Sunday, February 27, 2011

1981 - Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends (revisited)



Wizard Magazine #234 featured some interviews with the cast and creative teams and wanted to share some highlights.

- The show was originally called “The Spider-Friends”, but of course that was a little too close to The Super-Friends. As mentioned in my previous article, the show was originally going to feature the Human Torch. Although, no reasons were given for why the change to Firestar.

- Artist Rich Hoberg shared my rather low opinion of Ms. Lion: “Having Ms. Lion on the show killed me. I hated her, but I know some people like her. She was extraneous comic relief, when comic relief should be built into the characters.

- Rich Hoberg based his Firestorm/Angelica Jones on John Romita’s Mary Jane Watson. And that caused me to do a bit more digging and turned up this wonderful pre-production art. Apparently, there were many names floating around for Firestar, like Heatwave, Starblaze, and Firefly.


 Also found these great looking scans of preliminary cells.





And last, but not least, discovered that there were a few newspaper insert comics featuring Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends.



11 comments:

  1. oh man this show used to be the highlight of my weekend when i was a kid. that was back when there was such a thing as saturday morning cartoons. but now unfortunately when i watch this it doesn't quite hold up.

    ReplyDelete
  2. and by the way this show had one of the all time best cartoon intro theme song. which i still very much do enjoy today.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I had two episodes of this on VHS. It was one of the first VHS tapes I ever had and I wore it out until it stopped playing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Best cartoon EVER! But the new Avengers cartoon is a close 2nd. Still, Spidey and Friends has the most sentimental value for me. Firestar was HOT, pun intended, and I think I still have a thing for red-heads because of this show. I liked the voice, and definitely one of the greatest costumes ever----I almost puked when they changed it in Avengers. George Perez, I love you, man, but the new costume SUCKS!

    starfoxxx

    ReplyDelete
  5. I don't understand why this isn't on DVD yet. GREAT cartoon.

    - Mike McNeely

    ReplyDelete
  6. That Kraven model sheet is SO Ditko.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hey, now I remember when Firestar got the new, horrible costume. It was in the mid-90s, @ New Warriors #32 (thanks Cover Browser). Apologies to George Perez.

    starfoxxx

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hey Jason,

    I have, over on my blog, a bunch of interesting info on several episodes of Spider-man and his Amazing Friends.

    First off, I've some cool stuff from the most famous episode of that cartoon - ever:

    "7 LITTLE SUPERHEROES."

    Included is the entire episode to watch, screen grabs, pics of the VHS tape, and other cool stuff, including in-depth review and origins for the story...

    http://sanctumsanctorumcomix.blogspot.com/2009/02/magic-of-video-part-ii-dr-strange-in.html

    Also included in that post (but also in a post of its own) is a rare (one-of-a-kind?) production cel / character style guide of Doctor Strange.

    http://sanctumsanctorumcomix.blogspot.com/2009/02/magic-of-video-special-edition-spider.html


    Oh yeah, and I also include 2 other episodes to watch.
    Both feature Cameo appearance by Strange.

    But that's not all...
    in a separate post, I also feature;
    "Knights & Demons"
    the episode that featured the Black Knight (the Arthurian-age predecessor to the modern Avenger-era Black Knight).

    http://sanctumsanctorumcomix.blogspot.com/2009/02/magic-of-video-part-ii-spider-man-and.html

    Feel free to check them out.

    ~P~
    Sanctum Sanctorum Comix

    ReplyDelete
  9. Jason,
    I'm the artist who created the new SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS artwork for that issue of Wizard you mentioned, here was the process.

    http://www.artsucks.com/blog/2011/jan11/spider-man-1-16-11.html

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hey Cojo, thanks for the comment and the link!

    ReplyDelete
  11. What happened to "SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS"??
    My favorite Saturday morning cartoon was "SPIDERMAN & HIS AMAZING FRIENDS"! Saturday afternoons after our cartoons went off, we would go outside & pretend to be "Spiderman & his Amazing Friends!

    ReplyDelete

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails