Retro Toons #4: Spider-Woman

The 60's saw several Marvel Comics Characters make the jump to animated series. Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, The Avengers; which incidentally where more like motion comics than actual animated series, were the first ones to make the cut. With stories and artwork, lifted straight from the comic book panels it was like watching the comics books come to life, in a sort of stilted, popup book kind of way.

By the 1970s, the animated series landscape had become devoid of Marvel's characters beyond reruns. No new animated series were made until 1978 when a new Fantastic Four cartoon was released.

In 1977 however, then Marvel Publisher Stan Lee, decided they needed to trademark the name Spider-Woman, if just for the sake of having it, since anybody could come around and put out a Spider-Woman character and work of off the popularity of Spider-Man. So they did just that; writer Archie Goodwin created her general character and origin, while artist Marie Severin created her look and design. After a successful debut in Marvel Spotlight #32 featuring Nick Fury, she got her own ongoing comic book series, and a couple years later, in 1979, got her very own Saturday morning cartoon.

Created by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises and Marvel Comics Animation, the cartoon was aired on ABC from September of 1979 to January of 1980, and altered Spider-Woman from her comic book counterpart. While she retained her general spider-like powers like wall crawling and webbing; and her name, her origin was altered, got all new powers some extrapolated from Spider-Man, and she received the necessary sidekicks every cartoon at the time had to feature.

Spider-Woman / Jessica Drew is voiced by Joan Van Ark, of Knot's Landing fame.

The cartoon's intro offers quick recap of her origin: As child she was bitten by a very poisonous spider in her father's lab. Him being a scientist, uses an experimental Spider based serum and presto, spider-powers.

While she shares some powers with Spider-Man, Spider-Woman however, is not simply a female version of Spider-Man. She is by her own right a strong female lead with powers of her own. She was her Venom Sting, which allows her to project energy blasts from her hands. Her Webbing which projects small white tendrils from her finger tips, her enhanced spider-sense which can let her see future events unfolding, Flight with the aid of her under arm web wings and several other convenience based, or script driven powers depending on the situation; including but not limited to, Arachnid telepathy, where she can communicate and control spiders telepathically and web based air bubbles to breath under water.

Uncharacteristically for a 1970's cartoon, Jessica is portrayed as a strong independent single woman that holds a high profile job. Quite the role model even if the writers have her play down her own strengths when in the Jessica Drew guise for some reason.

The cartoon also grabs some inspiration from other shows of the time such as Jessica Drew's transformation sequence into Spider-Woman, where she spins much like DCs Wonder Woman, and is transformed in a flash of light.

The cartoon lasted all of 16 episodes before being summarily cancelled. Through the run she only really battles 3 Marvel villains. The Evil demon Dormammu in the episode "Realm of Darkness", The Kingpin of Crime in "The Kingpin strikes again" and Marvel's Dracula™ in the episode Dracula's Revenge. None of which are actually her enemies in the comics. Dormammu is a Dr. Strange villain, Dracula has faced off against a number of super heroes, but the Jessica Drew Spider-Woman is not one of them, and the Kingpin is more a Daredevil turned Spider-Man villain than her own.

As is customary with 80's cartoons a super-hero must always have sidekicks. In this case, Jessica Drew is paired with photographer Jeff Hunt, and her nephew Billy. They act as the "damsels" in distress for Jessica to save every week, and really offer very little in terms of character.

Along side them, Spider-Woman does get help from Spider-Man in a couple of episodes, though she almost always has to save him too. Voiced by John Mayer, who voiced him in the 1967 - 1970 animated series Spider-Man is pretty similar to his 1960's design, except for the yellow eyes instead of white.

The show also had something very few other shows got back then. While its intro was not bad, it really was nothing memorable in relation to Spider-Man's classic intro, and other cartoon intros of the time. However in the early 1980's it was dubbed and released in Latin America, where it got one of the best intro songs you could expect for it.

Chilean pop singer Juan Guillermo Aguirre better known by his stage name "Capitan" Memo (Captain Memo) recorded an intro song that would go down in history as one of the top Spanish cartoon intros along with He-Man and the original Spider-Man cartoon.

You can view the cartoon's Spanish Intro below:

And here is the complete 3 minute "Mujer Araña" song by Capitan Memo.

The show was decent enough, and had some fun episodes even if it only lasted for 16 episodes. Some like Realm of Darkness were quite good, and others like "The Kongo Spider" where just cheesy.

The Spider-Woman character has since then suffered many many changes, and has had several other Marvel characters take up the name including both of Spider-Man's love interests in the comic books, Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson.

The series was released on DVD, in a 2 disc set in 2009, and while it was a U.K. only release you can still find a copy, albeit a bit expensively last I checked, on Amazon, if you really want one. If you can find some episodes online, a couple are on Youtube, give them a watch, its an interesting often forgotten animated series that was quite ahead of its time with its portrayal of its female lead, while still being lighthearted and many times just out right silly.

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