Last week, a lot of you Comic Vine maniacs heartily agreed with my sentiment that the 90s X-MEN cartoon created a whole a generation of comics fans. However, some of you countered and said that your entry point was actually the 90s SPIDER-MAN ‘toon. I was thinking of doing a write-up of that series but, honestly, I’m not as fond of it as I am of the X-MEN toon and one of my reasons actually ties a little into today’s amorous holiday (it even relates to Inferiorego's plea for supervillains needing love, too!) In lieu of an extensive write-up, I just wanted to touch on the show's odd nature; namely how more villains were defeated with kisses than with punches!
I mentioned in my retrospective that I see X-MEN as one of the last gasps of kids programming’s wild days. Content guidelines got a lot a stricter as the 90s and, thus, since SPIDER-MAN debuted a few years later, there's a marked difference in how intense it could get. Among many things, the word death could never be uttered, laser pistols had to be used in place of real guns, vampires could never be shown (thus, Morbius thirsted for plasma instead of blood and he drained it out of suckers on his forearms) and, most notably, Spidey couldn't punch anybody.
When you’re forced to put a superhero into adventures where he can’t actually hit the bad guys, you’ve got to find some creative solutions to make things exciting. The solution, in this case, was love and the show embraced the soap operatic elements of Spidey more fully than the comics ever had. Not only did storylines often consist of many serialized parts, I remember a lot more emphasis on Peter's girl problems with MJ and Felicia. Of course, when you're an 8-year-old and kooties are still a legitimate threat, the last thing you want to see is all this mushy stuff.
Anyway, those are the memories of the 90s SPIDER-MAN cartoon that've been conjured up for me by Valentine's Day. How do you Comic Vine maniacs feel about this show? Did you look upon more fondly? Do you think the schmaltzy stuff wasn't as over-powering as I remember? Would you actually prefer Spidey opt out of fighting his rogues so as to sit them down and sort out their relationship problems? Is the power of love a curious thing that can make one man weep and another man sing?Let this intro jog your memory...
Tom Pinchuk’s the writer of HYBRID BASTARDS! & UNIMAGINABLE . Order them on Amazon here & here . Follow him on Twitter: @tompinchuk
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