Animation Spider-Man: Freshman Year

[Venom 1988]

I wouldn't say this show is useless or it doesn't deserve to exist, but I do question creative process behind it. It seems that when the show was first announced, the intention was for it to be firmly in the main MCU but obviously at some point during production (I would guess between it's annoucement and the following year's SDCC panel), they decided to shift gears and make this an alternate MCU branch timeline. Going from being a prequel show where they are limited on what they can do to essentially a What If spinoff where everything available on the table is a big change. And I'm kinda afraid that leap in direction mid production might hamper the quality of the show. It also makes me wonder if the direction change came from higher up but who is to say.


X-Men '97 knew what it was going to be from the getgo. It was a revival/sequel to the TAS and the love for the original show and the X-Men in general shows it the final product. For me personally, it kind of killed my hype for the show. I'm still going to watch it and give it a chance, but I'm not exactly excited for it either (maybe a trailer will change my mind). The tweets from the writers and staff getting laid off after finishing season 1 doesn't bode well either. But I hope it's not bad though. In fact I hope it does prove it wrong and it turns out to be a good and entertaining show. I really dig the Ditko art sytle they chose for it. They have had several years to work on it so hopefully it turns out great.

In slightly related news though, it seems Liza Singer (the director for this show and who also previously worked on Harley Quinn), just tweeted the other day that she has been hired to work on another Marvel show. She doesn't say if its animated but I assume it will be.

 

[Spider-Fan]

I wouldn't say this show is useless or it doesn't deserve to exist, but I do question creative process behind it. It seems that when the show was first announced, the intention was for it to be firmly in the main MCU but obviously at some point during production (I would guess between it's annoucement and the following year's SDCC panel), they decided to shift gears and make this an alternate MCU branch timeline. Going from being a prequel show where they are limited on what they can do to essentially a What If spinoff where everything available on the table is a big change. And I'm kinda afraid that leap in direction mid production might hamper the quality of the show. It also makes me wonder if the direction change came from higher up but who is to say.


X-Men '97 knew what it was going to be from the getgo. It was a revival/sequel to the TAS and the love for the original show and the X-Men in general shows it the final product. For me personally, it kind of killed my hype for the show. I'm still going to watch it and give it a chance, but I'm not exactly excited for it either (maybe a trailer will change my mind). The tweets from the writers and staff getting laid off after finishing season 1 doesn't bode well either. But I hope it's not bad though. In fact I hope it does prove it wrong and it turns out to be a good and entertaining show. I really dig the Ditko art sytle they chose for it. They have had several years to work on it so hopefully it turns out great.

In slightly related news though, it seems Liza Singer (the director for this show and who also previously worked on Harley Queen), just tweeted the other day that she has been hired to work on another Marvel show. She doesn't say if its animated but I assume it will be.

Like with the Sony deal, I have no way of knowing this....but it being an alternate universe I think is part of the limits on the license deal for the Holland Spider-Man films. Much like it appears to me Sony cannot make Spider-Man live action movies to compete against the MCU ones, I think Marvel Studios likewise would have to approve a series involving the Spider-Man featured in their movies, which Disney likely doesn't want to pay Sony for. So what we get is this "It resembles but is legally distinct" version of Spider-Man that's off in his own little world. I am betting that's why there is all this....weirdness

 

[Lip]

I mean, when they first announced it, I didn't really care about it. I just loved the art style.

But I really hated the idea of reviving X-Men 90s cartoon instead of coming up with an original idea. And here I am thinking X-Men '97 is the best X-Men adaptation done so far.

So I'm just going to hope this is as good as '97.

 

[Venom 1988]

Like with the Sony deal, I have no way of knowing this....but it being an alternate universe I think is part of the limits on the license deal for the Holland Spider-Man films. Much like it appears to me Sony cannot make Spider-Man live action movies to compete against the MCU ones, I think Marvel Studios likewise would have to approve a series involving the Spider-Man featured in their movies, which Disney likely doesn't want to pay Sony for. So what we get is this "It resembles but is legally distinct" version of Spider-Man that's off in his own little world. I am betting that's why there is all this....weirdness

Yea I can could see something like that being the case. It such a weird move to make mid-production.

 

[Spider-Fan]

Yea I can could see something like that being the case. It such a weird move to make mid-production.

I think a lot of the legal particulars got worked out sometime after Morbius was filmed and before No Way Home was finished. Cause clearly Sony was trying to connect their movies to the MCU and Morbius clearly at one point had Morbius in the same jail as Vulture. So sometime during its many delays, all those scenes got reworked and they had to make it clear it wasn't the MCU. I can easily see Sony once all that was going down "oh yeah, well we don't consent to your cartoon" and then Marvel having to pivot

 

[TheVileOne]

I will give the show a shot. Not everything has to be X-Men '97. X-Men: Evolution back in the day was an adjustment as well, but it turned out to be a very good series, and we got 52 episodes out of it.

People worship Spectacular Spider-Man, but I never thought it was anywhere near as good as Spider-Man: TAS, and that's fine. Spider-Man shows will continue getting made for years because it's Spider-Man. And they will all be different.

Just like The Batman never really measured up to Batman: TAS but The Batman still kind of ended up doing some cool stuff and had a solid run.