Spider-man and His Amazing Friends Animation Art - Models

Spider-man and his Amazing Friends is an American television cartoon, one of the first under Marvel Productions, that lasted 3 seasons and 24 episodes, each narrated by Spider-man's creator Stan Lee. Season 1 consisted of 13 half-hour episodes all of which were animated in Korea with the exception of episode 11 "Knights and Demons" which was animated in Japan by Toei Animation. Season 2 was renamed to "The Incredible Hulk and the Amazing Spider-man" and only consisted of 3 episodes each of which were done in Japan by Toei Animation (more expensive) and 30 min Hulk cartoon added for a total of 1 hour. For Season 3 the title was reversed to "The Amazing Spider-man and the Incredible Hulk" and the animation was sent back to Korea (less expensive) andl asted only 8 episodes.

NBC originally wanted to call the show "Spider-Friends" but quickly changed it's name because of it's similarity to ABC's popular "Superfriends", even though SMAHAF added a dog (Ms. Lion) just because Superfriends had a space monkey named Gleek. The Spider-friends were initially supposed to be Spider-man (voiced by Dan Gilvezan), Iceman and the Human Torch. Legal issues tied up the use of the Human torch and supposedly his "flames" would make children play with fire. They ended up with a whole new character of Firestar (Angelica Jones) which purposefully was made to look like Spider-man's red haired, comic book love interest Mary Jane with soft glowing flames, not fire. Bobby Drake (Iceman) himself was made to look like the comic book version of Flash Thompson having blond hair, thus having to change Flash in the cartoon series to brown hair. Oddly enough both in the cartoon were voiced by Frank Welker along with Ms. Lion.

Spider-man and his Amazing Friends ran concurrently with the lesser known and seldom seen stand alone "Spider-man" series which lasted 26 episodes. It was thought that SMAHAF was a sequel to the series, but the episode "Origin of the Spider-Friends" tries to fill the gaps between the series. Also flashbacks were used throughout SMAHAF of the "Spider-man" series with character designs used for both shows.