Hello true believers! RK here. I've been on a Clark Griswold European vacation with the Enchantress for the past 10 days and Squeezer just started his "Original Vacation" in his family truckster with Mrs. Squeezer and Squeezette so sadly, after 35 weeks in a row without missing a show, we're taking a 1 week vacation, but we'll be back next week!

In the MEANTIME, I figured I'd talk about 5 of my favorite things related to Spiderman! Why? Two reason. 1) Before we left for Europe, June Moon and I took in Spiderman Homecoming, and it was pretty phenomenal. 2)I brought up Spiderman as a potential topic for an upcoming show and Squeezer isn't as versed in the subject as I am. That being said, it makes perfect fodder for a blog post.

Without Further Ado.

1)Spiderman: The Animated Series

Mary Jane was always rocking that turtleneck sweater combo

Spiderman the Animated Series came out in the boom of animated comic books series in the early/mid 90's. It essentially started with Batman, but there were tons. Fantastic Four had one, Iron Man had one, they did a weird Avengers one, X-Men has a HUGE one, and of course there was Spiderman.

Growing up, I can remember how excited I would be to wake up early on a Saturday morning to watch Fox Kids (and Saturday morning cartoons in general). My dad could light dynamite off in my room Monday through Friday and couldn't wake me up to get me to school, but on Saturday mornings baby, I was up pouring my Ghostbusters cereal before my dad even started making his coffee.

Speaking of cereal, the serial IP licensing cereal maker (pun intended) Ralston, put out a cereal that tied in with the show and it was actually pretty decent.

This cereal was kind of a reincarnation of the old Ralston TMNT cereal which was also amazing

As far as the show, it will always be one of my favorite cartoon series. They story telling was really good, and story arcs would often span multiple episodes. There were also guest appearances from a lot of other Marvel super heroes (the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Daredevil, Blade, Doctor Strange, the Punisher and Captain America.)

You know a show is a hit when it gets it's own McDonalds happy meal toys

I wasn't much of a happy meal customer when these came out, but my sister gave me the Doc Oc and the Hobgoblin car.

I was always a fan of the Spiderman comics, but this really intensified my love of Spiderman.

Here is a youtube embed of the first season, but it's in one of those weird youtube crops that screws with the algorithm that searched for copyrighted material.

2)Spiderman-The Venom Factor

I still have my original copy, but I lost the dust cover, so I had to dig a picture up on the web, looks like this is from (mycomicshop)

As a kid, going to the mall was infinitely better than it is today. These days, most of the malls from my youth are barren waste lands with a super small fraction of stores open. Every Friday night was essentially "mall night" in our family mainly because it was the night my mom went grocery shopping every week. And since the grocery store was connected to the mall, we'd stop into the mall first. After we'd manage to survive my mom looking at clothing in the anchor store you enter the mall through, you'd get to the good stuff and before Kay-Bee toys or Electronic Boutique, I'd always stop at Walden books. Walden was a mall chain book store that went belly up a decade or so ago. The Walden always had a decent selection of the newest comic books, as well as my staple magazines. (WWF, Mad) but I lived for the discount section. This was my home. You could always find odd and cool books in the Walden discount section and I loved spending time pouring over the weekly finds. One week I spotted a Spiderman novel. Now I've been reading Spiderman comic books for years, but never a novel. It was less than 5 bucks, I think it might have been 99 cents even, so I figured why the hell not.

I didn't read it immediately, but when I finally picked it up, I sped through it fairly quick. It's a pretty decent story involving Venom and Hobgoblin, but I liked the author going into the minutia of Peter Parker's life as much as the action. You can find copies for pennies on the dollar via Amazon, and I'm sure eBay so if you're interested, get a copy and give it a read.

3) Maximum Carnage for SNES

The lim edish' red cartridge was SUPER cool.

Normally, LJN was known for making horrible licensed games, but Maximum Carnage was one of the rare successes. "Beat em ups" were a dime a dozen on the SNES, but really great ones were sometimes bought to come by. This is one of the first ones I fell in love with. You play as both Spiderman and Venom, due to the story line being based on the comic book story line "Maximum Carnage". The story is about a serial killer who gets the symbiotic costume, and breaks out of prison with Shriek, and goes on a killing/crime spree.

You gotta beat up some chicks in this game.

The game was a hit, and spawned at least one sequel. One of the best parts of the game was the soundtrack done by the band Green Jelly. I embedded it below so you can get a feel for how awesome it was.

4) Spiderman 2

It looks like he used "Blue blocker" lenses for his eyes.

This movie kind of re-legitimized comic books movies after the "Batman and Robin" disaster. It had everything you'd want in a Spiderman movie. Of course it has it's flaws, but what movie doesn't. I can still watch this movie and even the first one with pure enjoyment. The same cannot be said for Spiderman 3 however.

In this movie, I loved seeing the whole "Spiderman no more" story line being used. Doc Oc was a great villain and Peter works for Joe's pizza in the village, which is a real pizza joint in NYC and the pizza is probably my favorite EVER! Seriously, give it a try.

5) Spiderman Blue

Before he was the head of Marvel television, Jeph Loeb was already a comic book legend, but before that he wrote movies (Teen Wolf, Commando). His first work in comics was Challengers of the Unknown, where he would meet his long time collaborator Tim Sale. He would then go to work on Batman, working with Sale on the Batman Halloween specials, which led to them working on their seminal book "The long Halloween". He's work with Sale on "Superman for All Seasons" (go read that now). He would move onto Marvel and work on the Age of Apocalypse cross over books, and he would go back to DC to do Batman Hush with Jim Lee. Back with Marvel where he and Sale would work on their Color series, "Daredevil:Yellow", "Hulk:grey", most recently "Captain America:White", but what I love the most is "Spiderman:Blue".

The storyline recounts the death of Gwen Stacy. Peter Parker is feeling "blue" on Valentines Day, and is now married to MJ. He's talking into his recorder, leaving a message for the since passed Gwen. It's a fantastic read, and in my opinion, one of the best Spiderman Stories ever.

You can buy it in stores, kindle, iBooks, etc.

Now you've read a whole bunch of stuff about Spiderman. Enjoy and until next time, keep the memories of the Rad Years alive forever.

-RK