Scans_Daily

I thought long and hard over this (other candidates being Spider-Man 2 or Batman: The Animated Series) but in the end I came over to 'Spectacular Spider-Man'.

When it debuted Spider-Man was in a pretty dour state in the comics and this show was really the only place I could get my 'fix' of Spider-Man. In many ways I think Spectacular is the definitive adaptation of the character. Greg Weisman and co. did a great job combining different elements from all the past incarnations; the classic comics, the Ultimate line, the films, etc. An example: when Spider-Man gets the black costume it looks like how it did in Spider-Man 3 -- a black and white version of the regular costume. However, as the symbiote's control begins to grow, the spider on the chest grows bigger and the webs start to disappear until we get the classic black costume. 

Everything about it was perfect. The Spider-Man stuff was great but there was also a lot of focus on Peter's relationships with Gwen, Harry, MJ, etc. The whole series is on Blu-ray right now and it looks stunning in HD.

And then it was cancelled after two seasons as a result of Sony selling the animation rights back to Marvel. And in it's place was Ultimate Spider-Man. I don't want to rag on the USM cartoon too much as it's really not that bad and it's gotten better but... yeah. It stings.