Friday, June 25, 2021

Rein-Toon-Ation: Spidey & His Amazing Friends (2021)

 September marks 40 years since Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends debuted on NBC. Marvel and current corporate parent Disney are marking the occasion with a reboot intended for preschoolers.

Officially, Spidey & His Amazing Friends will bow on Disney Channel & Disney Junior in August, but some short pieces are already available on YouTube. Spidey (Peter Parker), Ghost-Spider (an alternate universe Gwen Stacy), and Spinn (Miles Morales, Marvel's other Spider-Man, given a new code name for this series to avoid confusion), have been repackaged as pre-teens.

Marvel's been down this road before, with Iron Man: Armored Adventures, which was produced for Nickelodeon/Nicktoons several years back. That series de-aged Tony Stark, Jim Rhodes, & Pepper Potts into teenagers. Going further down the age spectrum eliminates any hope of Gwen pursuing relationships with either of her partners, and, yes, there was a time when they were teasing a Miles-Gwen pairing in the books, not too long ago.

Let's take a look at one of those short pieces.


Spider-Man has been marketed for preschoolers before (Spidey Super Stories was a segment of the original Electric Company in the 70's, spinning off a comics version that lasted until 1981-2.). It's as if Disney took note of WarnerMedia & HBO Max's plans for preschool-centric cartoons featuring DC & WB characters, and decided to jump in first. So far, so good.

Rating: A.

2 comments:

Goldstar said...

This sort of series functions as a decent "gateway show" in order to introduce kids to the Marvel universe at an early age. Although The Super Hero Squad was more entertaining, but of course that was aimed at bigger kids, with enough inside jokes and comics references to keep adults (like myself) entertained.

hobbyfan said...

An entry-level series is what I'd call it, but you're on track.