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The 1970s Network Hit That Got Stan Lee’s Iconic Comic Book Hero All Wrong

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1 week ago

30 November 2025

The 1970s Network Hit That Got Stan Lee’s Iconic Comic Book Hero All Wrong

Stan Lee was one of the major forces in shaping Marvel Comics into a pillar of pop culture, and the one character who emphasizes that success is Spider-Man. Co-created by Lee and Steve Ditko, Spidey defied conventions; he was a teenager who was nobody’s sidekick, being a superhero only added stress to his life instead of easing it, and he was named after a creature most people hated with a passion. Today, he’s one of the most popular characters in fiction, headlining blockbuster film franchises alongside best-selling comics…but there’s one piece of Spider-Man media that Lee wasn’t a fan of: the 1970s The Amazing Spider-Man TV show.

Lee had sold the rights to Spider-Man to CBS, who intended to launch a full-fledged TV series beginning with a two-hour made-for-TV movie. Prior to said movie, Lee would end up clashing with producer Daniel R. Goodman, as he felt the show was too juvenile for audiences. “The whole appeal of the character is the contrast and conflict between his private life as Peter Parker and his life as Spider-Man,” Lee said in an interview with writer Bill King. “The comic book version is more adult and sophisticated than the TV version.” It turns out there were other issues that held The Amazing Spider-Man back from being a faithful version of the web-slinger’s adventures.

‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ Lacks What Makes Spider-Man Amazing

Amazing Spider-Man 1977 — Spider-Man’s costume as it appears in the 1977 series, ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’

The biggest issue with The Amazing Spider-Man lies in how it adapts Spider-Man’s origin. What makes Peter Parker stand out from other superheroes is the fact that he initially sought out fame and fortune with his powers, even letting a robber run by him. When that same robber murdered his Uncle Ben, Peter would adopt the mantra of “with great power, there must always come great responsibility” and fight evil. In The Amazing Spider-Man, he’s bitten by a spider…and just decides to fight crime. There’s no tragic twist to his origin or proper motivation to be a hero, which only backs up Lee’s claims that the show lacked the sophistication of the comics.

Another thing that was lacking from The Amazing Spider-Man were Spidey’s iconic foes. Due to budget constraints, Nicholas Hammond‘s Peter Parker couldn’t fight foes on the level of Mysterio or Electro. Instead, he had to settle for fighting a psychic cult leader, an arms dealer, and a clone of himself, which ironically predates the infamous “Clone Saga” storyline in the comics. The kicker was that the series claimed to be set in New York, yet was very clearly filmed in Los Angeles.

Yet despite these changes, The Amazing Spider-Man ended up getting a second season, and a new producer in Lionel Siegel who was determined to further tone down the comic book elements to make the show “relatable.” Siegel’s work was for naught, as The Amazing Spider-Man was canceled after its second season. Ironically, one of the reasons why CBS canceled the series is that it didn’t want to be known as the “superhero network”, per Back Issue! In a day and age where the CW made superhero shows the foundation of its lineup, that might seem impossible to consider, but it was a different time.

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Another 70s-Era Spider-Man Show Got Stan Lee’s Seal of Approval

Time did not dull Stan Lee’s dislike of The Amazing Spider-Man, as he went further into detail about his issues with the series during a 2004 interview with the Television Academy:

“Very often, people will take a novel, let’s say, and bring it to the screen…and they will leave out the one element, the one quality that made the novel a best-seller. I felt the people who did the live-action series left out the very elements that made the comic book popular.”

Ironically, there was another Spider-Man show in the 1970s that veered wildly away from the comics, yet Lee loved it. 1978’s Spider-Man, which was co-produced by Marvel and Toei, features Takuya Yamashiro as the web-slinger instead of Peter Parker. Yamashiro isn’t bitten by a radioactive spider, but injected with alien blood that gives him spider powers and calls a giant robot named Leopardon into battle. Yet Lee gave the series his stamp of approval, as revealed in the Marvel 616 documentary series. Apparently, Toei got the spirit of Spider-Man in a way CBS didn’t.