Spider-Man Unlimited

Spider-Man Unlimited is the title of both an animated television series which aired from 1999 to 2001, and three comic book series, one of which, a 6-volume series, was based on the television series and published soon after the series began airing. However, the series was short-lived, having been cancelled after airing for only 13 episodes and ending on a cliffhanger.

Plot

While covering the launch of John Jameson's one-man mission to Counter-Earth (another Earth located on the far side of the Sun), Spider-Man attempts to stop his two symbiote adversaries Venom and Carnage from boarding the shuttlecraft. Blamed for losing contact with Jameson by J. Jonah Jameson of the Daily Bugle, Spider-Man becomes a target of persecution by the media and the public at large, with a bounty placed on his head. After John Jameson had made contact with Earth through a distress signal, Spider-Man borrows nanotechnology from Reed Richards to design a new suit that incorporates built in webshooters, stealth technology and anti-symbiote sonic weaponry. Making his way to Counter-Earth after persuading an attacking Nick Fury to let him rescue Jameson, Spider-Man learns that Jameson has fallen in with a band of freedom fighters opposed to the High Evolutionary whose Beastials, hybrids of animal and humanoid attributes, are the dominant species whilst humans are the second-class minority.

With Jameson reluctant to return until all of the Beastials are defeated, Spider-Man elects to remain on Counter-Earth, blending in as best as he can as Peter Parker, taking up residence in the apartment of a doctor, Naoko Yamada-Jones and her son Shane and fighting the High Evolutionary, his Knights of Wundagore, and his Machine Men alongside the rebels as Spider-Man. It is soon discovered that Venom and Carnage are also on Counter-Earth, and are following orders from the Synoptic, a hive-minded legion of Counter-Earth symbiotes.

This series also shows the animated version of John Jameson's Man-Wolf form, superhero versions of mainstream villains Green Goblin and Vulture, and Counter-Earth's counterparts of Kraven the Hunter and Electro.

"Furry" in Spider-Man Unlimited

While there have been many anthropomorphic mutant heroes and villains in the Marvel Comics and media repository spanning the company's entire history, Spider-Man Unlimited is notable for being one of the few instances from Marvel that featured an entire world (in this case, Counter-Earth) populated and dominated mostly by anthropomorphic human-animal hybrid creatures called Beastials created from animals being genetically uplifted by the High Evolutionary. Furthermore, it placed Spider-Man's own origins (being a human who was bitten by a radioactive spider's bite and being given spider-like attributes that he uses to his heroic advantage as his masked character) into a stronger profile, as he was once again faced with an ambition of his enemies to turn him into a truly-arachnoid, half-spider and half-man creature.

In the Spider-Man Unlimited world, characters from the Spider-Man comics and other Marvel franchises make appearances, including John Jameson who turns into Man-Wolf in one episode of the television series "Ill Met by Moonlight," marking the first appearance of his Man-Wolf form outside of the comics, but with his transformation being the result from one of the High Evolutionary's experiments and happens every time he gets angry rather than a gemstone, and a Bestial Wolverine also makes an appearance as the bestial form of the scientist husband of Peter Parker's landlady, who is a local doctor for human patients along with a Bestial Chameleon who also appears.

See also

• Spider-Man Unlimited on Wikipedia
• Comic book iteration explanation on Wikipedia

This article about a television series is a stub - can you improve it?