A bit of history here. While North America spent years haggling over the live action rights for Marvel Comics creation Spider-Man before finally bringing the hero to the big screen, other nations were much quicker off the block. A totally unauthorized version of the character appears in a number of Turkish productions from the seventies and, in 1978, a fully authorized and properly licensed version of Spider-Man was the subject of an ongoing Japanese television series of the same name.
Now, this being Japan, this wasn't your typical Spidey. No, the back story was completely changed - he's not Peter Parker in this version, nor does he get his powers from a radioactive spider bite - and the character completely re-envisioned as a full on tokusatsu hero, battling an array of giant robots and crazy, rubber suit monsters. The series has been highly sought after by collectors for years, collectors who figured that their day may have finaly come when the Japanese studio behind the series released a re-mastered DVD set of the complete series just a while back. Now, that release didn't include any English language options but the collector set were right, in a way. Why? Because Marvel have bought back rights to the entire series and are now posting the complete series - an episode at a time, one per week - for free viewing on their official website. Here's hoping a subtitled DVD release is not far behind!
Check the trailer below the break!
Gotta love that Spidermobile!
I'm going to have to try and grab these and watch them properly on my TV.
My god todd, what is this? Freaking hilarious.
It is so 70s, so japanese and so power rangers. The fightning scenes and the back ground story are absolutely hilarious... can't get myself to watch more than that first episode though...
Suupppaidamaaaaaan!
I remember seeing a big original japanese box that included the spider robot, the bike and of course good ol Spider. It was a collectors wet dream come true.
Poor cat...
i thought hong kong's super inframan ('75) must've ripped this off - similar styling of sets, costumes, props. turns out it's made 3 years before spidey TV!
My local video store used to rent a bootleg of this show when I was really young. Rented it every weekend, but one day it disappeared. I remember being crushed because I hadn't shown my friends yet, and they didn't believe it existed.
Well, it seems I'm a bit late in discovering this one ...
This stuff is truly truly amazing !
Yeah yeah yeah WOW !
Yeah yeah yeah WOW ! ! !