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Not only has Spider-Man long proven his worth as one of the best comic book characters of all time, but he has also transcended the genre to become a pop culture legend. Like most characters of this magnitude, the web-slinger lends itself to constant reinterpretation, as evidenced by the multitude of films and television shows that have imagined and reinvented the character over the years. However, a forgotten live-action rendition of Spider-Man was not well received by his co-creator Stan Lee, who found this particular version of his material “juvenile” and unfaithful to his original vision.
In September 1977, CBS launched its live-action series “The Amazing Spider-Man” and appeared to be successful. The show was a ratings success, but proved short-lived and completely failed to win Lee’s support. In a 2004 interview with the Television Academy, Lee explained that he was “very unhappy” with the series, adding: “Very often people take a novel, let’s say, and bring it to the screen. […] and they will leave out the only element, the only quality that made the novel a bestseller. ” Clearly, Lee — who died in 2018 at the age of 95 — saw exactly this problem happening with “The Amazing Spider-Man,” with the comic book legend adding, “I felt like the people who made the live-action series left out the very elements that made the comic popular.” »
What were these elements? Well, if anyone should know, it’s Lee, because he made sure to imbue his own stories of the web-slinger with humanity and humor — two elements that he said were missing from the CBS series. “They left out humor,” he said. “They left aside human interest and personality and emphasized characterizations and personal problems.”
Stan Lee hated the 1970s Spider-Man series before it even aired
“The Amazing Spider-Man” debuted the same year as the end of The Electric Company’s “Spidey Super Stories” — the first live-action iteration of the Spider-Man character. While the show was on the air, Stan Lee opted to sell the rights to a live-action primetime Spider-Man series to CBS and executive producer Daniel R. Goodman. With producer Charles Fries, Goodman developed the live-action Spidey project into a two-hour pilot starring Nicholas Hammond as Peter Parker/Spider-Man. The pilot performed well on CBS, prompting the network to order five episodes.
But getting there proved tricky. According to “Science Fiction Television Series” by authors Mark Phillips and Frank Garcia, Goodman had a meeting with Lee during which the Spider-Man creator complained that the series had strayed too far from the original comics. Goodman, however, had done so intentionally. “My concept was to make Spider-Man more palatable to the general public than to children,” he explained, “and there may have been a clash of ideologies. We had to compromise because CBS was convinced by my original sales pitch for a mainstream prime-time show.”
However, Lee clearly wasn’t too happy with this compromise and wasn’t shy about saying as much in public or even in the pages of Marvel’s own publications. In a 1978 interview for Marvel’s Pizzazz magazine, the writer described “The Amazing Spider-Man” as “too juvenile”, and he lambasted the series again in a separate interview for The Atlanta Constitution in 1978 (via writer Bill King’s own website). “The whole appeal of the character is the contrast and conflict between his private life as Peter Parker and his life as Spider-Man,” Lee noted. “The comic book version is more adult and sophisticated than the TV version.”
There were a lot of problems with The Amazing Spider-Man
Clearly, Stan Lee’s thoughts on “The Amazing Spider-Man” haven’t changed, as he was just as upset about the series in 2004 as he was when it was still on the air. Luckily for him, the series didn’t last that long and was canceled in 1979 after only 13 episodes (although it did well in the ratings). At one point, there was even an ambition to make an “Amazing Spider-Man” and “The Incredible Hulk” crossover film, but that ultimately didn’t happen.
There were a number of things holding back “The Amazing Spider-Man” that had nothing to do with Lee’s criticisms. Like the beloved 1960s “Batman” series, “The Amazing Spider-Man” was primarily filmed in Los Angeles, despite the fact that it was supposed to take place in Peter Parker’s hometown of New York. As such, the series was at a disadvantage from the start, as New York is surely as important a part of the Spidey formula as Gotham is for the Dark Knight. The series’ budget and the fact that shows like “The Six Million Dollar Man” were popular meant that Spider-Man’s famous thieves were also excluded, so Nicholas Hammond’s Spider-Man fought with a businessman named Mr. White and a corrupt politician instead.
Still, during his Television Academy interview, Lee admitted that he liked at least that aspect of the show. “Technically, I think they did a good job,” he said. “The scenes of [Spider-Man] climbing the wall – back then they didn’t have the means they have today, and they did a really good job with that. » Otherwise, Lee wasn’t a fan.
