Seek and Disco: Comics TV shows

Spider-Man, 1967. I watched the DVD boxed set recently, and okay, it gets repetitive when you watch five discs of it, but what doesn't? It didn't run in arcs, it wasn't meant to be watched in big chunks like that. The animation is sometimes hokey but somehow very Ditko-like, and certainly holds its own against most of 60s television animation. Best theme song ever, obviously, except for the Metamorpho song.

Spider-Man and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, 1981. The pre-Amazing Friends series, it became Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends the following year, I think, maybe two years later. I don't remember the non-AF version, I don't think, but the AF version introduced me to much of the Marvel Universe -- and an appearance by Dr Doom in either this or the 1967 version made me realize Spidey and the FF lived in the same New York.

Spider-Man, 90s. Part of the next wave of Marvel cartoons, with arc-based stories -- Iron Man featured the (West Coast, I think?) Avengers, X-Men did a nice job with a lot of the canon, etc. I didn't like the animation for this, though, and the voice of Spidey was that guy from Day by Day and Starman (the Robert Hays TV show) who played Greg Brady in the Brady movies (which was always weird, cause of that Brady episode of Day by Day). I mean, I like that guy, but it was distracting.

Spider-Man, MTV. Bendis dialed back his involvement with this, didn't he? Just wrote dialogue instead of scripts, or the other way around, or something? Anyway, it gets points for the whatthefuck factor in its voice casting: Dr Doogie as the main man himself, Lisa Loeb as Emo Mary Jane, Keith Carradine, Cree Summer, Ethan Embry, Gina Gershon, Rob Zombie ...

Spider-Man Unlimited, the spinoff from the 90s Spidey. Spidey goes to another planet -- wasn't it the High Evolutionary's Counter-Earth? -- and jumps some sharks or something, I don't know, I was in college.

Spider-Man live-action TV show, 1970s. Spidey vs ninjas! Peter Parker played by a guy I was sure for years was also the guy who played Cousin Larry but wasn't! Ted Danson as an extra or something. How did this not get Emmys? By being bad.

Spider-Man live-action segments on The Electric Company. He doesn't talk, he has word balloons! How cool! The two-page Spidey comic in every issue was why I asked my mother to renew my subscription to The Electric Company magazine every year until I was like 27 or something.

The Incredible Hulk, 1970s, live-action. 1: David Banner instead of Bruce Banner, because Bruce sounded gay. 2: Anger releasement Vader-looking machine, because gamma rays are gay. 3: Sneaky reporter on his tail! 4: This Hulk never talks. He just rrars. All in all: not that great, except for the score; later revived in TV movies including the Trial of the Incredible Hulk (guest-starring Daredevil, whose costume had no eyeholes because the costume people thought that was clever) and the one I can't remember the name of, with Thor (the guy from True Romance and The Hughleys) and Don Blake, who were two separate people who were like bound together by Odin's love or something.

The Incredible Hulk, 1980s -- ran right after Spidey. Better than the Bixby show. Haven't seen it since I was a kid, though, so I don't really know if I should have it in this column.

"Pryde of the X-Men," just the pilot I think, late 80s or early 90s, Wolverine had an Australian accent. It was nearly identical, except for casting and whatnot, to the pilot for the 90s X-Men cartoon that used Jubilee instead of Kitty Pryde.

Superfriends, which was actually like three different series and had two sets of Wonder Twins, the sucky ones with a dog and the sucky ones with a monkey. The monkey ones could turn into stuff. The dog ones could not. Batman was a major weenie on this show, and I'll never see Apache Chief the same way since the Harvey Birdman episode, but you have to admit, the Legion of Doom's headquarters looks fucking badass.

Batman, 1966 TV show. Always classic in its own way, I suppose, and you can't beat Catwoman or the Penguin. I loved this so much as a kid, and I knew it was funny, but I didn't really understand the extent to which it wasn't serious, if you see what I mean.

I've lost track of how many Batman cartoons there were. There was at least one contemporary to the Superfriends and to Arabian Knights, with Casey Kasem as the voice of Robin, etc. Recently, we've had the Dini/Timm ones -- Batman, Batman and Robin, Batman Beyond (which I loved the first episode of and then never watched again), and The Batman (which I can't finish an episode of because Batman's voice sounds too meek and mild for me to take him seriously, even for a beginning Batman).

For Superman you had, what, the guy-from-Wings one ... was there one during Superfriends? There was definitely one in the 80s.

Popeye! He counts. There were many, many bad Popeye cartoons, but there were also some fantastic ones by the Fleischers that were later rebroadcast on television. "Popeye and Sinbad the Sailor" features some of my all-time favorite animation, and it must be sixty or seventy years old now. The latter-day Popeye cartoons really diluted their name, with unimaginative repetitions of Popeye beating up Bluto at the beach or the park (as opposed to the imaginative repetitions of same that marked the strip), and over-reliance on cutesy characters. Obviously suffered, too, from the essential unlikeability of Olive Oyl.

There was all that 60s stuff I've seen so little of, Sub-Mariner and Aquaman and Captain America and so on.

Why did no one ever make a Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham cartoon?

Plastic Man! I loved me some Plastic Man, and his show was one of those anthology ones where you had Rickety Rocket and Fangface, too.

The Thing -- no, not the Hanna-Barbera Fantastic Four cartoon (which was great, and then they got rid of the Torch and got H.E.R.B.I.E. and ugh), but the one where Ben Grimm was a teenager with two magic rings that turned him into the Thing when he banged them together, and don't even think I didn't try that all the time with every ring I could find that wasn't green. If you're more than a couple years younger than me, you think I'm making this up, and I don't blame you. They don't teach you this shit on I Love the 80s, son. You had to be there. You had to live it.

Wonder Woman. Why this show was great:

1: Linda Carter

2: The first season took place in World War II and had Diana macking on Steve Trevor, but then they got bored with WWII, and in second season, we resume with the nigh-immortal Diana in the present day (the 70s), macking on Steve Trevor Jr!

3: Linda Carter

The Flash, live-action, early 90s. John Wesley Shipp played Barry Allen (and would later play Dawson's dad), Amanda Pays from Max Headroom played his scientist-love interest, Mark Hammill played the Trickster too rarely. Very much an early 90s show, very Burton-meets-Cameron in look, but with a pretty standard Knight Rider/Manimal/Renegade type plot tacked on to most episodes.

The Silver Surfer, late 90s. Surprisingly good! I have it on my hard drive at the moment, actually. Manages to work in all the cosmic all-stars of the Marvel Universe, from Frankie Raye and Pip the Troll to Ego the Living Planet and Adam Warlock, then ends after one season on a cliffhanger.

I'll probably think of more later.