SNIKT! — Younger Man Logan’s long-awaited return is 9/19 and guess what, bub? There’s a gazillion variant covers to choose from — including retailer exclusives. And, as we often do in these situations, we’re picking our Top 13. Here we go, in no particular order:
It’s the anniversary! — UPDATED 9/9/18: We first ran this tribute to the Spider-Man cartoon series on last year’s 50th anniversary! It obviously holds up one year later. Dig it! — Dan — Batman may be my favorite superhero but if push came to shove, I think I’d have to say that the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon is my favorite animated series of all time. Not the best, mind you. That honor would go to Justice League Unlimited. But no show, not even Filmation Batman, presses my nostalgia buttons quite like the often slipshod, sometimes maddening Spidey cartoons produced by Grantray-Lawrence and Krantz Films from 1967 to 1970. Spider-Man premiered on ABC-TV on Sept. 9, 1967 — so the show is celebrating its 50th anniversary. My initial inclination was to post a Top 13 episodes list but as I started putting one together, I realized it wasn’t something I was capable of doing. Part of the reason, as I’ll explain further below, is that there are episodes I haven’t seen in years or perhaps ever, and I wasn’t really eager to binge-watch them. But more importantly, the overall experience of watching the show for me supersedes any specific installment, though I definitely have my favorites. It’s that experience that I want to celebrate here with 13 GREAT THINGS ABOUT THE 1967 SPIDER-MAN CARTOON: 1. To this day, Spider-Man ’67 is my prime Spider-Man, my favorite above all others, whether it be movies, comics, you name it. I know this makes me weird but it happens to be the case so I can’t apologize for it. Much of that has to do with it being my first Spidey and the one that most influenced my love of him when I was a kid. (I had more Spider-Man toys than any hero save Batman.) I only had a relatively small stack of Spider-Man comics (circa 1973-4 or so) but the cartoon was one of those things I lived for. — 2. I used to watch it on Channel 5 after school in New York but it often proved elusive: In those pre-VCR days, sometimes it would air in that half-hour before school ended so I’d just miss it, to my frustration. (Though “sick” days came in handy!) Other times it was off the schedule completely and I’d have to try to find it on a UHF...
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