Ranking Every Marvel Animated TV Series From Worst To Best

4. The Spectacular Spider-Man

Another strong contender for one of the better animated hero themes/intros, Spectacular Spidey was ever so slightly more fortuitous than its other counterparts, lasting a good two seasons before getting the whole cancellation treatment on the back of an impressive tenure on the CW.

The show boasted a quirky art-style, great voice-acting and, most importantly of all, a talented and dedicated writing team. Like Evolution, Spectacular Spidey opted for a version of the wall-crawler that other shows until that point had failed to really tackle, that of the high-school going, Gwen Stacy-dating, Aunt May-avoiding teenage Peter that we've really only just seen flourish on film. It also had a brilliant supporting cast of characters, all of whom received their own story-arcs, with Eddie Brock in particular getting a standout arc in the first and second seasons.

The show quite literally lived and breathed Spidey's lore, with characters like Jean DeWolff, Felicia Hardy, Robbie Robertson and more all getting a nod at some point in the series. What really made Spectacular stand out, however, was its expert use of Spidey's rogues. Everything about their portrayals just seemed to encapsulate the perfect blend of tragedy, comedy and plain old evil that so often typifies the wall-crawler's enemies. Indeed, the fact it dealt with so many - over such a short period of time no less - illustrates just how good the show really was.

Spectacular was the perfect wee Spidey package, and marked a resurgent period in animation for the web-slinger. Here's hoping that Ultimate's replacement can swing to similar heights.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.