John Ary here with a look at a new video series that I'm starting here at AICN.
With so much news breaking this weekend at Comic-Con, I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at some of the forgotten or overlooked superhero live-action productions from days gone by.
Super-Powered Cinematics will attempt to put a variety of TV shows and films into a cultural or historical perspective. We'll try to stay away from some of the more well-known or contemporary titles (no Dark Knight Rises or Superman II for instance) and focus on niche releases from different time periods and locations. I'm not sure how often we'll put these out (just depends on the kind of response we get), but you can definitely expect to see a new video each day this week.
ALSO, in keeping with the trends nowadays of a post-credit kicker, you may want to stick around until the very end of the video for a small extra treat. To kick off the new series, I thought we would head back to the late 70's for an international take on one of our most beloved heroes. Spider-Man had a TV series that ran sporadically on CBS starring Nicholas Hammond. Most comic book fans, including me found the show bland, with Peter Parker solving mysteries and stopping routine crimes instead of battling super-villains. A year later, Marvel gave the Toei company in Japan the rights to use Spider-Man in their own television show. The resulting TV series takes our friendly neighborhood wall crawler in a completely new and action-packed direction.
If you want to see a complete episode, Marvel.com is currently streaming the entire series. What do you think of Japan's take on Spider-Man? Let me know on Twitter (@john_ary) or in the comment section below and be sure to subscribe to the AICN YouTube channel for more videos. See you tomorrow for another installment of Super-Powered Cinematics!
