Among TV shows that ended too soon, The Spectacular Spider-Man will always remain one of the tough ones for me - something I was strongly reminded of watching the new The Spectacular Spider-Man: The Complete Series Blu-ray, which was released this week, no doubt thanks to Sony wanting to capitalize on their release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. This was a continually entertaining, heartfelt and exciting show, delivering the best TV version of Spider-Man to date – perhaps even the best adaptation of Spidey ever, including the movies.

Living on the edge...

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Fighting crime, spinning webs...

Swinging from the highest ledge...

Greg Weisman, Victor Cook and their collaborators were Spider-Man fans who knew and respected the character’s history and deftly incorporated elements from a ton of different sources, including the original Stan Lee/Steve Ditko comics, Brian Bendis’ Ultimate version and the Sam Raimi films. Yet rather than feel like a rehash, The Spectacular Spider-Man felt fresh and exciting, with familiar stories getting fun new twists.An excellent voice cast, led by Josh Keaton as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, brought these characters to life and it was great to see how the series interpreted the likes of Gwen (Lacey Chabert), Mary Jane (Vanessa Marshall) and Harry (James Arnold Taylor) with such wit and heart. That heart and attention to character allowed viewers to really invest in Peter and his personal life and it’s no accident that the version of Gwen played by Emma Stone in the new Spider-Man movies feels very influenced by the Gwen we met on this show, which was the most fully formed and endearing incarnation of that character.The villains were both fun and legitimately dangerous and the fight scenes were clever and thrilling – the early criticism of the show’s “cartoony” (for lack of a better word) character designs dissipated when you saw how the Spectacular team used the purposely simple designs to spend more money on the actual animation, as Spidey swung through the city and fought the likes of Lizard, Sandman and the Green Goblin in one memorable battle after another.If you were a big Spider-Man fan, there was so much to love here. Nearly every character with a notable speaking role was taken from the comics, allowing the likes of Blackie Gaxton to Stan Carter to co-exist. And if you didn’t know who those people were and what fate had in store for them (oh, the stories this show could have done had it continued…) it didn’t matter, since you still had great stories to draw you in.The release pattern for Spectacular on home video was always a frustrating one, with three to four episodes released at a time in “Volume” installments. The original plan was to edit these episodes together into single movies – the show was produced with this plan in mind, with extra footage made to extend the stories and better connect each grouping of episodes. Yet only the first Volume was actually released in this manner, with the other discs simply containing separate episodes. A collection was released for Season 1 eventually, but one for Season 2 was never made, much less a collection of all 26 episodes.Thankfully, we have this new Complete Series set to remedy that, while also bringing The Spectacular Spider-Man to Blu-ray for the first time. Given the fact that it seemed neither of these things would ever happen, this is a big cause for celebration for fans. This is a show with a ton of re-watch appeal, and I’m very excited to have this new collection, which boasts a colorful and vibrant HD transfer.The big downside is that clearly Sony were not looking to put any money into new special features, as there is nothing new on this front – the only extras are the already-slim pickings made for the Season 1 set , made up of two decent featurettes, and the previously-released music video, featuring the full version of the oh-so catchy Spectacular theme song. Not only does that mean there is nothing new included – say a recent interview with Weisman looking back on the series or commentaries – but also none of the hours of behind-the-scenes footage and many deleted scenes (including that footage made for the unreleased DVD movies) that have never been seen by the public. It’s too bad, because it seemed for a long time we’d never get this collection and it’s very unlikely anyone will be revisiting this series for another release anytime soon, so this felt like the one chance to go big.