Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Back On The Job
I have moved Brother Buble and his most cool jazzy version of the Spider-Man theme song to heavy rotation in the soundtrack of my day. It may be heresy to say this but I think it is slightly better than the version by the Ramones which I also love.
You know the theme is pretty amazing to begin with if it can stand up to many different successful interpretations by musicians. And who doesn't already know all the words? If like me you grew up with the cartoon (1967) which was the only animated superhero that was on TV in those days.
The first year's episodes of that series was awesome. All of Spidey's best villains were there - Doc Ock, Rhino, Sandman, Electro, Green Goblin, Scorpion, Vulture. Even J. Jonah Jameson acted and sounded like you always thought he would when you read the comic.
The least said about the later episodes the better. Those were some trippy chapters. You could be forgiven for thinking that the creative team must have taken mushroom or LSD when they were putting that craptastic season together.
On the 'You Tubes' I found this mashup of Buble's version with footage from the much missed 'Spectacular Spider-Man' cartoon from a few years ago.
That series was set back in the days when Peter Parker first put on the costume. They really captured the acrobatic nature of Spidey's powers perfectly as you can see from the above clip. Gwen Stacey is Peter's love interest not Mary Jane. The struggles Peter goes to balance being a kid and a superhero while keeping his secret from those closest to him got equal story time to the more flashy webslinging stuff.
If you have never seen it, it is worth tracking down the dvds. If you have kids who missed this one first time around, you owe it to them to do something about that deficiency in their upbringing.
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9 comments:
Remember it well. Enjoy it and the Spider-Woman series. But my favorites were the Filmation Aquaman toons from way back when. Awesome!
Gonna listen to this tune... I like Buble!
So good to see you back Amigo!
I was worried.
The original Spider-Man cartoon from the sixties was done at a cheap-o animation house in Canada and all the voice actors were CBC veterans, particularly Paul Soles as Peter Parker/Spider-Man. Soles is best remembered as the voice of Hermie the misfit elf from the original stop-motion Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
One of the reasons the second series was so trippy is because the production was taken over by young American animator named Ralph Bakshi. Bakshi would go on to make Fritz the Cat, Wizards, Lord of the Rings and Fire and Ice. (like you needed me to tell you that!)
Please do not mention that man's name is my prescence. He turned Spidey into one bad acid trip.
How does a director ever decide that the cute little superhero cartoon with the snappy theme song needs less Stan Lee and more David Lynch.
How does someone only make HALF Of a cartoon telling the story of the 'Lord of the Rings and then have the hubris to just release the unfinished epic and figure that people would be annoyed at the way that version stopped somewhere in the middle of the battle for Helm's Deep.
Great theme tune! Sort of fits with the architecture in the video. A year or two (or three?) ago the original 1960s cartoons were being repeated early in the mornings and I got into the habit of watching them before setting off for work. Trust me, if you miss your bus, you can't tell your boss "it's Spiderman's fault, not mine!". That just doesn't fly.
http://moody-by-name.blogspot.com/
I remember Paul Soles best from his stint as host of CBC's "Take 30" along with the other host, Adrienne Clarkson.
Debra, I wasn't going to mention "Take 30" because I though that was too obscure a Canadian reference. Not for you, though, obviously!
Bakshi's problem (aside from his drug problem) was laziness. He just didn't care and was constantly re-using animation that already existed to put the episodes together, sometimes creating new episodes by re-cutting old ones. According to Wickipedia: "The episodes, "Phantom from the Depths of Time"[8] and "Revolt in the Fifth Dimension" were, for a large part, recycled animation from two episodes ("From Menace to Menace" and "Dimentia Five") of an earlier series, Rocket Robin Hood.[9] Therein, Spider-Man was substituted for Robin Hood on the animation cells."
It sure does feel like we got the collective scewgie again.
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