I am a huge spiderman fanatic and over the last decade different forms of Spiderman (TV, movie and comic) have been rebooted in various ways. They have probably done this with other franchises but in this post I will just talk Spiderman.

In tv, there has been 12 different spiderman based tv series’. Sure one was in japan and another was just an animated comic with word balloons but in the end there are still alot of series’ out there. They have had various successful shows such as the 1967 animated series and the ’81 and ’94 shows BUT then they started Spider-Man Unlimited – the 1999 animated series, cancelled after 1 season. These next 2 I am a fan of and have watched through. What they called ‘The new animated series’ in 2003(with spiderman voiced by the funny and cool Neil Patrick Harris), supposed to have been based after the first Sam Rami film, but ends in spidey giving up his position, it was cancelled after 1 season. So then in 2008, they start again with, the awesome, ‘Spectacular Spiderman’. The animation here, best by far. Designs and stories, also great. I got the season 1 dvd the minute it came out and am champing at the bit for season 2 dvd. So what do they do? Cancelled after 2 seasons. And I know this was a popular series so I don’t think this was a great decision.

Now maybe it was Disney buying marvel(I think this because their new 2011 series will be running on Disney XD) but they have decided to start a new series based on the 2000-2009 comic series(which I will talk about later) ‘Ultimate Spiderman’. Only good thing I see here is that Brian Michael Bendis, who wrote the comic counterpart, will have a big hand on the show. I do enjoy Brian’s writing style and I know he can do well on tv as he had a small hand in the 2003 series I mentioned earlier. I am interested to see where this show goes so I hope they don’t butcher anything. If it is anything like the comic I will like it.

Now onto movies. Not much rebooting in this department until recently. Sam Rami had a 3 film series going and now, only 3 years after #3, they announce and start filming a re-boot set for 2012. It will start with peter back in high school. Not that this is relevant but I like how they have a 27 year old playing a teenager(But I do enjoy Andrew Garfield’s acting from the Social Network so not a bad choice).

Lastly, their comics.

Ultimate spiderman, which I mentioned their new series being based off, ran from 2000-2009. It was written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn, until close to it’s end(replaced by Stuart Immonen) Mark Bagley, who does a good job at it too. This series, while under the same continuity after the ‘ultimatum’ story, was rebooted to be called ‘Ultimate comics spiderman’ with a new numbering system and everything. Still written by Brian(that guy gets some good work) it is drawn by Sara Pichelli and David Lafuente, Although it seems Bagley will come back for a death of spiderman story in the series(Really? Will it continue after that? Who know with cancel-redo attitude of marvel). I haven’t finished ultimate spiderman yet so I haven’t started the new series but I do look forward to it.

Even the main story of ‘The amazing Spiderman’ series was rebooted in 1999 with some negative fan feedback on their stories(such as the death of MJ). Interesting enough though, starting with issue #30 of the amazing re-boot started with the main continuity # and the re-boot #. So starting with #30 it would have on the cover Vol. 1 #471 and Vol.2 #30. But it was still a re-boot.

This is a bit of a side note, but, all these re-boots and side stories do mean one thing. The latest video game for Spidey is Spiderman Shattered Dimensions. This game takes on Spidermen and MANY  villains from the universes of the Amazing comics, 1930’s comics, 2099 story and the ultimate universe(the ultimate one it seems is bonded to a symbiote). I have heard great things about this game and it shows one thing, many versions of something makes for a great game.

So while it is always good to have fresh ideas and fresh faces, at times we must wonder how many re-boots of these different spidermen will occur and what does it do to the franchise?