On and off this week I've been thinking about this one and it's tough.
I haven't seen too much of the Noughties series. I like what I've seen (The Spectacular Spider-Man looks especially appealing), but it's going to come down to some of the series I watched when I was young(er) as that's when I was at my most impressionable.
These are my final four:
The Sixties series was my introduction to animated Spidey. Now I think about it, it could well have been my introduction to superheroes. I grew up watching repeats of this (I'm too young to have watched it when it was brand new) and back then this was THE superhero show. There just weren't any others (I'd later find out that characters like Cap, Iron Man and Thor had their own animated series, but they didn't get shown. Probably because the animation was dire). When I've revisited this in more recent years, the best aspect has been the music. Not just the iconic theme, but the swinging score throughout the episodes. I'd definitely buy a soundtrack of this one.
I love the continuity, the slick animation and the occasional darkness of the 1994 series. Sure, there are a few little liberties taken with continuity and well-known stories (Green Goblin debuting after Hobgoblin has always frustrated me, but then even the team behind it have said they'd have done it differently had they known how long it would run). But overall it's the definitive animated Spider-Man time capsule.
I'm going to write the above two out, though. The Sixties series doesn't hold up well today with poor animation and less than stellar stories. The Nineties series is close to canon, but not quite and it came along a little late for me to really appreciate it.
That leaves me with two other favourites: both the 1981 series.
Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends wowed me when it first aired here. The timing was perfect: it first aired here in late-1983 - a year in which I got heavily into Marvel Comics.
I'm going to geek out for a paragraph here while I contextualise where I was when Amazing Friends came into my world (feel free to skip): My ongoing Spidey UK comic collection started in March 1983 with issue #522 (drawn in, ironically, by a cover featuring Spider-Woman whose own cartoon series was then belatedly airing on CITV). Later in the year I also started collecting the American Spidey titles every month starting with Amazing Spider-Man #244; Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider Man #85 and Marvel Team-Up #135 (MTU was a title which had Spider-Man paired with a different Marvel character each issue. The first one I bought featured one of my all-time favourite comic characters: Kitty Pryde (1983 also saw me hooked on the mutant titles, a heap of other titles such as The Avengers and a number of DC titles. I got the bug in a big way for about a decade and the obsession only grew in that time).
Anyhow, while this was all happening, along came Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends, finally arriving on Children's BBC one Thursday afternoon in late 1983 and officially endorsed by the UK version of Spidey's comic which changed its title to match and printed an adaption of the first episode over three weeks.
I loved the sparkly fantasy of the series. Plus every week there were all these guest-stars from other comics I was reading - including series regular Iceman (when the original X-Men had a cameo in the Iceman origin episode it was almost too much excitement for me). Then there was Firestar. Most of the ensemble titles I've bought have been on the basis of the female characters. I suppose I was something of an accidental feminist as a kid. Spider-Man was almost the sole exception to that - one of the few male characters I've found endearing on his own merits (solo Batman comics, for example, were usually only bought when Catwoman or Batgirl was featured). You can imagine how I felt about a sparkly new superheroine working with two male characters I enjoyed on their own merits.
Plus Peter looks exactly as I think he should look. Close to the Romita/Romita Jr. models of him in the comics I read. Outside of the 1981 shows, none of the Peters have looked quite right.
I don't even mind that Angelica and Bobby were visually based on the comics' Mary Jane and Flash. In fact I kind of like it.
And it has a fantastic soundtrack by the great Johnny Douglas. Seriously - when is there going to be an official CD release?!
Next to its flashier, glitzier companion show, the solo Spidey series made at the same time seems like a hidden gem. Actually, it's superior to the team-up show in many ways. It shares the animation style and character models and has the same music style, but it's closer to the true spirit of the comic: Peter is an average kid struggling to balance his study while scraping together some money as a casual photographer at the Bugle, looking after his aunt and having to battle super-villains on the side. It's the perfect sequel to the Sixties series while sharing the improved animated style of the early Eighties. And it had some great guest characters such as the Black Cat and Medusa. What's not to love?!
I'm still quite torn between these two series. If I could both together it would be a no-brainer.
The solo 1981 series feels more canon. If I were watching for the first time today I suspect that would easily be my favourite of the two. But I have to take into account how big an impression each show made on me the first time I watched. I don't watch TV and film adaptions for canonical versions of the stories anyway. I watch to see a fun alternative version to their proper medium, so why not go all out and have pure fantasy?
On that basis: Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends edges it into winning position for me.*
* I surprised myself with that conclusion. I came on sure I was going to vote for the 1981 solo series but talked myself out of it as I posted.
