Spider-man Month: TV-Retrospective: Ultimate Spider-man

And so we come to my final entry for Spider-man month

When Disney reacquired the animated rights for Spider-man from Sony, it lead to Spider-man appearing in The Avengers: Earth’s mightiest heroes. It also lead to the cancellation of The Spectacular Spider-man, to be replaced by a more in-house production.

“Based” on Marvel comics Ultimate Imprint (despite the fact that Peter Parker had long been replaced by Miles Morales in that imprint) Ultimate Spider-man was the result. It’s been the subject of infamy amongst fans. Some appraising it’s new direction and the focus of it integrating it into the Marvel Universe, others thinking it sucks. What do I think? I’ll get to that later.

Bear in mind, I have not gone over all the episodes of the series for the purposes of this review, I am doing this purely off memory (and limited research) so there may be a few inaccuracies and of course spoilers will follow

So we start with Peter Parker, average high school student, bullied by Flash Thompson, but secretly is the superhero Spider-man. When his attempts to stop a villain ended up causing a lot of property damage: Nick Fury steps in. He offers to help Spider-man in the next stage of his journey and become an Ultimate Spider-man.

This is a reference to the comic I’d mentioned. In the comic: SHIELD leader Carol Danvers (Nick Fury was… I have no idea, I read Death of Spider-man and it’s tie ins and that’s about it from this time period) was concerned about the amount of damage did in a fight, she consults with the Ultimates, the Ultimate Universe’s version of the Avengers about what to do. Captain America wants him benched, whilst the others stand in his favour. The agreed arrangement was that various heroes would help train him to avoid situations from occurring (and that worked so well, I think a district was destroyed in his first lesson and he had 2 lessons shown in-comic before his “death”) here the first thing SHIELD does is give him a team? What?

OK, they want to teach him leadership skills, hoping he’d become more mindful of his actions when doing solo missions and that the additional heroes would help limit the damage done in a fight. Who are these partners? Why there’s Power Man, who is more a Power Boy, Iron Fist, the guy with the glowing fists, and White Tiger, who I know absolutely nothing about from the comics, except that they’re all adult heroes.

What’s the story? Well, for the most episodes are self-contained, all be it with the occasional two-parter. But there is an overreaching arc regarding Norman Osborn and Otto Octavius trying to create their own spider-man or something. Jeph Loeb, who is in charge of Marvel animation, felt that a more serialised show might limit its appeal. It’s a philosophy he maintained doing Avengers Assemble and Agents of SMASH, which are both terrible. My philosophy is that serialised storytelling allows for more development for threats, as well as more natural character development for the heroes.

So, what classic one-shot stories do we have. We have Spidey being turned into a pig by Loki, needing to keep the Hulk in his house without alerting his aunt. A vacation that turns out to be a trap, and Spider-man throwing Captain America’s shield through the Latverian embassy… Yeah, this show is going for the same audience as Avengers Assemble

Hampering this further is the humour. Now, don’t get me wrong, a Spider-man show without humour is like Doctor Who without a TARDIS, it’s wrong. But the variety of humour they choose here is… Not very Spider-man, rather than the puns and quips that Spider-man throws out (although he still does on occasion) the main focus of the humour comes through cutaway gags and fourth wall jokes. Something you’d be more accustomed to from Deadpool. (There's a Deadpool episode where one of the jokes is he says un-alive because he can't say kill because it's Disney, it would've been funnier if they'd actually made that reference)

The old Teen Titans show used this variety of humour as well and it was really, the difference is it was used sparingly. This show uses them all the time, better yet some of the fourth wall jokes deliberately interrupt the action. I will admit that in season 2 and season 3, they’ve toned this down a lot and I do appreciate it.

The other issue is the fact that they’re so concerned with it being a part of the Marvel Universe, they seem to have forgotten that it’s a Spider-man show. Peter Parker barely features at all, leaving supporting characters from that side his live woefully underdeveloped. Flash Thompson gets some with a couple of stories, but his arc comes when he becomes Agent Venom: Yay I say with grated teeth. Harry Osborn gets some snippets of character development, Mary Jane gets a couple of episodes, otherwise neither of them make much of an appearance. Aunt May gets no character development whatsoever, in fact in the opening episode, they literally give us an excuse about why she'll never find out his secret. 

I mean seriously. Spider-man’s had 4 encounters with Loki now and yet the Hobgoblin, Jackal, Molten Man, the Kingpin, Mysterio, Black Cat, Shocker and Chameleon amongst others have yet to make an appearance (it took till season 2 to introduce Kraven, Electro, Rhino and The Lizard (and sort of carnage), whilst season 3 was the first appearance of the Vulture, the Vulture is thus far the only new Spider-man villain in the season)

So characters: Peter is voiced by Drake Bell. I don’t like his voice very much, you might remember that if you read my Space Warriors review.  But I actually think, the voice cast is fine. JK Simmons returns once again to voice J Jonah Jameson (who apparently now owns a news channel that broadcasts on billboards with nothing but super-hero hate 24 hours a day, how does this guy run a network whilst presenting it, or does he not run it at all?) and Clark Gregson reprises his role of agent Coulson whose role is… is erm… is… Oh Stan Lee plays a school janitor

Spidey’s team get a bit of development in season 2, but I’ll gloss over their characteristics now. Nova is a jerk, Iron Fist is one of those find your centre types, and White Tiger is the only variety of woman they seem to able to write at Marvel animation. Badass fighter, limited power set, shakes her head at the boys. Like Dot from Animaniacs; except without all the bits that made her funny.

Season 3 of the show, entitled Web Warriors, focuses on Spidey’s attempts to help other heroes in the Marvel Universe. We have the aforementioned Agent Venom, Cloak and Dagger, The new Iron Spider, Ka-Zar joining the roster, whilst the villain Taskmaster (another villain they’ve encountered several times, yet I still haven’t seen Mysterio) is gathering his own army to stage a prison break of the SHIELD tri-carrier (the replacement after the heli-carrier was destroyed in the season 1 finale)

Then we have the 4-part spider-verse story, something to mirror an arc from the Amazing Spider-man comics. When the Green Goblin uses mysterious artefact #743 combined with Electro’s power to tear open dimensions and gain samples from other Spider-men to enhance his own abilities. Spider-man follows him and wow, I do like how they change the animation style for each dimension, using CGI for the 2099 universe, a more cartoony one for Spider-ham’s universe etc. The arc ends and it’s kind of disappointing the way the Goblin is defeated.

I have seen a couple of episodes of what follows and I can say that I’m not impressed with the SHIELD Academy storyline thus far. Mostly because it’s a convenient excuse to distance themselves even further from Peter Parker.

So, what’s my take on the show? The show has a lot of writing talent. Man of Action took the helm of seasons 1 and 2, they wrote or co-wrote almost every episode. Season 3 is a bit different, Man of Action has yet to have written an episode. Man of Action are decent writers, they wrote decent episodes of Avengers: Earth’s mightiest heroes, and wrote for the original Ben 10 and Generator Rex series (both of which, while not perfect, are decent shows).

The show has also changed in its nature in season 3, going for smaller arcs over an overreaching narrative, some episodes are not to my taste but I do appreciate that more time is given to a narrative than a done-in-one special.

Paul Dini is one of the writers and producers of the show. Paul Dini is a very talented writer. From his excellent work in comedy with Tiny Toon adventures, his work on Batman: The Animated Series, and his work in comics (specifically his run in Detective Comics and Streets of Gotham) not to mention he was one of the creative talents behind the first 2 Batman Arkham games. I think it’s the creative direction the series took that limits its appeal to me. This is not the plight of a guy trying to balance his identity with his responsibilities. This is the plight of Spider-man, and that’s it. Paul wrote the opening episodes of seasons 1 and 3 and I didn’t think either were all that good, he also wrote the second part of Spider-verse, which I liked.

The animation, also done by Man of Action is pretty good, if carrying the same problems Avengers Assemble does.

Ultimate Spider-man is something I continue to watch, it is making improvements and progress, if not always in a direction I desire. And whilst by no means is it superior to spectacular, I don’t think I can rage at it either. Avengers Assemble on the other hand is still cr*p in season 2, be prepared for a review when it finally comes to an end.

Rating 60/100

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Images used in this review are from Marvel's Ultimate Spider-man and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use.