here than usual. When Spidey swings to the zoo, back to the ballpark, then from the front of the museum to INSIDE the museum, it seems like it takes forever, as he appears to be swinging all over town, down to the river and back, etc. The music for this is GREAT, though almost none of it has turned up online anywhere yet. But the ABSURDITY of this really hit me, decades after I first saw it, when I was on an art school trip to NYC. You see-- in Central Park, the baseball stadium, the zoo, and the Metropolitan Museum (on which the Cosmopolitan was obviously based) are all RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER!!! All that swinging clearly served no other purpose but to pad the episode out from 10 to 20 minutes.

There's 2 funny bits (mistakes?) in this one with the voices. In one scene, Shakespeare and his gang watch Spidey fight the gorilla on TV, and he says, "Well-- let's see!" in a completely different voice than the rest of the story. I put it down to his being from the same neighborhood they are, but having better education-- that's his REAL voice, and the whole "Shakespearean" aura he does is just a big put-on! The other scene's in the museum when the curator talks with the guard. When the curator says, "Well let's hope there's no monkey business!" it's in a completely different voice. Coinsidering the line, were the animators just having a joke at the audience's expense?


Ep.27

"SPIDERMAN BATTLES THE MOLEMEN" had me shaking my head back when. I heard the name in the coming attractions, and thought, "Wait a minute! Didn't he fight the Molemen LAST week??" I know rerun scheduling can be bad, but that would be insane. Turns out they had the nerve to do a SEQUEL, only 2 weeks after the original!

This opens with a prolonged swinging scene over Alan Hawkshaw's "Raver", one of the wildest rock tunes in the series' run. Another building disappears, causing Spidey to think, "But that's silly-- Mugs Riley's in jail!" He heads to Dr. Orloff's lab, and hears another one of those messages, which his "Spider-hearing" apparently allows only him to decode. This time he hears they're planning a trap for Spider-Man-- but what?

Spidey hitches a ride under a zeppelin, then accidentally stuns himself trying to land atop a building. By a wild coincidence, it's one of the very buildings The Molemen have a "descending mechanism" build under, and they YANK it down to the center of the Earth. While it appears he's near Mole City, Spidey goes "searching", and has more wild adventures than last time, running into a giant lazer-beam-shooting insect (which appears to have stepped off the 3rd season of ROCKET ROBIN HOOD-- made the same year by the same studio), a group of bloodthirsty warrior elves, and that giant guard (again). On reaching Mole City this time, he's knocked out and tied up. Incredibly, Hammond is among a group of surface prisoners for the 2nd time (I mean-- WHAT ARE THE ODDS???). Spidey breaks free, mayhem ensues, he forces "The Mole" to order everyone freed, the buildings returned, the mechanisms destroyed. But "The Mole" gets loose, tries to shoot Spidey, hits a control panel (it's The Master Technician and Sky Master all over again, I tell you!) and Spidey barely manages to flee the blast-- though how he got back to the surface when the LAST working mechanism had already lifted a building is never shown (or explained). Also a mystery is the identity of "The Mole", as the voice this time is completely different. They thought what Mugs Riley did was wrong, but 2 weeks (or a couple of months, depending) it's suddenly okay? Well, I guess Molemen aren't the smartest guys aroung.

This one reuses several tracks from "MENACE" while also introducing several more of the wildest, weirdest music bits in the series run to date. This time out, the coming attractions promised a "mummy" come back to life in "PHANTOM FROM THE DEPTHS OF TIME". A week later, the promised story aired, but with a completely different title...

Ep.28

"THE EVIL SORCERER" falls about halfway between the really weird stuff and more traditional Spidey stuff. It starts out with a battle between magicians for control of the entire world, set long in the past. You'd almost think you stepped into a DR. STRANGE cartoon or something! Kotep, who looks like a 6-foot version of Yoda (right down to the pointed ears and green skin) loses the battle, at which point we switch to the present-day. Somehow, his "mummified" remains (the result of a spell that cost him the fight) are on display at Peter's college, as if he was a statue!

Susan (last name revealed here as Shaw), that blonde from "CRIMINALS IN THE CLOUDS", makes a return appearance, once again brushing Pete off, this time for a lecture on archeology, which Pete scoffs at. (I dug the stuff, I'd have gone along! Is this version of Pete really such a "brain"?) After, she hangs out at the coffee shoppe with another "jock" type, this one named Bob (they all look alike, don't they?). Susan invites Pete to have a drink with them, which probably annoys BOTH guys! (Women...!)

The professor is accused of scaring his students with stories about black magic & curses, and in the ensueing argument the dean says the guy needs a psychiatrist. "You think I'm mad, do you? I'll show you! I'll show the world!!" (Uh oh-- haven't we all heard this sort of thing before, and don't we all know where it always leads?) Before you know it, the guy reads a spell which brings Kotep back "from the depths of time". Kotep is not interested in helping the professor-- he seeks to raise a demon army and conquer the world! He sics a "demon-slave" on the guy, and before long, the student body's in danger. Oh, and Susan calls Pete a coward for running out "to get help" (WHY is Pete chasing after this obvious WASTE of his time?). Spidey challenges Kotep & his demon-slave, but Kotep vanishes "into the half-world of magic".

Ralph Bakshi seemed to catch his breath with this one, music-wise, as most of the "KPM" tracks had already been featured in "KING PINNED" and "SWING CITY". Kotep summons his demon-army, to the tune of Syd Dale's "The Hell Raisers" (talk about an appropiate use of a song!). They tell him he must defeat Spider-Man, or they will turn on him! He crafts a giant spider-web, and, wouldn't you know, Spidey gets STUCK in it-- before finding himself in another dimension, filled with hordes of devil-bats and other monstrous creatures. At Kotep's castle, he gets caught in another spider-web-- this one created by a giant spider! But Susan's words about Kotep's sceptre come in handy (at least she did something useful), though you gotta think this guy wasn't too smart to be telling his opponent, "No! ALL MY POWER rests in that sceptre!" Although Kotep's body clearly existed thru the ages in suspended animation, once the spell that brought him back to life is broken, he says he must "go back-- into the depths of time!" (This was announced as "PHANTOM FROM THE DEPTHS OF TIME"-- for some reason, they changed it to the more generic sounding "THE EVIL SORCERER". The longer, and more accurate title, wound up being used on a 3rd-season episode, where it made absolutely no sense at all. Like so much in the 3rd season!)


Ep.29

"VINE" shows Peter's luck with girls FINALLY turn around, as he's helping a nice girl named Jackie check out the attic in the old house her parents just bought. The place belonged to a Dr. Smithers who disappeared years before, and before long they uncover a strange seed pod, Smither's journal, and-- of all things-- a time machine! Exposed to air, the pod grows, cracks open and unleashes a quickly-growing vine that bursts out of the house and snakes its way toward the city, destroying everything in its path. "Too big for Spidey to handle", thinks Pete-- so he decides instead to (get this!) use the machine to go back in time, and find Smithers, who may know how to stop the thing. Wouldn't that be obvious to anyone?

And so, Spidey plunges headlong into a nightmarish primordial prehistoric jungle, populated by killer plants, giant killer frogs, and a strange race of furry blue humanoids, who capture him and take him to Smithers. He tells of how, 20 years earlier, he gathered the "men" and built a city-- but at some point the place was over-run by "vine-things". A huge dose of radium can kill them, but they've mutated by feeding off it slowly, to the point where they now depend on it. Spidey heads toward "the forbidden city" to get the last 2 remaining radium gems, which can solve both his and Smithers' problems.

Those mutated vine-things are intelligent now-- there's few things on this show weirder-looking than talking vines. "LOOK! A MAN-thing is among us!" Naturally, the leader vine looks like a different species (ain't that always the way?). When asked, "Shall I prepare the FANGED one?" he (it?) replies, "YES! It has been too long since we have used the arena-- and I wished to be amused!"

Spidey's caught, finds himself fighting some big ugly thing (I'm not even sure if it's supposed to be a mammal, a lizard, or what), steals the gems, the vines keel over, he returns to NYC, and dumps the gems into the giant vine's "mouth". End of problem. What I found interesting was how this episode once again featured some of the WEIRDEST music yet, until Spidey was back in control near the end, and then they returned to Ray Ellis' 1st-season music. It really fit! For once, Pete's still on speaking terms with the girl of the episode, as Jackie invited him back to "explore the basement".


Ep.30

"PARDO PRESENTS" weirded me out the 1st time I saw it (like just about every episode this season), but over the years it's become one of my favorites. It starts out very ominously, as what appears to be the shadow of a giant black cat hovers and walks high over the city, committing a series of robberies in its wake, tons of swag disappearing in an electrical disturbance akin to a transporter effect. Somewhere, we meet Pardo, a really strange-looking character with a long robe, big moustache, the usual green skin and an attitude that shows he's even more full of himself than most of this show's baddies. He's just collected this massive haul (the loot, inexplicably, floating in mid-air!), yet feels it's only the beginning!

Pete & his latest girlfriend Polly (I said his luck was picking up) attend a movie premiere (Pete hinting, mostly to the viewers, that it was Spidey who got the tickets). The Mayor, the city council, and the city's elite are all in attendance, to witness a "new screen process"-- but they have NO idea what's coming. As the show's about to begin, Pardo announces, "I hope you've all brought plenty of money, because this performance is a benefit-- MINE!" Suddenly, a giant cat's EYE appears on screen and mesmerizes the entire audience (except for Pete, who fights hard to overcome its effect). Goons go thru the audience collecting loot, as Pardo announces the entire audience will be held for a king's ransom . But Spidey tackles the goons and makes his way to the projection booth, where he & Pardo SEEM to recognize each other. (How can this be if Pardo is a newcomer?) Pardo escapes-- thru the giant eyeball-- and Spidey follows.

Following the commercial break, everything changes. Suddenly, with no explanation, Spidey's floating in a rooftop water tower, loaded with stolen loot. Outside, panic reigns as the audience runs to escape, the police and national guard arrive on the scene, and a GIANT CAT growls at the crowd from the rooftop! "MMMMMROWWW!!!" It feels like they skipped a scene somewhere... unless we take it for granted that the eyeball teleported Spidey from inside the theatre to inside the water tank.

The image of Pardo's face appears, hovering in the air, telling the cat to attack, and the crowd is once again mesmerized. Spidey challenges it to a fight (which looks hopelessly one-sided), and the rest of the story consists mostly of the cat chasing Spidey across half the city, until they reach the Brooklyn Bridge (always a popular spot for Spidey battles). As in "VINE", the 1st half of this episode mostly contained "KPM" tracks, but once the chase begins, it's Ray Ellis music all the way. In the end, the cat is electrocuted, but all that's left is Pardo's clothes! Pete wonders if Pardo and his "pet" were really one and the same.

While re-reading my early-60's comics, I suddenly recognized that "PARDO PRESENTS" was yet another adaptation (the show's 11th)-- of sorts. The scene of Spidey fighting the cat around the rooftop water tank looks VERY similar to the cover of ASM #30 (Nov'65), a story entitled "THE CLAWS OF THE CAT!", which featured a cat-burglar ripping off a whole series of penthouses. In addition, the major set-piece about an entire audience at a show being hypnotized (except for the hero) is straight out of ASM #16 (Sep'64), "DUEL WITH DAREDEVIL!" The difference being it's a movie theatre instead of a circus (circuses were considered on the way out by the late 60's), and it's Spidey rather than Daredevil who's the only one not hypnoptized. Note both Pardo and The Ringmaster (a Jack Kirby villain who dates back to CAPTAIN AMERICA #5 / Aug'41) wear loud clothes & have long moustaches! Talk about a BIZARRE reinvention of a story!

Okay, now it REALLY gets weird...

Ep.31

"CLOUD CITY OF GOLD" shows Peter aboard a tiny airplane flying over the Andes, supposedly on a "student exchange" program. HUH??? He hears a story about a "lost city of gold jealously guarded by its inhabitants". Next thing, lightning strikes, the engines give out, the plane crashes. Pete switches to Spider-Man (NOBODY asks what happened to Pete), they build a raft and head downstream to get away from natives looming closeby. Before you know it, the jungle's disappeared, they're racing thru a rocky canyon, and the stream reaches a dead-end at a whirlpool! Sucked DOWN into it like the drain at the bottom of a bathtub, they find themselves in an underground river, menaced by rocky rapids and blood-thirsty bats. Was Spidey ever MORE out of his environment? (I'd think this was more JONNY QUEST territory-- see "TREASURE OF THE TEMPLE".)

Exiting the tunnel, they come upon the City Of Gold-- ruled over by De Vargas, a descendant of Spanish Conquistadors (and still dressing as one), who keeps the natives in a grip of fear via "The Volcano Crapowa" (I translate that as "exploding S***"). Spidey battles a giant "Aztec War Bird", whose wings never move. Either the animation has reached new levels of cheapness, or this baby is some kind of creature of magic (take yer pick). The bird is beaten, the others are captured, and Spidey is soon stuck down the volcano shaft, battling "the guardian of fire"-- a giant spider! Someone's fool enough to shoot a cannonball at him, and-- even I don't believe this-- it causes the vocano to erupt, along with an earthquake, which destroys the entire city. De Vargas, we're told, is running for his life from the natives, his "power" over them now broken.

The foursome get back on the raft and continue downstream... or DO they? We see them going thru another underground tunnel-- more rocks-- and then... NOW WAIT A MINUTE!!! It appears they travel UP the spout they came down from, and are soon back at the plane, where Pete says "I saw the whole thing from here". I'm sorry, there's just NO WAY I buy this. A helicopter arrives and takes them to safety. Personally, I think the whole thing was in Pete's imagination.

This episode is notable for featuring a LOT of "new" music, much of which was later reused endlessly in other episodes. I keep hoping some of it will turn up eventually-- it's pretty wild stuff.


Ep.32

"NEPTUNE'S NOSE CONE" begins when a satellite housed in what looks like a Mercury capsule goes off-course over the Antarctic Ocean, and JJJ dreams of glory for him and the Bugle by sending Pete (who's now apparently taking pictures full-time) and lady reporter Penny down to search for it. Lost in a snowstorm, they crash on a tiny island, which inexplicably houses a tropical jungle, bizarre monstrous creatures, and a tribe of cavemen! Apparently, this episode features the TV show's version of "The Savage Land", except there's no sign of Ka-Zar or Zabu.

Pete's knocked out in the crash, and on awakening finds Penny gone-- a prisoner of the cavemen, who plan on throwing her and the "nosecone" into their volcano to appease their fire-god and grant them warmth. He figures it'll block the spout, pressure will build, and the whole island will be destroyed. (Hey, didn't we see something like this the week before??) En route to save Penny, he's attacked by a flying snake, man-eating plants, and the cavemen, who chase him thru a giant wooden door (which looks like it was the inspiration for a similar one in the origin of IRON FIST-- I kid thee not!). He finds an immense tunnel, filled with huge statues and equally huge monsters. (The visual is almost IDENTICAL to one featured much later in KA-ZAR #11 / Oct'75.) The best part of this is the music-- WILDER than ever!!

Spidey escapes the tunnel, rescues Penny, and somehow, the nose cone's retro-rockets activate themselves-- sending the thing BACK into orbit. (OH, COME ON!!!!!!!) Somehow friendlier now, Pete says the cavemen can probably be convinced to help unbend their propeller (and here I thought the wings were sheared off). Back in NYC, JJJ doesn't believe a word of it, since the capsule was spotted in orbit again. He asks "Where did you REALLY go? Paris? London?" Pete leaves him a "scoop"-- a box containing an egg, which hatches a baby flying snake that prompty bites Jameson.

This has long been one of my least-favorites. I think I may have stopped watching the show regularly after this one. Funny enough, they got around to doing a story somewhat similar to this in ASM #103-104 (Dec'71-Jan'72), which DID feature Ka-Zar and Zabu, plus Kraven The Hunter, JJJ and Gwen Stacy. Between the two, I think I prefer THIS one!


Ep.33

"HOME" is one I think I missed on its first-run. It starts at the Coffee Shoppe, where what appears to be an 8-piece band plays (not likely at such a tiny venue), and while everybody has fun & dances, Pete reads about the government testing a "proton device" in the desert. Rodney Rogers & Sonja, last seen together at the end of "SWING CITY", turn up saying Pete should "live a little". She asks him to dance, but he's just not interested. That is, until a pretty redhead named Carol approaches and begins talking about science. Pete feels like he's met his dream girl at last, and an hour of dancing later, looks forward to seeing her again.

But things go quickly wrong when he later finds Carol stealing equipment from an electronics warehouse. What th'...? He's even more surprised to find she's got SPIDER-powers, just like his! (Both the wall-climbing and web-shooting.) In a twist, she webs him, escapes, and it takes 2 hours before the webbing disolves to free him. The next night, she's a no-show, but on patrol he finds her again. And this time, she's brought friends. A hovering globe deposits several "spider-men" who rescue Carol. Because she knows his secret identity (among other reasons), Pete follows on a chase that (according to him) covers "half the United States". (Either he's exagerating, or the writers have flipped out yet again.)

In a cave in the desert, Pete finds an underground city (this seems like something out of a Jack Kirby FF comic), is captured and taken before the ruler-- Carol's father. Seems they come from another planet, crashed on Earth, and have been awaiting rescue-- which may come JUST too late, as that proton device Pete read about in the paper, designed for "excavating", is about to be tested nearby! They hoped to transport a device that would weaken it by remote-control, but the equipment they needed was damaged when Pete foiled the robbery. Feeling guilty, he offers to help, and although there's some confusing and contradictory dialogue (Carol's Dad comes across as a real "stiff" the way he talks) eventually he manages to plant their device on the proton device and flee. At which point, a beam of light shines out from their home planet, disintegrating the proton device (and thus negating all their worries), before transporting their entire city back to the stars. All done to some amazing, spectacular soundtrack music.

Pete wonders if he'll ever see Carol again, and back at the Coffee Shoppe, reads a newspaper which reports "proton device failure" (no mention of it being wiped out of existence). This particular cartoon was padded out by showing the same very long pan shot of the band playing-- 3 TIMES!

Another thing I thought I'd point out involves Spidey swinging. It didn't start out this way, but the longer the 1st season went on, they started having long shots of Spidey swinging, with the city in the background-- and NO visible means of support for his webbing. Like-- WHAT exactly is he swinging FROM? The 2nd season got much worse with this, and in this one I believe they also showed him swinging across the southwestern desert (that proton device sure looked a lot like the "gamma bomb" in INCREDIBLE HULK #1 / May'62). Perhaps the MOST obvious and absurd shot is when they have a high-angle view of the Empire State Building-- and somehow, Spidey is shown swinging past it or over it. HUH??? It's no wonder we saw Spidey in so many underground caverns this season-- at least THERE he had a roof to swing from. (Best not to even think about it... hee hee.)

Ep.34

"BLOTTO" is a riot-- in more ways than one. "Clive" is a movie director turned raving-mad scientist, and like several previous Spidey villains, has a grudge against those who "laughed" at his ideas. Via a "new screen process" (didn't Pardo have one of those?) he's created a creature called "Blotto" which encompasses all the darkest aspects of the human psyche-- and with his "spiritscope", freed it from the movie screen and brought it to horrible life! Unleashed, it begins absorbing everything in sight-- cars, mail boxes, street lights, entire buildings. THAT'll show them!

Pete is seen driving some glamorous movie star with an accent to an appearance at his school-- when he runs out of gas. (OH REALLY???) It's that moment Blotto appears, ahd he quickly rescues the lady & switches to Spidey. But how do you stop a thing like that?

Clive (and his dwarfish sidekick, "Colin"-- easy to see where that tribute is aimed) appear to the Mayor via TV broadcast. "Now you see what wonders I, Clive, have wrought! Surrender your city to me-- and maybe I'll let you LEAVE-- before I DESTROY it. Just-- MAYBE!" "Stay tuned to this channel for further instructions." That always gives me a laugh.

Most of the music is recylced this time, but ranges from "epic adventure" to "crime noir" in style. Dark, frightening stuff! If ever Spidey was out of his league, it's now, but somehow, against all odds (or common sense) he manages to save the entire city from destruction. Well, what's LEFT of it by then, anyway...


Ep.35

"THUNDER RUMBLE" starts with Spidey matching wits with "Boomer", a safecracker who likes to rob banks during thunderstorms. But this is anything but a "down-to-Earth" story, as the focus abruptly switches to the planet Mars-- where we find a race of superhuman, godlike warriors who have apparently conquered most of the Solar system, and plan Earth as their next target. Ares, God of War, sends Boltan, god of thunder (who looks like the traditional depiction of THOR rather than the Jack Kirby one-- except for his being at least ten feet tall) to Earth. He arrives just in time to stop Spidey from nabbing Boomer in Central Park. Talk about worlds colliding!

Spidey somehow manages to stun Boltan, then gets help from "the gang" (a crowd of hot-rodders who, presumably, attend the same school Pete does) to tie him down. But Boomer strikes a deal with Boltan and frees him, at which point Boltan uses one his hand-hurled lightning bolts to send Spidey toward outer space!

After reaching the gold depository, Boltan is attacked by the air force, but to no avail. Just-- barely-- Spidey stops himself from hurtling out of Earth's atmosphere, and returns for a rematch. Before you know it, Boltan's own weapons backfire against him, sending HIM back into space, whereupon Spidey clobbers Boomer. A fun diversion, sort of halfway between the type of stories done in the shows 1st & 2nd seasons.


Ep.36

"SPIDERMAN MEETS SKYBOY" is another one I missed the first time out. A scientist, Dr. Caldwell, being honored by the scientific community, mysteriously vanishes in front of a crowd. His son Jan (who attends the same school as Pete and appears to be slightly younger than him) decides to use his father's "missing" invention (which only he knows the location of), the "astro-wave projection helmet" (there's a mouthful) to help search for his missing father. FLYING over the city in a red outfit, he runs afoul of Spidey, who stupidly thinks it's someone "invading his turf" and challenges him to a mid-air fistfight. (Never mind that Spidey CAN'T FLY!)

Pete's rival at another paper, Jerry Muldoon, snaps a pic of the fight, and next thing, Jameson tells Pete not to come back unless he, too can come up with a pic of Spiderman fighting "Skyboy". (You'd THINK JJJ would want something different & original, but apparently not this time...) And so, we see Spidey on patrol-- with a large, awkward camera hanging on a strap around his neck. I guess in the cartoon universe, he hasn't gotten ahold of a camera small enough to attach to his belt yet. Or gotten the idea of setting it up with webbing so he can take pics of his own fights. Oh well...

Meanwhile, somewhere outside the city, on "Lightning Mountain", we meet the story's villain-- a character called Dr. ZAPP!!! He's kidnapped Caldwell and is trying to force him to reveal the location of his invention. Seeing the pic of "Skyboy", he rightly deduces it's Caldwell's son, and lures him into a trap-- with Spidey right behind him. Both fall into Zapp's clutches, and things look bad... until Spidey noticed the heavy glasses Zapp wears, and decides to put his bulky camera's flash-bulb to good use. Anyone who's seen the origin of Captain America knows what happens when some baddie stumbles into electrical equipment, and before you know it... ZAPP!

I strongly suspect this is the show's 12th adaptation-- of sorts. Quite a few elements, from the mountain-top secret lair to the lightning-based villain, seem inspired by the very 1st Starman story, all the way back in ADVENTURE COMICS #61 (Apr'41)! Oddly enough, there also seems to be several similarities to Larry Ivie's Altron-Boy serial that ran in MONSTERS & HEROES #1-6 (1967-69), including, again, the remote mountain-top hideout, and a young hero using the invention of his missing father. The Altron-Boy serial started about a year before this cartoon was made, so it's possible someone on the show was aware of it.

Dr. Zapp is the latest baddie here who appears inspired by a movie actor-- in this case, Otto Preminger! More than most, the voice & accent is VERY similar!! The goofiest scene may be where he's talking to Caldwell, apparently via a closed-circuit TV system-- but then reaches thru what appeared to be the screen, which is actually a window. Later on, while pursueing Skyboy, Spidey is confronted with there being no buildings to swing from in the country-- and "hitches a ride" on a truck. One has to think after a similar chase in "HOME", someone may have brought up the point. We see him hanging in mid-air behind the truck from his spider-web, in defiance of gravity (there's a lot of that in this episode).

Ep.37

"COLD STORAGE" follows up on "THUNDER RUMBLE"'s trend of down-to-Earth baddies (sort of), with "Dr. Cool" and his henchman, who pull diamond heists at midnight. Their hideout is an ice factory, where they hide their loot ("hot ice") for transport inside the genuine variety. Spidey shows up to nab 'em... but gets careless, gets knocked out, tied up, and left to FREEZE TO DEATH in a "nuclear-powered" freezer with the thermostat set to "absolute zero". Oops!

He wakes up to find the place thawed out quicker than expected... or HAS it? Outside, all is in ruins, and the city has been taken over by cavemen and dinosaurs. SAY WHAT??? Apart from the wooly mammoth and the giant lizards, I'm almost reminded of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. It's one non-stop series of deadly hazards after the last, more and more, until...

The real ice man, ahead of schedule, stops by turns off the freezer. (Yep! It was all a dream!!) This week's cost-cutting padding consists of the exact same robbery sequence staged again, right down to the line, "I wonder what we'll get for THIS?" Spidey shows up again-- they try to knock him out the exact same way as before (not very bright, are they?) and this time he puts the kibosh on them like he should have in the first place.

I remember seeing this first-run, and it was just one more episode that made me really tired of watching the show. At least the music's cool, though most (if not all) of it is recycled from earlier episodes.


Ep.38

"TO CAGE A SPIDER" opens with Spidey complaining about how tired he is of losing sleep and running around in a hot costume. He goes after some bank robbers, but gets clobbered in a most absurd fashion, by a device called a "vibrator" (which looks like a jack-hammer) that's hurled at him from a speeding car. He's clobbered and falls to the ground, which knocks him unconscious. We're supposed to believe he fell from around 80 feet up, but I don't buy for a second that something that big could be thrown straight up that far from a moving vehicle. At any rate, for the 2nd time in the show's run (counting "KING PINNED"), some crooks get away. His track record this season has been uneven, to say the least.

A crowd gathers, followed by police, including Captain Stacy (his first appearance on the show), who managed to keep Spidey from being unmasked by a blood-thirsty mob. Despite repeatedly helping save NYC this year and more than once being shown on good terms with the Mayor, inexplicably Spidey is apparently suspected of being guilty of SOME crime, and taken to the prison infirmary to recover. While there, Stacy calls his wife (a major deviation from the comic-- where he was a widower, calling his DAUGHTER). And then, a group of convicts grab him, hoping to use him as a hostage to help in a prison break.

Waking up, slowly recovering, Spidey decides to pretend to throw in with the cons, to keep Stacy from being hurt. Knocking out the lights, he picks them off one by one, finally taking out the leader in the prison yard. Stacy offers his thanks, and says he'll speak in his defense at "the trial" (even though we have no idea what he's suspected of having done!). Spidey declines, takes off, saying he's actually HAPPY to be losing sleep and running around in a hot costume.

Of course, this is a rather faithful adaptation (the show's 13th), of ASM #65 (Oct'68), "THE IMPOSSIBLE ESCAPE!", which came out only a few months before this story aired. The main difference, apart from no mention of Gwen Stacy, was how Spidey wound up hurt & unconscious. In the original, the story followed a 2-parter in ASM #63-64, "WINGS IN THE NIGHT!" and "THE VULTURE'S PREY!" (funny how the cartoon used that title a year before the comic-book did), in which the "new" Vulture found out the original Vulture was still alive-- and got clobbered by him (I don't believe the 2nd Vulture has ever turned up again in the comics). Spidey then got clobbered as well, the cliifhanger ending leading to the prison story. It made more sense in the comic, as the reason he fell from 80 feet up was, he was fighting a guy who could FLY! (Maybe the cartoon should have shown him taking on a penthouse burglar or something?

Between the setting, the visuals and the dark, "crime drama" style music, this episode was more down-to-Earth and "film noir" in style than usual. This season certainly was on the schizophrenic side, flip-flopping between realistic "crime" stories and wild, outrageous sci-fi and fantasy material (and only the occasional "super-villain" on display). When I tuned in the following week and saw they'd started reruns, that was it for me. I figured, I'd put up with enough of it, and stopped watching. As a result, I never knew there'd been a 3rd season worth of stories (if only 13 episodes) until a couple years later, when I started watching syndicated reruns. In its way, the 3rd season was even more schizo, and made the 2nd year seem almost "normal" by comparison!

Ep.39

"TROUBLE WITH SNOW" was a shocker when I first saw it-- sometime in the early 70's, as part of the syndicated rerun package. This and several episodes that followed appear to be an attempt to return to the format of the 1st season, with 2 10-min. stories per show, while retaining the psychedelic backgrounds and weird music. I wondered if, after doing an entire season of "full-length" stories (mostly padded out to be that long), Bakshi & co. weren't trying to upgrade the show. If so, they succeeded to some degree-- but NOT FOR LONG.

This story probably has more narration than any other Spidey episode, which can get annoying after awhile. A miraculous, "one-in-a-million" set of cirumstances brings a snowman to a semblance of life, and naturally it goes on a rampage, growing bigger with each subsequent snowfall. Pete first sees it while futilely trying to ask Susan Shaw out on a date (AGAIN???) and getting told once more she'd rather hang out with Roy Robinson (both characters appeared previously in "CRIMINALS IN THE CLOUDS" and "THE EVIL SORCERER"). Later on, JJJ demands that Peter bring back a photo of the snowman, or not come back at all. (Once again, by the time he's saying this, it's already been in the papers, and should be considered "old news".)

Pete backtracks the snowman's prints to the spot of his "creation" and figures out what the narrator already told us minutes before. Tracking the monster with a much smaller camera than he had in "SPIDERMAN MEETS SKYBOY" (but still much bigger & clunkier than the one he had in the comic-books), he loses it when the snowman attacks. Via some cable & hooking into the city's power supply, he takes out the creature in a manner similar to that used in "KILOWATT KAPER".

Although quite a lot on the "stiff" side, compared to much of the previous season, this story flies by at lightning-speed.


"SPIDERMAN VS. DESPERADO" introduces a new super-villain (we hadn't seen enough of them of late), a cowboy-themed baddie who rides a robotic flying horse. (Shades of Giant-Man's enemy, The Black Knight!) The high points of this one is some of the dialogue. The villain, on seeing Spidey approaching, says, "Well! If it ain't the dude in the funny outfit!" Just before Spidey gets clobbered in mid-air, he says, "What in tarnation...?"

Spidey plants an idea in JJJ's head to lay a trap for the western baddie, but naturally, Jameson figures the two are in cahoots, and against all sense, the police apparently agree. Even so, Spidey manages to save the cops, capture the crook, AND get away in the process. The attitude of the law toward our web-slinger sure is schizophrenic this season.

Aunt May made her 4th appearance on the show in this episode, watching the news with Peter as a report on Desperado comes on. Considering he lives with her, you'd think we would have seen more of her than we did on this series.

One obvious feature that identifies the 3rd season is the end credits. Though basically the same as the 2nd season (the picture of the dock at night), the credits FADE in and out instead of blinking. Also, a new credit was added at the very end. In addition to the previously-used "Spider-Man appears in Marvel Comics Magazines", this year they added, "Spider-Man is based on an original character creation by STAN LEE." Uh huh. I'm glad the recent MOVIES finally "fixed" that, to say "Created by STAN LEE and STEVE DITKO".


Ep.40

"SKY HARBOR" introduces Baron Von Rattenraven-- another aerial villain in the mold of The Sky-Master, except this one appears to have been hiding out, scheming and building since "The Great War". Between his outfit and the squadron of lazer-beam-shooting biplanes, he sure looks like a refugee from WW1-- but wouldn't you think by the late 1960's he'd be a LOT older than he appears here?

Perhaps borrowing an idea from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s heli-carrier (or Spectrum's "Cloudbase" in CAPTAIN SCARLET AND THE MYSTERONS), "The Baron" has built a mobile airfield, complete with a hangars, held aloft by a pair of zeppelins. (Take THAT, Sky Master!) He tells his men, "I want to take hostages!"-- and they actually succeed in hijacking a jet-liner in mid-flight. With the plane and its passengers captive, air traffic grinds to a halt, and The Baron plans to rule the skies-- and possibly the world.

Spidey is personally recruited by the Mayor, and against this menace (which apears completely out of his league-- nothing new there), he quips, "Maybe I'll use mirrors." In one of the quickest turn-arounds ever seen concerning such a "big" menace, Spidey hitches a ride on the tail of The Baron's biplane, which is subsequently damaged by a blast from one of his men! While trying to land on Sky Harbor, he winds up crashing into it thanks to more of Spidey's meddling, and the entire colossal construction crashes into New York harbor. (Presumably, the jet-liner was landed and held elsewhere-- otherwise, Spidey just destroyed it AND all its passenger-hostages!!!) In the wrap-up, Spidey jokes with the Mayor that The Baron's plans were "full of hot air".


"THE BIG BRAINWASHER" is one of my favorites of the 3rd season. The Kingpin returns-- with a completely different voice this time (as with Doc Ock and The Phantom, the original voice was MUCH better). The story opens with a dialogue-heavy scene that spells out most of the plot in a rather forced, rushed, awkward way, as Kingpin & his scientist-lackey "Winkler" have devised a way to brainwash city officials into doing his bidding.

This story marks the only appearance on the cartoon of "Mary Jane"! While her personality seems dead-on (fun & flighty), her hair seems wrong (blonde & no bangs) as does her voice (I never connected her with a thick Bronx accent-- or is that Brooklyn?-- she sounds like a floozie from some old gangster pic). MJ tells Pete about her new dancing job, saying "I'd dig watching you watching me." Stuff like this makes me wonder, WHY the heck did he EVER waste time with all those other girls who never returned his interest???

At "The Gloom Room A Go Go", we see that same band from "HOME" playing again, while MJ dances wildly onstage, then takes a break to snap photos of city officials (as instructed by her boss). Among them are-- surprisingly-- Captain Stacy, who is portrayed here as her UNCLE. Not only that, he looks COMPLETELY different than he did when he appeared in "TO CAGE A SPIDER"!!! Consistency clearly wasn't one of Ralph Bakshi's priorities.

The action is FAST and FURIOUS, as Spidey fights some thugs, confronts The Kingpin, who escapes with Stacy & "his niece". During the chase that follows (much shorter than it might have been if this had been done the year before), we actually see Kingpin's car pull away from the SAME building he eventually arrives at (the re-use of animation & backgrounds reaching ever more absurd levels). Spidey fakes out the thugs lying in wait in the dark with a web-dummy (shades of "CAPTURED BY J. JONAH JAMESON"), but STILL gets knocked out again, this time by gas (shades of "KING PINNED").

And then, Kingpin locks Spidey in a steel-lined room, chained to the wall, which quickly fills with water. Outside, Kingpin tells Winkler, "Leave it filled for 5 minutes-- then, clean it up." But Spidey has created a web-ball with an air pocket inside, to keep him from drowning. On finding this out, Winkler blurts out, "He ain't drowned!" Spidey replies-- "NO-- I AIN'T!" POW. Next thing you know, Kingpin is clobbered, and a rescued MJ says, "And I thought MY act was somethin'!" Ironically, in his 2nd cartoon appearance, Kingpin ends up in the hands of the law, even though it NEVER happened in the comics. (Shades of Ming The Merciless being beaten in the 3 FLASH GORDON serials.)

This was the show's 14th adaptation, and what excited me the 1st time I saw it was that I'd read a reprint of the original only a few months before seeing the cartoon. The bulk of it was loosely based on ASM #59 (Apr'68), "THE BRAND OF THE BRAINWASHER!", which was actually the follow-up to the Doc Ock / Nullifier story in ASM #53-56, with hanging plot-threads in #57-58). In the original, Pete returns home after having been missing with amnesia for weeks, to a relieved May-- and a surprisingly overjowed Gwen. This was the story in which Gwen finally realized how much she cared for Pete, though they had soap-opera problems due to her father Captain Stacy becoming a stooge of The Kingpin. MJ's part was pretty much just what is was in the original (her dancing was even a feature of the book's cover!). The cartoon, however, jettisoned the 2nd & 3rd parts of the story, where things got really complicated. Instead, surprisingly, they used the climax of ASM #52 (Sep'67), "TO DIE A HERO!", the 3rd chapter of the earlier Kingpin story. In that, Spidey & JJJ are locked in the steel water-trap room. By rights, that scene should have been used in the earlier cartoon, "KING PINNED", but wasn't-- though they did have the line, "Put them in the tank!" (Spidey recovered before that happened, leading to The Kingpin's helicopter get-away.)

For whatever flaws it has, and this bad habit of "mix-and-match", compared to most of the Bakshi-Morrow cartoons, I wish MORE of them had been like this!

Ep.41

"THE VANISHING DR. VESPASIAN" presents the cartoon's 2nd "invisible" villain. while "Dr. Noah Boddy" (Ep.12) used an electrical machine of some type, "Dr. Vespasian" does it with a chemical formula that he drinks-- and feeds to his rather large dog as well. Financed by a group of gangsters (who look like more refugees from old Warner Bros. films), he turns the tables on them and takes over the gang. A string of bank robberies ensues.

Spidey, once more personally recruited by The Mayor (something more in common with the 60's Batman than the comic-book Spidey!), turns up at the next robbery, only to be visiously attacked by the invisible mutt. Believed dead by the crooks, Spidey in reality has figured out the gimmick, and plans accordingly. "What you want with an ice cream truck in a bank vault is beyond me."

Something else else that started late in the 2nd season is having a brief "flashback" after a commercial break-- one more way to "pad out" the stories. In most cases this year, the flashbacks-- like many old-time movie serials-- include stuff we didn't see before the break, which is what used to be considered a "cheat". They do a lot of this this year.


"THE SCOURGE OF THE SCARF" opens with David Lindup's "Stop Look And Listen", one of the loudest and most blaringly upbeat instrumental pieces ever used on the show. Theatre-goers are shaken & confused by an eye-popping spectacle in the sky, many thinking the world is ending. But under cover of what is really just a tremendous optical illusion, "The Scarf" and his gang rob the box-offices of several theatres in sequence.

A "pop-art" themed baddie, The Scarf then brazenly plans another robbery the next day, at an art show. In a scene straight out of the Adam West BATMAN show, gas fills an art gallery as the crooks rob the customers. But Spidey has tipped the cops to his suspicions, and a paddy wagon is waiting at the crooks' getaway route. Fun, but almost too simple.

I noticed certain parallels between this and the earlier "PARDO PRESENTS" (except, no giant black cat). Among them, incredibly, was Peter hanging out with Polly, the SAME girl he took to that film premiere!


Ep.42

"SUPER SWAMI" begins in a manner very similar to the previous episode, as weekend travellers bound out of town are confronted with a giant eyeball in the sky which seems to make bridges, buildings and boats vanish into thin air-- while people and cars remain suspended in mid-air. TV broadcasts are interrupted by "Kogar, Super-Swami Of Storms", who resembles a short, fat Fu Manchu. He blows into a crystal ball, causing a snow storm, and Spidey is abruptly caught in the middle of it, spinning head-over-heels out of control.

After the commercial break, inexplicably, we see Spidey bouncing back and forth inside the crystal ball-- then crash OUT of a giant crystal ball, somewhere in a cavern deep under the city. There's NO explanation as to how he got from swinging high above the buildings to suddenly being deep in the sewers. At least when they pulled this in "PARDO PRESENTS", it could explained via teleportation. At any rate, Spidey follows an underground passage, confronts an image of Kogar in flames, them leaps thru it, finding it's just a projection. A rather overlong fight scene ensues (once more to the tune of "Stop Look And Listen") until Kogar gets clobbered. Had this been a 2nd-season story, it might have been an epic, from the way it started out. As it is, it's over far too quickly.


"THE BIRTH OF MICRO MAN" ressurects that old 1st-season standby-- the prison break. "Dr. Pretorious" tunnels out, and as a panicked warden informs us, he's threatened to destroy the entire city of New York with something called "The Kingdom Come Machine". On a foggy road at night, Pete almost runs down, then picks up a strange hitch-hiker. It's only after dropping the guy off and hearing the news that he finds out he's inadvertently helped a fugitive-- and somehow, was seen and is believed to be his "accomplice"!

Spidey quickly tracks Pretorious to his lab, seconds before the police also show up, and points toward a closet he disappeared into. But there's nothing inside except a cat, leaving the cops thinking Spidey's "losing it". Suspicious, Spidey checks things out more closely... and discovers a SHRINKING ray! Evading the now-giant cat (as he's so small), Spidey finds Pretorious, and his "Machine"-- a tiny, miniature nuclear pile, set to overload! A quick run-around with a pet monkey and a fight later, the reactor is disarmed, as the police are amazed that what almost wiped out the city was so small.

There aren't the greatest cartoons in the world, but compared to some of the really weird ones they did the year before, I find them quite watchable.

Somehow I got off track with these, and since I really wanted to finish them off, I started watching them again so they'd be fresh in my mind. Yeah, I'm now plowing thru the "WORST" episodes-- deliberately!


Ep.43
"KNIGHT MUST FALL" has a guy in a suit of armor-- whose "steed" is a motorcycle-- stop a robbery of a Broadway threatre, only to make off with the money himself! Jameson naturally blames Spidey when "Sir Galahad" escapes, figuring the "knight" was just a publicity stunt for the play that was robbed, "KING ARTHUR". On the road (where there's nothing to swing from!) Sir Galahad rips off an armored car, and AGAIN Spidey feels foolish when he gets away. But 3rd time's the charm, when Spidey does finally manage to nab the guy when he tries to steal a sword believed to belong to the "real" King Arthur. "Sir Galahad" almost seems a tribute to the villainous "Black Knight" (who started out as a Giant-Man & Wasp villain). Maybe a winged horse was considered too difficult to animate? (They don't even suggest the wheels on his bike are spinning-- it's getting that cheap here.) Like several episodes early in the 3rd season, this feels like a return to the 1st season, except most of the music in this is the really weird stuff, much of it I believe first used in "CLOUD CITY OF GOLD".

"THE DEVIOUS DR. DUMPTY" continues the trend of villains who look like they might have been more at home on BATMAN than SPIDER-MAN (the non-super-powered variety). Described by Spidey as "Dr. Humperdink Dumpty, master thief and despair of Weight-Watchers Anonymous", he reminds one of a cross between The Penguin and W.C. Fields (sort of). Like The Scarf before him, he successfully gets away with one crime (stealing a fortune in jewels worn by a famous movie star during a parade), then decides to be audacious and pull ANOTHER crime later that same night! Will they never learn?

Points of interest this time are the huge balloons used in the parade-- in addition to the Spider-Man balloon, there are also clearly recognizable balloons of Iron Man, Captain America and Thor-- but totally mis-colored, as Krantz Films didn't have the rights to use them. I also got a kick out of "Bubbles", the Doc's half-witted (but very CUTE!) girlfriend, who laments that Spidey was apparently "scragged" (she thought he "looked cute in his Dr. Dentons"), then later bumps into Spidey at a costume party and blurts out, "I thought you was DEMISED or somethin'."

Spidey takes out the baddies this time with the help of "I.B.P."-- Instant Banana Peel-- in his web-shooters. See, this just wouldn't work in the movie series!!

Among the technical flubs this time is a scene where Spidey falls, and the sky is moving in the WRONG direction-- then, when Spidey is climbing, but the animation is running in reverse! OY.


Ep.44
"UP FROM NOWHERE" brings the refreshing new trend of the 3rd season to a crashing halt, by essentially taking one of the 2nd-season episodes-- "SWING CITY"-- and remaking it! AUGH!!! "Dr. Atlantean"-- master scientist of the "lost civilization of Atlantis"-- fills in for The Master Technician, and his underwater craft is a dead ringer for the roof of the Atomic Research Center (gee, I wonder why). The interior is the same, though it seems totally at odds (and far, far too big) to possibly fit inside what looks on the outside like a submersible sphere.

After the army attacks instead of capitulates, Dr. Atlantean uses a ray which covers the entire island of Manhattan with a transparent dome-- and then SINKS the island, underwater! There's a few things wrong with this scenario... topping the list is, there's SOLID BEDROCK under Manhattan, yet we see the island separated, as it was in SWING CITY, wreckage hanging underneath... but WHERE are the foundations of the island? If the solid mass under Manhattan sank in its entirety, that would be one thing, but that's NOT what this looks like at all.

Dr. Atlantean's voice, as far as I can tell, keeps alternating between that used for "The Mole" (in SPIDERMAN BATTLES THE MOLEMEN") and The Master Technician (from "SWING CITY") in some scenes. Weird!

The whole of the climax, where Spidey makes it to Atlantean's craft, is teleported inside, confronts him, is weakened by radiation, sidesteps as the baddie shoots his own control panel... it's all so nearly-identical (yet nowhere near as good as the original cartoon), I could not believe what I was seeing the first time I watched this. There's also loads of flubs, as when Atlantean appears to fade out and into view and moving while Spidey lays helpless, or one scene where his mouth is moving, but no words are heard. I can't be sure, but it's long seemed plain to me many of these later episodes were knocked out just to fill out a nice syndication package of 52 shows (the minimum number for a successful sale, generally), as CHEAPLY as possible. It worked. SPIDER-MAN ran nearly non-stop for the whole of the 70's, while Hanna-Barbera's FANTASTIC FOUR disappeared without a trace. I've long felt this series did more for the popularity of Spider-Man than the comic-books ever did! (Never underestimate the power of T.V.)

Ep.45
"ROLLARAMA" --as if "UP FROM NOWHERE" wasn't bad enough, this one is a blatent remake of "VINE"-- which wasn't so hot to begin with. This time, it opens with the city already in ruins, as "another" giant rolling ball smashes its way thru town. Pete & "Sue" (can this be the same one who treated him so bad in the previous season?) are investigating the home of Dr. Karl Von Glutz, who disappeared years earlier, find a mysterious pod, something called "The Glutz Machine", and his journal, which describes the doorway to "The Cave Of Crystal Creation", and has a warning not to expose the pod to air. TOO LATE! The pod grows, smashes its way out, then, STOPS, at the top of a hill, about to smash into missile base "Camp Forward" which is apparently within view of the house.

The police, national guard, army, have no clue, but somehow Pete & Sue figure out where the pods came from? And who let the other pods loose? Never mind... as in the previous version, Pete decides to see if he can find Von Glutz, saying "Our entire free enterprise system is at stake!" (You feel like the writers were into deliberate self-parody by now?) As before, Spidey fights a giant frog, but gets knocked out by it, then wakes up a prisoner of some furry blue guys. This time around, their leader, "Vegio", tells of how Von Glutz created an atomic generator to turn their once-paradise into a frozen wasteland, so the pods he found could grow. After some of the most stilted dialogue in the show's entire run, Spidey goes to "Summit City" to disable the generator, warned that the pods "have eyes everywhere". (HUH???) With no explanation, we find intelligent plants, who reveal Von Glutz is no longer alive, and plan to ambush the approaching "animal" and pit him in the arena against "Goliath".

Instead of a giant idol, Spidey fights the plants atop the atomic generator, the design of which makes it look like it has 2 giant eyes and a mouth. After being clobbered, he awakens to face... a giant caterpillar. He wins, removes 2 big gems, leaves, and the plants die-- for no apparent reason! Meanwhile, the giant rolling pod has waited patiently atop the hill until Spidey arrives before it starts falling, at which point he tosses the gems into the barrel of a cannon, which allows it to destroy the pod. Sue tells Pete he's too modest when he claims Spidey did all the work.

There's SO much wrong with this it's absolutely mind-boggling. When we see the ruler plant, one shot has him floating in mid-air because they used the wrong background. This happens again when Spidey falls to the ground unconscious. All the dialogue relating to "Goliath" suggests Spidey was supposed to fight a giant CAT (they no doubt intended to re-use the black cat from "PARDO PRESENTS"), but we get the same caterpillar seen in "VINE" instead. When Spidey arrives in the city, he sneaks up behind a plant to give it a karate chop-- but when he actually delivers the blow, it's one of the Molemen he hits!! (Were they just trying to see if anybody was paying attention at this point?) As he returns to the doorway, he waves good-bye to the furry blue guys-- and we see Dr. Von Glutz among them, even though he's supposed to be DEAD in this story! Finally, the army destroys one giant pod. WHAT about the OTHER ones???


Ep.46
"RHINO" was actually the first of these later cartoons to be aired on ABC-- smack in the middle of the 2nd season! I'd completely forgotten about this, until I ran across a website dedicated to the show, that listed all the original airdates. And then, the horrible memory came back...

"RHINO" consists of scenes from both "HORN OF THE RHINO" and "THE GOLDEN RHINO", re-edited together, with most of the original dialogue left completely intact! The only new scenes appear to be the ones in Jameson's office, and one short odd scene of the Rhino, in a dark alley, saying "I'll cause such a ruckus he'll come running!" (--but then, he doesn't) I have to figure that what happened was, they were running late, desperately needed something to put on Saturday morning, but instead of a rerun from the 2nd (or the 1st) season, they threw together this abortion of a remake!!

Now here's the WORST part (as if all that wasn't bad enough). I now remember seeing this as a kid. They ran this abortion, and after its 10 minutes was over, went to a commercial break... and NEVER CAME BACK!! Over 15 solid minutes of commercials!!! I'm pretty sure this was nearly the last straw for me. I stopped watching for a few weeks. I did eventually see most of the rest of the 2nd season, but by the time the 2nd season ended, I'd had it with this show, and didn't watch it again until a few years later when it wound up in syndication, where Channel 17 in Philly ran much of the 2nd & 3rd seasons-- OUT of sequence!!


"THE MADNESS OF MYSTERIO" did not, I assure you, run with "RHINO" on the network. But it was lumped together with it in syndication. While "RHINO" was a horrible double-remake, "MADNESS" surprised the heck out of me the first time I saw it-- because it was an actual adaptation of a real comic, and one which I had only recently read a reprint of!

This final adaptation was based on "THE MADNESS OF MYSTERIO!" and "TO SQUASH A SPIDER!" from ASM #66-67 (Nov-Dec'68) Like the comic, it begins with Mysterio looking over a table-top amusement park, talking to himself, and planning the doom of Spider-Man! Soon, he appears in Manhattan, announces his return, then vanishes. Pete races to the Bugle, where Jameson has the TV on. We see Mysterio smash the Brooklyn Bridge, saying, "The sight you have witnessed is only an illusion! But-- it COULD happen! Mysterio has the power to do it!" He then challenges his "sworn enemy" to face him at the sight of their "first battle".

Inexplicably, Spidey shows up at the TV studio rather than the Brooklyn Bridge-- and Mysterio is waiting for him! Some more genuine Stan Lee dialogue is used when Mysterio asks, "So soon Spider-Man? Or do you rent that corny costume by the hour?" Caught in the beam of what looks like a movie camera, Spidey gets dizzy... and suddenly finds himself-- apparently-- shrunk to 6 inches and on the table-top amusement park, about to be crushed by his foe! It's one death-trap after another after another, Spidey never getting a chance to catch his breath, until he wonders if that's what the guy is really trying to do. Suffice to say, Spidey figures out that his foe really has lived up to his rep as Hollywood's "greatest special effects man" (which makes more sense than having him be a "stuntman" as in the earlier cartoon).

This is COOL, and ranks way up there with "The Big Brainwasher". They adapt a story (though simplified), they use actual dialogue from the comic (again, simplified), and the voice-actor even managed to use the ORIGINAL Mysterio voice from "THE MENACE OF MYSTERIO"!! (He got it a bit "off" in "RETURN OF THE FYING DUTCHMAN"-- here, it's spot-on!!) But here's the WEIRD part. Instead of the classic Ditko costume, we get a complete redesign-- a Mysterio who looks like a whacked-out Hollywood movie director-- green skin, orange hair, purple shell-rimmed glasses, long cigarette holder. WHAT th'...??? It also seems this cartoon MAY have been intended for early in the 2nd season, but scrapped at the last minute (the comic would have been done JUST about the same time that Grantray-Lawrence went belly-up!!). According to something I read online (somewhere), it seems when Krantz got their hands on G-L's materials to get their run started, among the materials were the VOICE recordings for this episode! Reading this finally explained why, even though Mysterio looks COMPLETELY different, nobody mentions it, everybody recognizes him, and in one scene, Spidey even calls him "bowl-head"-- when he AIN'T wearing the bowl!!!

Despite this "minor" glitch (heh), I rank this as the LAST really good episode in the run. From here's it's downhill and picking up speed... though there were a couple of interesting shows left to come.

And then, it REALLY got weird!!!!!


Ep.47
"PHANTOM FROM THE DEPTHS OF TIME" was originally announced as the title of a 2nd-season story which became "THE EVIL SORCERER". The title instead turned up in the 3rd season, on another remake. But this wasn't a remake of an earlier SPIDER-MAN cartoon-- no! This was-- incredibly-- a remake of a ROCKET ROBIN HOOD cartoon!

While Grantray-Lawrence was doing THE MARVEL SUPERHEROES SHOW, and later, the 1st season of SPIDER-MAN, they also did a show for syndication-- RRH. This was the adventures of the descendants of Robin Hood & his Merry Men, fighting the descendants of King John & the Sheriff of Nottingham-- in the 30TH CENTURY!!! What a wild, loopy, yet inherently FUN idea. They did 2 "normal" seasons, distinguishable by the story title cards (1st season had a yellow background, 2nd season had a black background, both with a full figure of RRH holding up his bow & arrow.) When G-L went belly-up, and Krantz hired Bakshi (who in turn hired Gray Morrow) to fill out their contracted (and already-paid-for) next season of episodes, they did the 2nd season of SPIDER-MAN-- and the 3rd season of RRH. The change in look, tone, style, etc., was EQUALLY shocking for both series. My initial reaction was the same in both cases-- "What the F*** is THIS S***??" In retrospect, I've developed a fondness for these dark, deeply demented 'toons-- and once I finally "connected" the Gray Morrow of comic-books as the same guy who did these later shows (with his drawing style clearly INTACT!), my admiration grew... despite the tragically low budgets and unbelieveably inferior animation used to bring them-- just barely-- to "life".

The 3rd season of RRH, if anything, deviated even more from the earlier episodes than the SPIDER-MANs had. Gone were the recurring villains-- no more Prince John, no more Sheriff Of N.O.T.T. (National Outer-space Terrestrial Territories). Instead, RRH became possibly the wildest ride on TV-- a bizarre, mind-expanding SCIENCE-FICTION epic (of sorts), where nothing was too strange, too off-beat, too WEIRD. No Philly-area stations have aired this show since the late 60's. But-- incredibly-- 2 of the WEIRDEST episodes ever made-- live on, remade the following year as a pair of SPIDER-MAN cartoons!

Opening with "Stop Look And Listen" (previously heard in "THE SCOURGE OF THE SCARF" and "SUPER SWAMI"), Spidey enjoys a rare crime-free night, saying, "Nothing to do but swing and dig it!" But on some remote island, terror strikes, as a swarm of giant, robot beetles attack a small town, destroy buildings, stun inhabitants with freeze-rays and kidnap them. In a replay of the JONNY QUEST episoide "TURU THE TERRIBLE", the captives are told they will remain prisoners-- SLAVES-- until "every ounce of precious lavacide" has been mined for their captor-- the insect-like Dr. Mantan! With his demented sidekick Igor (who looks a lot like The Hunchback Of Notre Dame), you've got 2 of the sickest villains in cartoon history!

Before I go on, I'd like to point out a few things. The island looks downright prehistoric from a distance. The buildings look downright futuristic. The fashions worn by the inhabitants also look like something out a sci-fi movie (or maybe the late 60's were really just a wild time for fashion designers??). Originally, this entire story took place in the far future on another planet. But here, it's modern-day Earth. WHERE is this place, and what's it supposed to be? Perhaps it's a some kind of vacation resort island. That could account for the architecture and the clothing. It just would have been nice if it was explained as such in the dialogue.

One of the prisoners slips away and uses some kind of radio (about the size of a modern-day cell phone!) to send a "Mayday" message. Somehow-- Spidey picks it up via his Spider-sense (!!!), and makes a point of saying that the frequency it was on could not have been picked up by anyone else but him! HUH??? Next thing, he decides "I've done everything else, why not test pilot?" --and "borrows" a experimental jet plane! The design changes completely between take-off and flight, becoming in the process a dead ringer for one of Rocket Robin Hood's small spaceships. He finds the island, and no sooner does he land, then... "The hills walk again!" With Dr. Mantan playing a mournful tune at his church-style pipe organ, "hills" transform into robot beetles, and attack-- destroying the "borrowed" jet in seconds. Uh oh...

Spidey climbs inside one of the robots, switches it to manual, and creates a "pile-up". He approaches Mantan's castle, causing Igor to say, "Look, master! They're walking right up to the castle!" Yeah-- "they". They didn't even bother re-recording the dialogue from the earlier cartoon! Spidey's knocked into the moat by a swarm of devil-bats. Mantan says, "We have FRIENDS in the moat, Igor! Friends who need NO ENCOURAGEMENT from us!" And some sort of prehistoric reptile attacks. (Where is this stuff coming from??)

One of my favorite exchanges is when Mantan & Igor are talking... "It's a pity there's no one here who can appreciate my plans." "I am here, master! I appreciate them." "YOU? You cannot appreciate the fear, the sheer TERROR that I inspire! At best, YOUR befogged mind can merely TWITCH in AWE!" "Master, that's not FAIR! I can..." 'NEVER mind! I am my best audience. But I consent to your presence." "Oh, THANK you, master!" Great stuff!!! (I seem to recall The Joker once saying "I'm my best audience." --I wonder if whoever wrote that saw this cartoon and was inspired by it?)

Although he was almost at the castle, it takes Spidey another 5 minutes of story, roaming over what looks like half the jungle island, before he finally makes his way back and into it-- and we don't even get to see it. Abruptly, Mantan is speaking, "As a matter of fact, the lavacide is already loaded onto my spaceship." --and we find he's talking to Spidey (scene missing???). Spidey challenges him, whereupon Mantan, swearing he will have his "revenge" (as if they'd fought each other before!), plays again, and says, "The MOUNTAIN monster is programmed to destroy this ENTIRE ASTEROID!" (This made SO much more sense when it was taking place in space...)

Spidey uses Mantan's ship to take out the Mountain Monster, then is thanked by the freed inhabitants. (But WHAT happened to Mantan & Igor??? No clue!) "Where do you COME from, webbed one?" (These are supposed to be Earth people??) Spidey realizes he has to get the borrowed jet back before it's missed-- and does. But WAIT a minute! We saw it get RIPPED to pieces earlier! Oh, never mind. Even I can't come up with a "no-prize" worthy explanation for that one...


Ep.48
"REVOLT IN THE FIFTH DIMENSION" ranks as the single WEIRDEST episode in this entire run-- and that's really saying something! It's also the ONLY one, reportedly, never run by ABC-- as they considered it "too scary" for the kiddies.

Once more enjoying a "peaceful" night, Spidey looks up at the stars and thinks "Yeah, it's peaceful up there!" Guess again... as we see an entire planetary system WIPED out of existence, by the "mental powers" of Infinata, master of "Dimensia 5". Two scientists on the planet Garth lament their entire civilization is about to end, because they discovered Infinata's secrets. Aton declares all their endless work, all their culture, will live on, as he has the entire "Library Of Garth" transferred via computer onto magnetic tape, and then into cosmic energy stored in a single small sphere. He escapes by spaceship only moments before his planet is obliterated. (This is a SPIDER-MAN cartoon???)

Infinata's "extra-sensory perception" informs him of what's happening, and he sends 3 of his minions to bring down Aton's rocket. But he makes to "another galaxy" (they keep referring to star systems as "galaxies" in this one-- sheesh), and Earth. To escape destruction, Aton magnetically attracts meteors to form a shield around his ship-- a visual later reused in the DOCTOR WHO story, "UNDERWORLD". On entering the atmosphere, his ship somehow causes Earthquakes, until finally a parachute opens, and Spidey sees it's coming down right where he's standing! Right into his HAND, in fact-- as we discover the ship is only about 6 inches long, and Aton even smaller within. By mental projection, he fills Spidey in on what's going on-- before he dies. Spidey realizes he has to get the "Library" to the proper authorities, so it can be decoded, that Infinata can be stopped.

And then, to the tune of Alanb Hawkshaw's "L.S.D." (first heard in "MENACE FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD"), Spidey is sucked thru a "force field" and straight into another dimension! He finds himself drawn up a twisting stairway to a doorway where there's a clawed hand where the doorknob should be. Pulled thru, he finds himself in "Dimensia 5", and confronts Infinata, who demands the Library. Spidey tries to fight, then escape, but is hauled back before his foe, who now stands atop a giant open hand. Spidey claims the Library was "lost when you pulled me into this dimension"-- and Infinata's E.S.P. reveals it is "not on his person". At which point, not needing him anymore, he says, "To your DEATH!" --and Spidey is pulled down into the ground as if it were quicksand. "How do you fight a thing like this? A malevolent intelligence-- composed entirely of pure evil?" But when his eyes close, he sees himself back in NYC, and realizes "It's all illusion!" He escapes-- and Infinata realizes he must flee and to escape destruction, and "never cross the threshold into reality again."

Back in NYC, Spidey reveals the Library was hidden INSIDE one of his web-shooters (so WHY didn't it show up on Infinata's scan??), and goes to turn it over to the authorities-- then get some much-needed sleep.

The visuals-- both character designs and psychdelic backgrounds-- and the music (some of the wildest in the KPM Library) combine to make this one of the most mind-bending cartoons EVER made. I just wish I could see the RRH version again. After decades, I can STILL recall one piece of very memorable music from that (used in the sequence when RRH was pulled into Dimensia 5), and I know the original was even BETTER than this remake.

Getting to the end here...


Ep.49
"SPECIALISTS AND SLAVES" managed to be a remake (or is that, ahem, "sequel"?) of 2 earlier episodes: "SWING CITY" and "TO CAGE A SPIDER". Incredibly, that INSANE scientist who called himself "The Master Technician"-- now calling himself "The Radiation Specialist"-- is out of jail after "a few years" (he says), and shows up at the SAME experimental nuclear power plant, stuns the guards, and takes over. AGAIN! This guy's parole officer must have been sleeping on the job.

Using a "robot car" he lures Spidey outside the city, then after it crashes off a cliff, gloats via radio transmitter. This time out, the guy uses radiation to deaden the minds of everyone in NYC (okay, so maybe he doesn't have that far to go), then "seals off his kingdom" by LIFTING Mahnattan into the air. ("AGAIN? But that trick NEVER works!") Spidey makes it UP to the city-- somehow-- but "The Specialist" causes an Earthquake, knocking him loose from a building (and causing the building to collapse in the process). A mob encircles him, but he's taken to a prison infirmary on the orders of Captain Stacy-- one of the only people whose mind has not been "enslaved". (Only "strong" minds and "evil" minds would not be affected, the Specialist tells us.)

While recovering, Spidey is witness to an attempted jailbreak (WHAT, ANOTHER ONE??). He saves Stacy, makes it to the power plant, is teleported inside...and you know, if you've seen "SWING CITY" or "UP FROM NOWHERE", you've already seen the rest of this TWICE before!! Really.

The number & type of onscreen mistakes are so great, one suspects they were having fun seeing how much they could get away with. When Manhattan rises into the sky this time, it's got a bubble over it (like in "UP FROM NOWHERE") but that disappears in the next shot. When Spidey climbs up thru the sewar pipe, the animation of his movements is running BACKWARDs-- and repeats about a half-dozen times. Captain Stacy's appearance completely changes in 2 scenes, but he's his usual self the rest of the story. In one shot, "The Specialist" has pointed ears and a crest on his head (from when the animators turned him into "Dr. Atlantean" in "UP FROM NOWHERE"). When Spidey reaches for the lever on the control panel, in one shot, you see the lever, floating in mid-air. The next shot, it's connected to the control panel. When Manhattan lowers back in place, they use the wrong image of it, making it look like it SHRUNK to half its normal size!

Compared to this, having "The Specialist" use a COMPLETELY different voice as we heard used by "The Master Technician" (he sounds more like Dr. Noah Boddy in this one) is nothing-- but it does make you do a double-take when Spidey instantly recognizes him over the radio, when his voice AND name are different from his last appearance.


Ep.50
"DOWN TO EARTH" is just about the last straw, as it's a remake of one of my LEAST-favorite 2nd-season episodes, "NEPTUNE'S NOSE CONE". Do I really have to summarize the plot? It's easier just to list the differences. Instead of a missile nose-cone (which looked like a space capsule anyway), this time we have "Rabbit-Ear Meteor", a hunk of rock with what looks like really big TV antennas sticking out of it. It comes down near the North Pole rather than the South. Pete goes after it with "Osa Olsen", and land on an ice flow instead of a prehistoric jungle island. Pete calls the natives "Snowmen", and suggests they probably live in underground caverns, warmed by a geyser (as opposed to a volcano). Unlike Penny in the original, Osa is NOT captured by the savages, though in long shots we keep seeing what looks like a girl tied to the meteor! The flying snake, steel-tendrilled plant, huge wooden door, underground cavern with stone statues, monstrous creatures & fires that start to go out at just the wrong time are all IDENTICAL to the original-- only the music has changed!

Osa meets Spidey-- yet NEVER connects that she never sees him & Pete together! (And they're at the NORTH POLE!!) When he tries to stop the savages from dumping the meteor into the geyser, we keep seeing shots of the white space caspule instead, one of them including the girl tied to it. (OOPS-- wrong episode!!) This time, when it takes off-- the rocks surrounding it breaking off, revealing a weird-looking flying saucer inside-- both Spidey & Osa are dragged along into the air, until they manage to drop off into the snow.

The original's scene of Pete giving Jameson a box containing a flying snake egg-- which hatches-- is missing from the remake, but instead Pete & Osa talk about her maybe getting an exclusive "interview" with Spider-Man, Pete baffling her when he laughs about how it might be easier than she thinks. (And STILL she never connects him & Spidey being the same? What kind of a reporter IS she???)


Just 2 more to go now...

And that brings us to... the end of the line.


Ep.51
"TRIP TO TOMORROW" is that most hated of episode types (and lazy of production methods)-- the "all-flashback" episode! Spidey is swinging around when lightning shoots upward, zapping his webline, sending him crashing thru the roof of a railroad box car. When he wakes up, he finds a kid running away from home, hoping to head to Podunk to become "The Caped Protector Of Podunk". He asks is Spidey can teach him how to become a superhero, and what follows are excerpts of 3 earlier episodes.

First up is "THUNDER RUMBLE", where we see Boltan & Boomer steal gold from the Depository, then watch Spidey fight Boltan, who gets whisked to space via his own badly-aimed and out-of-control lightning bolt. Much longer is "RETURN OF THE FLYING DUTCHMAN", where Spidey fights Mysterio for the 2nd time. In both cases, they pretty much just took the films as-is with no changes.

The 3rd flashback comes from "THE EVIL SORCERER". What makes this stand out is, it starts with Spidey in the other dimension, hopping a ride on the fire-breathing whatsit, getting to Kotep's lair and being snagged by the giant spider. THEN, it switches to the fight in the museum, followed by Kotep's summoning the demon army, who demand he destroy his "rival" or they will kill him. At which point they cut to the climax of Spidey vs the giant spider, the sceptre getting broken and Kotep being sent back to "the depths of time", On top of re-structuring it so there's a flashback within a flashback, ALL the music from the original cartoon has been replaced with much darker, weirder stuff!!

The kid winds up running home, saying "My mom won't even let me cross the street!" Spidey laughs, and we never do find out where that lightning bolt came from. Even as a kid, I HATED these type of episodes-- to me, they were a rip-off, and a waste of time. I noticed not long ago that this is apparently listed LAST on the recent DVD set-- but when Channel 57 re-ran the show in the early 80's, it was NEXT-to-last.


Ep.52
"THE WINGED THING" is another quickie "remake", this one combining elements of "THE SKY IS FALLING" and "THE VULTURE'S PREY". Following a penthouse robbery, The Vulture (not "Vulture-Man" as earlier) warns people to stay off the streets. When some fail to comply, he destroys a skyscraper under construction. Then, he steals a mini-missile, and uses it to attack a helicopter carrying a device that can control animals. He ditches the missile, then attacks the city with a swarm of vultures obeying his commands!! At least, until they inexplicably turn on HIM. If you've seen the 2 earlier episodes, you can see how this was pieced together. Virtually all the dialogue is new, and the sky backgrounds have all been replaced with those dark, demented, "psychedelic" skylines. Same goes for the music. Very little Ray Ellis, almost entirely "KPM" stuff-- and the darker, demented stuff at that.

Among the gaffs this time are Vulture having his feet webbed to the missile before Spidey ever reaches him, and Spidey having a handful of dollars in his hand (as he did at the climax of "THE SKY IS FALLING") despite it having nothing whatsoever to do with the plot! The "animal-control" device would seem to make this a PREQUEL to "THE SKY IS FALLING", even though everything else screams "sequel". No point trying to figure it out...


"CONNOR'S REPTILES" is basically a remake-sequel to "WHERE CRAWLS THE LIZARD". All the dialogue is new, but ALL the animation is the same, most of it in the same sequence as the original! The backgrounds & music, as with the other half of this "twofer", have all been replaced with the dark, demented variety. The sequence of The Lizard overturning the boat with the 2 fishermen has been moved to the middle of the story from the beginning. Also, instead of Connors turning into a Lizard, this time, he was experimenting with "reptile intelligence", and reportedly, one of his "creations" kidnapped him and is planning to create an intelligent reptile army to take over the world. As Connors was supposedly being held in "the old Spanish fort", it would have been a PERFECT opportunity to reuse footage of Connors being held prisoner in "FOUNTAIN OF TERROR"-- but we never see Connors until after his rescue! The "thing" (as Spidey calls it) is also called "Reptilla" at one point, and is (big surprise) wearing the same clothes "The Lizard" did in the original. Inexplicably, while Billy Connors recognizes Spider-Man, he makes no mention of having met him before!

At one point, Pete wonders why he puts up with Jameson, but muses "I guess life would be pretty dull without him." If that's all the justification he has for sticking with that job, he should consider some serious psychiatric help.

And so, the series creeks to a rather ignominious end... All the excuse one needs to go back to Ep.1 and start watching all over again!