Marvel Studios Animation’s latest series, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, started airing on Jan. 29. Created by Jeff Trammell, the series aims to return Spider-Man to his roots, giving him a show about balancing his school, personal, and superhero lives.
The series is not set in the main Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). This was ultimately done because the team found that the original MCU was too constricting on the narrative.
“We couldn’t really use his rogues gallery, we couldn’t really use his origin.” Executive Producer Brad Winderbaum said. “It was not fun, honestly. We would’ve had to put so many limiters on our story to get it to lock into canon.”
The show’s art style has garnered a lot of discussion online. Marvel Studios’ animation does not have a distinct signature art style, which opened the door for the series to have its own unique look separate from previous Spider-Man animated shows. They wanted to specifically pay homage to the art of legendary comic book artists John Romita Sr. and Spider-Man Co-Creator Steve Ditko. The development team ultimately opted to go with 3D cell-shaded animation, as it helps the show look like a moving comic book.
Since the show isn’t set in the MCU, it’s able to give Peter Parker a different supporting cast. In place of his typical classmates like Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane Watson, and “Flash” Thompson, he gets aged-down versions of Lonnie Lincoln (Eugine Byrd), Nico Minoru (Grace Song), and Pearl Pangan (Cathy Ang). Fun fact, Lonnie Lincoln in the comics is actually the Crime-lord Tombstone. Whether or not he’ll take on his villainous persona later on in the show is currently unknown.
In an interview for “The Movie Podcast” on YouTube, Winderbaum confirmed that the show has been green-lit throughout season three, and that season two is already fully written and the animation team is halfway through the animatics for season two. The fact that the executive producer is so nonchalant about the future of the series is testament to how proud and confident they are that the show will do well.
I think having the artistic integrity to prioritize making the show the best it could be over maintaining corporate brand synergy was a very smart call. It shows that the team behind the series truly cares about producing a piece of art as opposed to another building block in the multi-year MCU plan. I am eager to see where the series will go and hope that more media writers follow in the steps of this team.
