Bear with me, as this may turn into a bit of a long, rambling piece on current happenings in Marvel animation.
Here’s the situation: In Australia, The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is airing episodes ahead of America. And last weekend, they got a very notable episode, Season 2’s “Along Came a Spider,” which features the first appearance in the series from Spider-Man.
Because of that early overseas airing, Jesse Betteridge, who began the Keep Spectacular Spider-Man Alive Facebook page, noticed something: Spider-Man was voiced on The Avengers by Drake Bell, the star of Ultimate Spider-Man. Which wouldn’t be so notable except this episode was conceived (and voice recording was done) quite awhile back – before Ultimate Spider-Man was even cast and Bell had the role.
The episode features Grey Delisle as the voice of Betty Brant, a role she played on The Spectacular Spider-Man, and Daran Norris also appears, though not as his Spectacular role of J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons, who played Jonah in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films and reprises the role on Ultimate Spider-Man plays Jonah). And as Betteridge and others suspected, something was up, confirmed when Josh Keaton, who played Spider-Man on Spectacular, replied himself on the Facebook thread with, “Wow, so they redubbed my audio. I recorded a few Avengers eps as Spider-Man and was looking forward to seeing them. Typical Parker luck I guess.”
Yes, Marvel replaced the voice of The Spectacular Spider-Man with the voice of Ultimate Spider-Man on Avengers – something that hasn’t gone over great with fans of Spectacular in the days since this news was revealed, who would have liked to have heard Keaton reprise his role from the short-lived but beloved series.
Spider-Man in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes
I reached out to Keaton to ask him some follow-up questions, and the prolific voice actor (who currently can be heard as another superhero, Hal Jordan, on Green Lantern: The Animated Series), told me he’d recorded his work as Spider-Man for Avengers: EMH back in early 2010.
While Avengers: EMH’s head writer, Christopher Yost, has noted he’s a big fan of Spectacular Spider-Man, Keaton couldn't speak as to whether Yost intended to homage Spectacular by using the voice cast. Said Keaton, via email, “I don't know if that was intentional or not. Keep in mind that this was way before Ultimate Spider-Man had even been cast (it was almost a year after recording the episode that I auditioned for Ultimate Spider-man), so I'm assuming that they were pretty much just hiring the people who had most recently done the voices, and Spectacular was the most recent Spidey show.” [Yes, I confirmed with Keaton he specifically auditioned to again play Spider-Man on Ultimate, but did not get the role.]
But Keaton told me that he hadn’t heard anything from Marvel on being replaced on Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and indeed, found out via the Facebook posting last weekend. “I didn't have a clue before that, no. I had a feeling but it was always something I wrote off, particularly because I recorded it so long ago that I figured it was already in the can. Seeing the screenshot of the credits definitely took the wind out of my sails for a second.”
On the other hand, Keaton noted, “This stuff happens all the time: I originally voiced Gary in Team America but they went a different way. I also originally did the singing as young Hercules in Disney's Hercules but I was going through a voice change at the time and couldn't hold the long note at the end of the reprise as long and strong as they wanted it (the note was right in my break), not to mention my sound skewed pop and they wanted musical theater-style so they brought in Roger Bart and he did an excellent job. I’ve even been on the other side of the coin. I dubbed the voice for Valtor in Nickelodeon's dub of Winx Club. It really is a very common occurrence.”
Having not heard from Marvel, Keaton could only speculate on why they replaced him, remaking, “I can only assume it was done for brand consistency.”
Meanwhile, Keaton is very appreciative of the continued fandom for Spectacular, telling me, “To have been a part of something that people are so vehemently passionate about is great. As actors we often forget that the projects we've been a part of have a life after long after we've finished the job. I had a turn at ‘being’ my favorite superhero. That in itself is almost the complete realization of a childhood dream and thus awesome, but for that version of Spider-Man to still be so loved is extremely gratifying. For all the Peter Parkers, just think of Spectacular as Uncle Ben.”
For more on Keaton's thoughts on the situation -- including his request for fans to not "jump all over Drake [Bell] for this" -- check out his recent blog.
Keaton’s outlook is admirable, but I will say, as a fan… Come on, Marvel! It’s important to note that Spectacular Spider-Man’s supervising producer, Greg Weisman, has stated that Marvel did not "cancel" the Sony-produced The Spectacular Spider-Man. Rather, the show was caught in a very unique situation, after Marvel got the TV rights back to Spider-Man, because Sony owned all the specific elements from Spectacular, such as designs and storylines. Because of this, Marvel basically had to start from scratch with a new series, no matter what they may have wanted to do at the time. [Click Here for more of Weisman’s very interesting/frustrating explanation of what occurred].
Spectacular Spider-Man, we still miss you:
But the fact is (and regardless of what people think of Ultimate Spider-Man), Spectacular retains its own fanbase, and the Avengers guest appearance by Keaton would have been a nice nod to that. I reached out to Marvel for this story and was told they had no comment on the Keaton/Bell swap, but I can only imagine their argument would be something similar to Keaton’s speculation – that it was to keep the (literal) voice of Spider-Man consistent on their series. But I have a few issues with that argument:
1. I don’t think most kids would care. I think that they’d recognize Spider-Man as Spider-Man and be able to accept he had a different voice on one show from the other. After all, there are different voice actors for Iron Man on Iron Man: Armored Adventures, The Super Hero Squad Show and The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, but no one is freaking out.
2. The only people who are going to really care about this are the fans of The Spectacular Spider-Man who are upset by the change. Keeping Keaton would have made some people happy, while others wouldn’t have even been aware, one way or the other. Changing the voice, on the other hand, actively angers that same group of Spectacular fans, while others, again, won’t really be affected. It’s created a “situation” where there doesn’t need to be one.
3. There is a lack of consistency for the argument for, well, consistency. Iron Man again comes into play here, as the character recently appeared on Ultimate Spider-Man, where he was voiced by Adrian Pasdar - who does not play the character on Avengers: EMH. Clearly this was not seen as a big deal to Marvel or to viewers. But yet they decided they had to change Spider-Man’s voice to be the same on these same two series? That doesn’t add up.
It’s all but certain that The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is over after Season 2. While no one at Marvel will confirm it, there continues to be talk that they are developing their own new Avengers series. Just this week came a report at Marvel TV News that the new show is called Avengers Assemble, though Marvel tells me that report is incorrect when it states that any official press release has been put out about such a series - and the company has no comment on their Avengers TV plans beyond finishing the airing of Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes Season 2.
But assuming Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is over, it’s likely that this new series will be in continuity with Ultimate Spider-Man, plus the upcoming Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. and other future Marvel animated projects, as the natural assumption is that Marvel wants the clean slate of being able to develop all their animated series going forward completely in-house, something they never were able to do until Ultimate Spider-Man.
So if that’s the case, and Bell will be used in that Avengers series (if Spidey guest stars – which we all know is fairly inevitable), then again, why not let Keaton play the part, as the producers intended, in Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, this one last time?
Typical Parker luck indeed…
Meanwhile, I’m going to go sing the Spectacular Spider-Man theme song to myself.
Update: In a bit of amusing timing, about an hour after this story was first published, The Hollywood Reporter revealed Ultimate Spider-Man was officially renewed for Season 2.
Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
blog comments powered by Disqus