In the ’90s, Marvel was facing some problems. The company was dealing with the threat of bankruptcy. Its attempts at live action films weren’t doing the most successful. But there was one area the company was having great success in: animation.
Throughout the ’90s there were several animated series based on Marvel properties – arguably too many. But the two most successful of the bunch were X-Men: The Animated Series and Spider-Man: The Animated Series. While the animation itself may not have aged well over the years, the writing for both shows is still praised to this day.
In fact, the former was so beloved that Marvel has recently revived under a new name X-Men ’97. While the show is still in its infancy, it’s received rave reviews so far. If it proves to continue to be another hit for Marvel, I think the studio should give a similar treatment to Spider-Man.
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Now, unlike the original animated X-Men series, Spider-Man had a major plot thread that was left unresolved to the frustration of many viewers. That hopefully could be properly resolved in a revival show.
It is important to note that Spider-Man: The Animated Series based most of it’s storylines from the comics. Because it was a children’s show, obviously certain elements had to be censored and toned down. But the show was still able to deal with serious moments extremely well. One story taken from the comics was when Spider-Man visited a terminally ill child to fulfill their last wish. Another story that actually had a dark tone to it was the Hydro-Man arc. In the show the character was portrayed as being the ex-boyfriend of Mary Jane Watson who was stalking her. The character was later brought back as a clone, and that’s where the series actually ended.
As I said before, because it was geared towards children, some things had to be changed for ratings. One of those changes was with Mary Jane Watson. In the comics there’s the infamous story where the Green Goblin kidnaps Peter Parker’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy and throws her off a bridge. Despite Spider-Man catching her, he still fails to prevent her death. In the show this was changed to Mary Jane being the one who was kidnapped and because they couldn’t straight up kill a character like that off she instead fell into a portal to another dimension. How the incident played out after that seems somehow worse than if they had killed her.
In the following season Mary Jane appeared to have come back completely fine. Her and Peter even got back together and got married. However, it was revealed that she wasn’t actually the real Mary Jane. In another pull from the comics. Peter found out that a professor had made clones of both Hydro Man and Mary Jane. The clones ended upi being unstable and ultimately disintegrated, leaving Peter traumatized. And he still had no idea where the real Mary Jane was. Towards the end of the series, after adapting storylines like “Secret Wars” and “The Clone Saga,” the show ended with Spider-Man going on a journey with Madame Web who promised to help him find the real Mary Jane…..and then that was it.
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Throughout the years, the show’s writers have said that the series wasn’t really cancelled, and that they had simply made the amount of episodes they were hired to do. That was also combined with the fact that one of the studios went out of business and producer Avi Arad did not get along with the other studios. So, all of this led to no additional episodes unfortunately. There were some ideas and concepts for another season that presumably would’ve resolved the Mary Jane story, but none have come to fruition yet.
If Marvel wanted to do a revival of the series, now is the time.eTo have both the 90s versions of X-Men and Spider-Man back again – and at the same time – would be great for fans. And although there is an animated Spider-Man series already in the works, the concept of the multiverse allows for more than one to successfully thrive. Even if it’s for the sake of nostalgia.
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