All 14 Spider-Man TV Shows, Ranked

With Spider-Man swinging back into theaters with "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," TVLine is taking a look back at the web-head's legacy on the small screen by ranking every Spider-Man TV show, live-action or animated.

Other than perhaps Batman, no other superhero has been adapted so many times as our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. He's responsible for some of the best Marvel cartoons of all time, as there are so many ways to take the character. He can stand on his own, battling his own roster of villains, like Green Goblin and Venom. Or you can pair him up with the rest of the Marvel universe and watch this young hero find his place among Earth's mightiest heroes. 

Of course, not all Spider-Man TV shows are stellar. Just look at "Spidey Super Stories," which consisted of various silly skits on PBS' "The Electric Company." Bits like "Spidey Meets the Funny Bunny" don't exactly showcase the best of Marvel's best, so naturally, we're keeping those installments off this list. As for everything else, we determined the best Spider-Man shows based on how faithful they are to the character and best represent everything Spidey's about (in addition to overall entertainment value).

For a live-action superhero show in the 1970s, "The Amazing Spider-Man" was technically impressive. The shots of Spidey crawling up buildings offer some old-timey fun. But there's a cardinal sin this show committed that we just can't overlook.

CBS kickstarted this show with a TV movie before moving forward with 13 episodes, and the longer the show went on, the more it tried to appeal to adults and lose some of its comic book-y charm. This didn't go unnoticed by one of Spider-Man's creators, Stan Lee. In an interview with the Television Academy Foundation, Lee criticized the series: "With 'Spider-Man,' I felt the people who did the live-action series left out the very elements that made the comic book popular. They left out the humor. They left out the human interest and personality and playing up characterizations and personal problems."

There's no wisecracking Spider-Man here. And the show follows standard robberies rather than diving into Spidey's rogues gallery. It may be nostalgic for some, but it hasn't aged well at all for modern audiences looking to find more Spider-Man media to consume. 

There's something wholesome about watching old Spider-Man cartoons and seeing how far the web-slinger has come. And while there's plenty of worth in some of those older shows we'll get to in a bit, there's just something off-putting about "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends" from the 1980s. 

The animation is extremely rough. Yes, there's a Spidey show from the '60s that's arguably worse, but we're willing to cut it some slack since it came from a significantly different era. But it feels like a bad Saturday morning cartoon as Spidey (voiced by Dan Gilvezan) goes on adventures with his friends Iceman (Frank Welker) and Fire-Star (Kathy Garver). 

"Amazing Friends" has strong Hanna-Barbera vibes (despite not being produced by that studio). Backgrounds get reused ad nauseam, and the personal stakes typically affiliated with Peter Parker are gone. Instead, it's a superhero team-up show, which was admittedly novel at the time, but there are just better Spider-Man cartoons now that incorporate other Marvel elements far better. 

The inclusion of Miles Morales (Nadji Jeter) and Spider-Gwen (Laura Bailey) help differentiate 2017's "Spider-Man" cartoon from the rest. Other than that, there's not much going on here. 

The animation is nothing to write home about and can feel very stiff, especially when the characters are supposed to be zipping throughout New York. And there's a surprising lack of texture or depth to anything. The dialogue also leaves a lot to be desired. The show's gimmick is that Peter Parker (Robbie Daymond), Miles, and Gwen are all genius students at Horizon High. And the characters will often talk about scientific subjects in a pretty cringey, unnatural manner. It's hard to get invested when everyone feels like exposition devices rather than characters.

Things did improve in Season 2, and Season 3 — subtitled "Maximum Venom" — actually has some good stuff incorporating the Venom (Ben Pronsky) symbiote into the characters' journeys. But by then, it's too little, too late. If you must watch it, you can stick with watching Season 3 and nothing else just for the Venom storyline. 

The late 1990s were all about nu-metal and putting an "X" in front of everything. In that vein comes "Spider-Man Unlimited," which might as well have been titled "Spider-Man: X-Treme." It takes a different path from previous cartoons by taking place predominantly in another world, Counter-Earth, where Spidey joins a rebellion to overthrow the High-Evolutionary (voiced by Richard Newman) oppressing the human with human-animal hybrids. 

It's hard not to have a soft spot for a show willing to swing for the fences, but it just doesn't feel much like a Spider-Man show, in large part due to Sony not wanting to use main villains or supporting characters since the live-action "Spider-Man" movie directed by Sam Raimi was in development. 

And it's hard not to compare "Spider-Man Unlimited" to "Batman Beyond" as both offered dystopian, sci-fi refreshes of classic superheroes, with the latter doing it far better. But hey, at least this version of Spider-Man (Rino Romano) was one of many Spidey cameos in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," so someone out there must like him. 

The same year "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends" aired, we also got a standalone, straightforward "Spider-Man" cartoon — and it's the superior version to watch.

To be fair, it still has some of the same drawbacks as the aforementioned "Amazing Friends" show when it comes to poor-quality animation. But for fans of Spider-Man's comics, this was a pretty faithful adaptation. Spider-Man (Ted Schwartz) fights many of his classic villains and even Doctor Doom (Brad Crandall) on several occasions. The plots were never anything too deep, but the fights aren't the main attraction to this show any longer.

Intentional or not, 1981's "Spider-Man" is downright hilarious to watch today. There are so many hilarious clips that would make for great compilations to post online, like Spidey stealing a cop's motorcycle and being told that it's city property, only for him to respond, "So? I'm a taxpayer." It's a testament to Schwartz's voice acting abilities that he truly gave Peter Parker some personality as opposed to just being another super-heroic dude in tights. 

"Spider-Man: The New Animated Series" was a fun show at the time. The original idea was that the events would all take place between 2002's "Spider-Man" and 2004's "Spider-Man 2." You have Peter Parker (Neil Patrick Harris) continuing to find his identity while fighting crime. Harry Osborn (Ian Ziering) still holds a vendetta against Spider-Man, believing he killed his father in the first film. But by the time you reach the ending, it's clear none of this makes sense in those films' continuity, so it must exist as its own thing. 

It's a fun experiment, especially with Michael Clarke Duncan reprising his role as Kingpin from 2003's "Daredevil" movie. The idea that those films could've crossed over at some point is enticing, but it wasn't meant to be. 

The 3D animation may seem dated now, but the show didn't skimp on showing Peter Parker's struggles balancing his dual identities. Aging up the characters so that they're in college rather than high school helps add some romance and soap opera-esque elements that make for ample drama. It has its flaws, but it's one of the more underrated Spider-Man shows. 

If you're reading this article, there's a good chance you've aged out of the intended demographic for "Spidey and His Amazing Friends." It is a preschooler show in every sense, as Spider-Man (Benjamin Valic), Miles Morales (Jakari Fraser) and Gwen Stacy (Lily Sanfelippo) go on safe, colorful adventures. Yes, there are villains, but their plans are always foiled and no one gets seriously hurt. 

It's unfair to judge this show on its merits from an adult perspective, but looking at it as a series intended to entertain much younger kids, it's an utter delight. More than anything, it can function as a great entry point into Spider-Man and the larger Marvel universe. Kids today can grow up alongside Spider-Man and watch his adventures here before advancing onto some of the more grown-up shows. 

There's no strong pathos here. Spider-Man doesn't have any dark nights of the soul. It's just a nice series that espouses the virtues of teamwork while providing other good lessons. That's all you can ask for here. 

Forget the Marvel Cinematic Universe; there was an awesome animated universe taking shape on Disney XD in the early 2010s. And a key component of that world was "Ultimate Spider-Man," which saw Peter Parker (Drake Bell) recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D. and leading a team of younger heroes to stop villains like Norman Osborn (Steven Weber). But the web-head would swing by other shows occasionally, like "Avengers Assemble" and "Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H."

The humor here was very hit-and-miss. The show leans into a far wackier side of Spidey than most people are probably used to, with his fourth-wall breaks and his tendency to turn into a little Chibi Spider-Man for sight gags. 

The rapid-pace jokes can make it hard for the stories to feel grounded, but if you're willing to overlook that, it's pretty enjoyable. It handles concepts like the Spider-Verse and Clone Saga surprisingly well. One could even argue that it has a better clone storyline than what we got in the '90s comics.

We gave the '80s Spider-Man shows some guff for their dated animation, and the same holds true for the 1967 series. But considering it came out two decades prior to those other shows, we're willing to cut it some slack.

Honestly, the animation gives the whole thing a charming, retro vibe. At the end of the day, 1967's "Spider-Man" remains a pretty faithful and fun interpretation of the titular character. It's not trying to reinvent the wheel and it knows its audience. You have Spider-Man (Paul Soles) fighting his classic villain roster, so what more could you ask for? Well, how about one of the best theme songs to an animated show ever? This is where we get the iconic "Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can" song that's still catchy to this day.

Kids today may be most familiar with 1967's "Spider-Man" for its abundance of memes, the most famous of which comes from the episode "Double Identity" where two Spider-Men are pointing at one another. It's one of Spider-Man's greatest contributions to the internet, and that makes it worth ranking high on this list.

On no other Spider-Man TV show will you hear the web-crawler refer to himself as an "Emissary from Hell," but that's just one of many things you'll find in Japan's "Supaidāman," a Spider-Man show pretty much in name only but still one of the coolest things ever made from the superhero.

As part of a licensing agreement with Toei, Marvel got the rights to some of their anime robot characters, and Toei got the rights to some of Marvel's characters, including Captain America and Spider-Man. The ensuing TV show bears no resemblance to the comics. Takuya Yamashiro (Shinji Tōdō) receives his powers from an alien hailing from Planet Spider, and if battles ever get too tough for him, he can summon a giant mech called Leopardon to help him. That's right, a giant leopard, not a giant spider.

"Supaidāman" has earned a lot of affection for being one of pop culture's greatest curios. It's the kind of IP you just don't get out of Marvel these days where everything feels hyper-focused to appeal to as many people as possible. It's a genuinely fun tokusatsu TV show, and as long as you're not a stickler for lore, it's a blast. 

Every generation deserves its own Spider-Man show to call its own, and even in the midst of the MCU dominating the zeitgeist and Tom Holland swinging around on the big screen, Disney+ unleashed a new iteration of the web-head with "Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man."

The animation is probably the most striking thing at first. It looks like it was ripped straight out of the pages of a comic book, a vast departure from early concept art that had characters looking like their MCU counterparts. This is firmly in another reality where Peter Parker (Hudson Thames) is still learning the ropes of a superhero but gets a massive assist from billionaire Norman Osborn (Colman Domingo). 

It's a brilliant contrast to Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) being Spider-Man's mentor in the MCU. Norman has good intentions at first, but it's clear he'll go down a darker path soon enough. The show subverts our expectations of what it means for a working-class hero to get help from a billionaire because they don't always have noble intentions. It may not be set in the MCU, but it certainly feels like it's in conversation with those movies, making it essential viewing all the same. 

After several decades of Spider-Man shows of varying qualities, how do you make the character feel fresh again? You transport him back to the 1930s, cast him as Nicolas Cage, and make him a hardboiled detective, that's how. 

TVLine's review of "Spider-Noir" called it "fun," even if it got muddled in referencing old-timey noir pictures. But as far as holding our attention throughout only eight episodes, that's all you need. Cage offers another unhinged Cage-ian performance here as Ben Reilly, a private detective who's been out of the superhero game for a while but dons the Spider's mask once more once super-powered threats emerge in New York.

The show teeters between the serious and the ridiculous, managing to pull off a perfect balance. More than anything, Season 1 manages to immerse us in a world we absolutely want to spend more time in. While another season hasn't been confirmed, we feel confident it could take the premise and characters in even bolder directions now that we've laid the groundwork. 

It's easy to overlook "Spider-Man: The Animated Series" from the 1990s when Batman and X-Men had similarly impressive series in that era. But the show remains one of the best forgotten cartoons from the '90s still worth watching, and it encapsulates everything that makes Spider-Man such a great hero. 

The show didn't just have a villain-of-the-week format. There were multi-episode arcs, if not storylines that spanned over an entire season. You had Spider-Man (Christopher Daniel Barnes) interacting with other Marvel characters in ways that felt organic, and the show successfully pulled off its own version of the "Secret Wars" arc in the comic (and soon to be major motion picture event with "Avengers: Secret Wars"). 

"Spider-Man: The Animated Series" is absolutely made for kids. Spidey is quick-witted as usual, but the series also isn't afraid to tackle serious topics. The show doesn't shy away from Peter's guilt over letting Uncle Ben die, allowing kids to learn lessons like moral responsibility in a way that doesn't feel hackneyed. Parents could watch it with their kids and appreciate the stories and morals, and more than likely, this is the show that helped introduce a generation of kids to Spider-Man. 

It's a close call when determining the best Spider-Man show of all time, but ultimately, "The Spectacular Spider-Man" wins out. There are truly no weak points in this series other than the fact it was canceled way too soon after just two seasons. Fortunately, it made its short life count.

For starters, the voice acting is probably the best we've ever gotten out of a Spider-Man show, with Josh Keaton's Peter Parker still being a fan favorite. The show skips over Spidey's origin story and drops us right in the middle of him being Spider-Man. Peter juggles his high school responsibilities with being a superhero. It doesn't skimp on the pathos, as you really feel Peter's anguish at having to lie to his friends and loved ones so that he can protect the city.

The supporting cast is great, too. There are no one-dimensional characters here, as everyone feels so lived-in. This really helps when fleshing out the villains, as we often get introduced to them before they acquire super powers of their own. The best example of this is Eddie Brock (Benjamin Diskin), who's Peter's friend before acquiring the Venom symbiote. It's a show that makes full use of Spider-Man's entire history to create something that's both familiar yet wholly its own thing.