Spider-Man is one of the most iconic superheroes in pop culture history. First appearing in Amazing Fantasy #15 in 1962, Spider-Man was made into an animated series just five years later in 1967. With an opening theme song that is so catchy and memorable that it endured for decades after the show ended, Spider-Man the animated series left a cultural imprint that endures even today.
Now, nearly 60 years after that original series, Marvel Animation is releasing a fresh new take on Spider-Man that balances the old and new. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is the third animated series under the Marvel Animation banner of Marvel Studios (following What If…? and X-Men ’97) and it is led by Jeff Trammell, who serves as head writer, executive producer and showrunner. Trammell worked closely with Mel Zwyer, supervising director for the series, to tackle the daunting task of telling a modern story that still honors its history.
I had the opportunity to speak with Trammell, Zwyer and Hudson Thames, the voice of Peter Parker and Spider-Man, about the new series.
One of the main questions that any Marvel geek has about a new series is, which Marvel universe does it take place in? The Marvel Cinematic Universe (and oddly the Marvel comics universe) is known as Earth-616. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man takes place in its own universe of Marvel, so I asked Trammell what this universe is called.
“That’s a great question. I would love to just say something, but then I don’t want later Kevin [Feige] to be like, ‘Uh no. It’s this,’ so I’ll just say we are undesignated for now,” Trammell said.
However, Zwyer jumped in with a thought of his own, saying it might be considered “Earth-616x”.
“He doesn’t know! Don’t…” Trammell said laughing.
In this potential Earth-616x universe, there are events similar to that of the MCU, like the heroes battling at an airplane hanger in Captain America: Civil War. However, there are intriguing differences as well. Most notably, in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Tony Stark is not Peter Parker’s mentor; instead, it’s noted Spider-Man arch enemy Norman Osborn. Trammell talked about the decision to place Osborn in that role.
“What does Norman as Peter’s mentor gets us? And that was, to me, like a very fun area to mine. A thing I’ve said a lot is like, every Spider-Man fan knows who Norman is, so if you hear Norman is Peter’s mentor, you’re going to go, ‘That’s not gonna go well,’ so even in that crafting who our Norman is and how we wanted to introduce him, I think even that changes your perception of Norman,” Trammell said. “Because now you’re like well, ‘I know this thing to be true, but this is a different person,’ so you know, are these things going to go the way I think they’re going to go? And for me that’s really interesting, because then we as the audience are on the same footing as Peter. You’re meeting someone who says they want to help, you believe they want to help, but do they have ulterior motives?”
Staying in the Osborn family, another new twist on an iconic character is that of Norman Osborn’s son, Harry. Long-time fans of Spider-Man’s story know where both Norman and Harry end up, but with this series, Trammell and Zwyer had the chance to tell that story in a different way. The result is that for Zwyer, Harry became his favorite character in a show full of great characters.
“It’s actually Harry,” Zwyer said of his favorite character in the series. “Yeah. It’s Harry. Especially wait till season two. I don’t know whether I can say that!”
Zwyer talked about the various characters on the show and noted one in particular that they weren’t allowed to use.
“We originally wanted to use Big Wheel. We couldn’t. There was quite a few characters we wanted to use that we weren’t allowed to use yet. So hopefully we can in the future. Yeah, absolutely Big Wheel,” Zwyer said.
Peter Parker and Spider-Man are voiced by Hudson Thames, who also voiced the character in What If…? season 1. Thames talked about finding the balance between sounding similar to Tom Holland, who plays Spider-Man in the MCU, and adding his own sound.
“It’s interesting, because you know, there’s so many iterations throughout the years of Spider-Man, and I think everyone has done a really good job of like bringing their own honesty to those performances.” Thames said. “So with What If…?, it was kind of this interesting thing of of trying to kind of honor what people want and were expecting out of that version of that Spider-Man that they knew, and like you know, again, like kind of trying to stay in the vocal zone as Tom [Holland]. And there was some space, luckily, in between the two projects, so when I got a call about this, my first thought was like okay like, does this still live in the What If…? world or is it its own thing? And as I was able to have more conversations with Marvel about it and learn that this is a new chapter, and a new iteration, and its own thing, I was really grateful for that.”
Watch our full conversations below. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man premieres January 29th on Disney+.
About YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN
“Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” is an animated series that follows Peter Parker on his way to becoming a hero, with a journey unlike we’ve ever seen and a style that celebrates the character’s early comic book roots.
Catch Web-Slinger-in-Training Peter Parker Starting January 29 Exclusively on Disney+
Ron is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of POC Culture. He is a big believer in the power and impact of pop culture and the importance of representation in media.
