From the Spider-Man '67 cartoon DVD...I slept on this boxset a few years back, and my mistake. It's now OOP with steadily-climbing prices on the collector's market. The set contains all three seasons of the lo-fi Spider-Man cartoon which ran from 1967 to 1970.
Cult animator Ralph Bakshi took over the series for its second and third seasons, and imbued the affair with a psychedelic glow. Truly, this is a whacked-out series in Bakshi's hands, as Spidey glides across kaleidoscopic backgrounds and takes on increasingly surreal foes and situations.
Legend has it that this episode, Revolt in the Fifth Dimension, was not shown during the original broadcast of Season 3, due to its insane vibe. No one seems sure if this is true, but it sounds cool nonetheless.
Could you imagine any comics company releasing a cartoon like this in today's tepid world? And it was marketed to kids!
Do yourself a favor and track down the DVD set. I recently did, and the entire Bakshi run is just as psychedelically insane.
1 comment:
I was a fan of this series when I was growing up, and the above episode definitely was aired, although this would have been more like 1977-1978, a good ten years after the original run.
I like a few episodes of the Bakshi era, the fifth dimension one being one of them, but generally I find the Bakshi episodes really padded and less well-drawn, whereas the first-season ones are more efficiently paced and have better art.
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