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Spider-Man: The New Animated Series (also known as MTV Spider-Man) is an animated series featuring the Marvel comic book superhero Spider-Man, which ran for one season, 13 episodes, starting on July 11, 2003. The show was made using computer generated imagery (CGI) rendered in cel shading and was produced by Mainframe Entertainment (Executive Producer Brian Michael Bendis, who also wrote the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book) for Sony Pictures Television and broadcast on MTV and YTV; it featured characters and a loose continuity from the 2002 Spider-Man movie (except Aunt May, who was seen only in photographs throughout the series). Initially, this series was intended to be an adaptation of the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book. Spider-Man was voiced by Neil Patrick Harris.
The complete series was released on DVD as Spider-Man: The New Animated Series: Special Edition on January 13, 2004. Four separate DVD volumes containing three episodes each were also released from 2004-2005. The entire series was licensed by Marvel and Sony to DigiKids/Sentimental Journeys, who re-edited the footage from many episodes into one feature, which is sold as a personalized DVD in which the purchaser's face is revealed under Spider-Man's mask
Complete episodes of the series can be viewed online for free on Hulu and kids' entertainment channel Kabillion beginning May 1, 2008.
This series is able to be viewed online using the Netflix watch instantly feature available to any paying subscribers.
The CGI version of Marvel's popular superhero features the voice talents of Neil Patrick Harris as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Lisa Loeb as Mary Jane, and Ian Ziering as Harry Osborn. Assuming this series fits into the movie continuity, it takes place sometime after the first, but before the second (as Norman Osborn is dead). Here, Peter has graduated from high school and is attending Empire State University (although in the films he attends Columbia University). Still burdened with the desire to use his incredible, spider bite-derived powers to do good, he finds it hard balancing his responsibilities of being a superhero with schoolwork and his romance with Mary Jane Watson. Almost in all of this series, Harry craves for revenge on Spider-Man. But in the When Sparks Fly episode, Harry intends to help Spider-Man trap Electro.
Peter Parker was originally supposed to wear baggier clothes to hide his superhero musculature, but cost-effective difficulties with the CG format prevented folds from being put into his everyday attire. As a result, Peter's street clothes were redesigned to be close-fitting and contemporary, while still managing to hide his physique (and the costume he wore under his duds) as Spider-Man.
Aunt May does not appear in this series (except for a photograph in Peter's bedroom), because MTV executives feared that the appearance of any old people would deter their target youth audience from watching. By contrast, she made several prominent appearances in the first animated series and was a regular character on NBC's Spider-Man and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends in the 1980s, and Spider-Man: The Animated Series on Fox Television.
The series employed a device which became a calling card for the show, where Peter Parker could apparently move so fast as to almost instantly change into his costume at will. Some of these scenes were visually creative. The police interrogation room sequence from "Law of the Jungle" is frequently cited as one of the best, with Peter shedding his clothes and suiting up as Spider-Man in a series of frozen, strobe light images as the emergency power struggles to kick in. However, other "quick changes" were downright baffling. As he runs down an alley to change in "Mind Games, Part 2," Peter's outer clothes literally morph into his costume in a burst of light. The first episode of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, "The Power of Doctor Octopus," featured the fastest change into costume before this series.
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