Thoughts on the new ‘Ultimate Spider-man’ Cartoon

I don’t watch a lot of new TV. Adventure Time, Community, and The Office are the only shows I bother staying up to date with, which usually means digitally acquiring episodes or buying them for silly prices on Amazon Instant because we have no actual TV channels at my house. But with a summer full of (hopefully) awesome comic book movies ahead, I’ve gotten the itch to get back into some animated superhero shows.

So, a new Spider-man cartoon based on the Ultimate line of comics, with a heavy dose of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Coulson? What? Stan Lee plays a janitor at his high school? This sounds like a pretty awesome Spider-man show.

Then I watched the first two episodes.

Your Spazzy Neighborhood Spider-man

I get it that Spidey is a mouthy high schooler. I’m actually looking forward to getting more of that in the new Spidey movie this summer. It’s just that they took it to an annoying level in this new show. For these first two episodes I felt like I was watching Saved By the Bell: The Spider-man Years. As I told my wife, this seems like a Spider-man cartoon that was made by Spider-man.

Peter Parker pauses the story a lot to explain things, doodle on the screen, and crack jokes about villains. I don’t have a problem with that, the creators just take every opportunity available to ham it up, and it got very old. I think Ultimate Spider-man has a lot going for it and I really want to like it and tune in (or download) every week, so we’ll see how things pan out in future episodes.

The Premise

Ultimate Spider-man is one of the comic series that I actually remember reading regularly in high school. I was in to comics right around the time Marvel starting releasing the Ultimate lines, and I really dug them. I had been a huge fan of the 90s Spider-man cartoon and even the Ultimate Spider-man video game, so I was looking forward to this show.

It’s been so long since I’ve read the comics, but basically it’s a reboot of the Spider-man timeline, getting him back in high-school, adding in some elements of S.H.I.E.L.D., and giving new life to some villains. In the cartoon, they took it a step further and put Peter Parker in a high school under the supervision of Agent Coulson (actually voiced by Clark Gregg). He’s joined by other young heroes that S.H.I.E.L.D. is tutoring including Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Nova, and White Tiger. Oh, and Stan Lee is their janitor.

Don’t Let Me Down, Spidey

I’m willing to give Spider-man the benefit of the doubt and put up with the cheesy shenanigans for a while with the hope that it will all get better. Having missed out on the Spectacular Spider-man (I know, I need to watch it), I want to have a new Spidey show to keep up on. Especially one with Agent Coulson.

Did you get a chance to catch the first two episodes of Ultimate Spider-man? What did you think? Sound off in the comments if your Spider sense is tingling.