To celebrate the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, I will be taking a look back over far too many characters that are associated with the film and it's tie in video game. The images appear courtesy of Amazing Spider-Man .Info and Marvel Animation Age. Please let me know what you think. Enjoy!
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Spider-Man has never been shy of crime lords. Since his original inception Spidey spent most of his time fighting supervillains and gangsters, rather than commies and aliens like most of the Marvel books at the time.
Debuting in the superlative Amazing Spider-Man #50 "Spider-Man No More!", The Kingpin was initially intended to be the biggest of the crime lords that had littered the earlier Spidey book. With John Romita Sr. taking over the artistic chores of Amazing Spider-Man following the shocking departure of Spider-Man co-creator Steve Dikto, he wanted the characters design to reflect that. Here's how he recalls The Kingpin's origins on the special features for the Daredevil movie DVD.
Stan's procedure used to be, he would leave me a little card on my drawing table saying next month, the character is going to be called The Kingpin. That's all. No description, no limitations, the sky was the limit. All the criminals, the master criminals that Steve Dikto and Jack Kirby had created has a similarity, they all lean, mean looking, moustached with a felt hat and a stripped suit, what I would call the established criminal type. So when he said The Kingpin of Crime, I immediately gave him the most different look I could. I fashioned him after a wall street tycoon baron type.â€
Looking at Romita's early drawings of the character (who he cites as his favourite creation, much to the horror of Firestar fans) it's clear there's a Marlon Brando influence in there to me. He's now more of a Daredevil villain after Frank Miller took over the reigns of that book in the 80's and produced what I believe to be his finest ever work.
My own initial impressions of The Kingpin are not fond ones, despite him probably being my favourite Spidey villain. For you see, as a young lad, The Kingpin was the bane of my existence for several months. As the 6 year old I received the gift of a Mega Drive and a few games for Christmas, chief amongst them being Spider-Man Vs. The Kingpin. Unfortunately, Santa's elf got them in Japan and I had another month to get an adapter to play the bugger (although I later learned that if you saw the side of a Japanese Mega Drive cartridge off, it will still remarkably work on a British system!)
For those of you pour souls who don't own or haven't played the game, the story is a simple one; The Kingpin has planted a huge bomb that will destroy New York in 24 hours and has blamed it on Spider-Man. Offering a $100k reward for Spider-Man's capture, Fisk has turned the entire city against Spider-Man. Upon hearing rumours of Dr. Octopus hiding in a warehouse, the player breaks in and laying a beat down on Ock, he reveals that The Kingpin has hired plenty of his old villains to stop Spidey and they each hold a key to disarm the bomb. His investigations lead him the sewers to fight The Lizard (and we learn Foggy Nelson is right, there are alligators in the sewers!), Electro at a power plant (stopping the transmissions, clever boy Spidey) and The Sandman in Central Park, where all the thugs hang out. Upon realising that he has no further leads after that, he simply comes out into the open as Spidey to see "who else tries to beat my brains out?" before further confrontations with Hobgoblin and Venom (who later kidnaps Mary Jane eventually lead to a final confrontation with The Kingpin with Mary Jane moments away from sinking into a vat of acid.
The game is based on then Amazing Spider-Man artist Todd McFarcline’s models and they look outstanding for a 16bit game. The people behind were clearly Spider-Man fans or did their homework there's plenty of nods here, including a cameo from J. Jonah Jameson and one of the game's coolest functions; in order to clear your name, you can take photos of Spidey fighting crooks which are sold to The Daily Bugle and the money you earn increases your web fluid.
As much as I love the game, it was the bane of my video gaming existence for years and try as I might, I couldn't complete it without cheating. I kid you not True Believer, last year I literally sat down and played the game, was defeated by The Kingpin (I ran out of web fluid and was helpless to save MJ from sinking to her doom) and then played it AGAIN, right the way through before again, tasting defeating from the fists of Fisk. I couldn't blame MJ this time either as The Kingpin kicked my ass in a matter of seconds.
I recently actually managed to defeat the behemoth last month without cheating on a Saturday morning before I went out. As far as video gaming prowess goes, it is the one trump I hold over my brother, to counteract his boasts of achieving 100% on Arkham City, while I fail at a mere 98% as I cannot do complete the Nightwing million point challenge to save my dignity.
So now we've covered his comics and video game/childhood traumas, how does he fair up in animation?
As one of the main villains back from the Romita days, The Kingpin was bound to make his debut on the small screen sooner or later. Spider-Man himself made the translation over to the small screen in 1967 and Kingpin would eventually feature in the second season of the show.
Sadly, the production company behind Spider-Man 67 (as it would later become known) Grantray-Lawrence animation in Canada, would file for bankruptcy after the first season of Spider-Man concluded. They were none for having notoriously cheap budgets, which explains the use of stock footage found throughout the Spider-Man cartoon, and why the Marvel Superheroes Show simply added moving mouths to the panels from the various comic books which they adapted.
Following the bankruptcy, Ralph Bakshi Studios took over production from Spider-Man. With the budget slashed again, Bakshi went to work on the show and sadly, ruined it. The show was cheap and cheerful before the change, but Bakshi, despite claiming to be a comic book fan, clearly had little regard for either Peter Parker or Spider-Man, nor the assorted villains from the comic book which the first season managed to adapt. The clean, simple background of New York were replaced by trippy messes which had no resemblance to the city that never sleeps. Amongst the numerous oddities were the fact that most of the villains now had green skin. Stock footage was used to an embarrassing degree, regardless of whether it made sense to the story or not.
Kingpin himself would appear in the second episode of season two, which actually serves as a prequel to season one. Following the death of his Uncle Ben, Peter Parker attempts to find work as a copyboy at The Daily Bugle, in which Jameson offers him a job simply because he is the nephew of a murdered man, citing it as his good deed of the day.
The story sees Jameson attempting to rat out The Kingpin over a drugs racketeering run, in which The Kingpin is forcing chemists to buy his imitation drug at gunpoint and Peter overhears The Bugle star reporter Foswell (nice nod) working as The Kingpin's stooge. The Kingpin later attacks Jameson in his office and kidnaps, ordering him to kill the story. Jameson isn't presented as the coward he was in the first season (while hilariously declaring himself the "fearless publisher" of The Daily Bugle). As far as plots go, this episode is probably the seasons best, however it has terrible pacing; just as the story gets moving, we are treated to an endless montage of webslinging shots, marred by horrendous red and black backgrounds. There is even a scene in which Spider-Man has only 2 minutes to get to the Daily Bugle to stop a bomb; what should be a fast paced race to save his new workplace is again turned into a web slinging highlight montage. The story would've worked better as two 10 minutes episodes rather than 20 minute stories, in order to cut down on the excessive reuse of animation.
The designs had gone to hell by the time season two started, but Kingpin looks decent enough. His skin isn't green, which is a bonus. He doesn't have the presence that John Romita Jr drew him with, but that is to be expected for a show made his cheaply. Casting again is fine, the Canadian cast were kept for season two, so Paul Soles is still Peter Parker and his crime fighting alter ego. Kingpin, along with numerous other villains in the show, is portrayed by Tom Harvey.
Kingpin would return in season three, in a rarity. The villains in the later seasons were not known for appearing more than once but Kingpin was always the exception in these seasons, as sadly, no other new villains from the comics appeared. The Big Brainwasher is actually based on The Amazing Spider-Man #59-61 as Mary Jane (in her only appearance in the show) invites Peter to watch her dance at a new club she works at, but unfortunately for her, the club is owned by The Kingpin. Tom Harvey returns to voice The Kingpin, but he is redesigned and... he's skinny. It just looks odd seeing a skinny Kingpin, I cannot lie. The animation and models in the show just got worse and worse as time went on, but seeing Kingpin change from newly animated skinny to the bigger model from the repeated animation; even sillier is when a clearly skinny Kingpin announces himself as 300lbs of pure muscle.
It's not as good as Kingpinned, and Kingpinned isn't as good as some of the earlier efforts from the first season. It is a shame, I always rather enjoyed the original series of the 67 show, despite how crude and occasionally camp they were. There was a lot of enjoyment to be found from them, whether it be via nostalgia or just appreciating the long sought after jazz scores; sadly, the second and third seasons are all too often a trip down memory lane not worth taking.
Moving on to the 70's and perhaps Marvel's most obscure cartoon. The Spider-Woman cartoon of the late 70's has always been an oddity to me. There were certainly more popular characters to make an animated series from in the 70's, especially considering Spider-Man himself was absent from television at the time and a female lead in an action show can't have been a massive priority back then. There are rumours circulating that Marvel actually created Spider-Woman simply to licence the name Spider-Woman and a similar themed Spider womany show was planned at the time.
Whatever its origins, Spider-Woman debuted in 1979 and only lasted one season, quickly forgotten following its initial airings. One of my earliest cartoon memories is actually watching the premiere episode on an old Spider-Man VHS I had, which featured 67 Spider-Man episodes Return of The Flying Dutchman and Farewell Performance and Spider-Woman's Pyramids of Terror which I watched over and over again as a child. I have fond, nostalgic memories of the episodes and thanks to the wonderful people of Clear Vision, I now own the complete series on DVD so have had the opportunity to view the show in its entirety. I actually bought the full 80's Spider-Man show, Spider-Woman and all of Spider-Man: The Animated Series as soon as I could, as I thought that the DVDs would be shortly discontinued. I haven't actually made my way through all of Spider-Woman yet (I was eventually planning on a Spider-Woman site for Marvel Animation Age... haven't started that yet either). The few episodes I did watch had little to no reference to the comic books but for the sake of completeness, but following our very own Spider-Friends informing me that The Kingpin appeared in one of the episodes, I unearthed my DVD watched the respective episode.
He bears very little resemblance to The Kingpin of Crime of the comic books. He is a short, fat criminal, who is seen constantly chowing down on food. His henchmen are clearly inspired by The Enforcers, but are not known as Ox, Fancy Dan or Montoya. The main plot of the episode sees Kingpin and his enforcers steal a paint that will make them invisible.
The invisible paint storyline is as stupid as it sounds, but cartoons were far more juvenile back then. The show has Jessica Drew serving as the editor of Justice Magazine and there is something of a romance between Jessica and her photographer Jeff, who is clearly modelled after Peter Parker (hence why Parker doesn't appear in the show) and her nephew Billy, who usually manage to get themselves involved in the episode while never quite twigging that Drew is Spider-Woman. It's the Clark Kent/Lois Lane/Superman triangle but the girl is the hero this time around. With the show being set at a magazine/newsroom, I doubt this was unintentional, especially as I believe this debuted around the time of the superlative Superman: The Movie (still the best Superman movie to be seen on the big screen.)
The most interesting part of the episode is that the invisible Kingpin actually sees Jessica do her Wonder Woman transformation twirl and deduces she is Spider-Woman and he announces to the world that Drew and Spider-Woman are one as the same. Spider-Woman eventually apprehended the Kingpin and his goons, and uses a Spider-Woman robot to trick Kingpin into thinking they are two separate people. It was a disappointing ending that came from nowhere, but given the time, one can't expect much more.
I found the episode to be enjoyable. Realising there was another Spider-Man team up that I had never seen before, I watched that immediately following this episode and the Kingpin appearance was by far the better of the two. From what little I have seen of the show, it was a refreshing change to see a supervillain from the comic books features, but its not something I would suggest anyone go out of their way to see unless they have a massive desire to see John Romita Sr's beautiful Spider-Woman costume animated, but as a curiously glance, it was an enjoyable way to spend half an hour of ones time.
Bigger and better things were to come for Kingpin, of course.
Next: Acceptable in the 80s?
_____________________________
Spider-Man has never been shy of crime lords. Since his original inception Spidey spent most of his time fighting supervillains and gangsters, rather than commies and aliens like most of the Marvel books at the time.
Debuting in the superlative Amazing Spider-Man #50 "Spider-Man No More!", The Kingpin was initially intended to be the biggest of the crime lords that had littered the earlier Spidey book. With John Romita Sr. taking over the artistic chores of Amazing Spider-Man following the shocking departure of Spider-Man co-creator Steve Dikto, he wanted the characters design to reflect that. Here's how he recalls The Kingpin's origins on the special features for the Daredevil movie DVD.
Stan's procedure used to be, he would leave me a little card on my drawing table saying next month, the character is going to be called The Kingpin. That's all. No description, no limitations, the sky was the limit. All the criminals, the master criminals that Steve Dikto and Jack Kirby had created has a similarity, they all lean, mean looking, moustached with a felt hat and a stripped suit, what I would call the established criminal type. So when he said The Kingpin of Crime, I immediately gave him the most different look I could. I fashioned him after a wall street tycoon baron type.â€
Looking at Romita's early drawings of the character (who he cites as his favourite creation, much to the horror of Firestar fans) it's clear there's a Marlon Brando influence in there to me. He's now more of a Daredevil villain after Frank Miller took over the reigns of that book in the 80's and produced what I believe to be his finest ever work.
My own initial impressions of The Kingpin are not fond ones, despite him probably being my favourite Spidey villain. For you see, as a young lad, The Kingpin was the bane of my existence for several months. As the 6 year old I received the gift of a Mega Drive and a few games for Christmas, chief amongst them being Spider-Man Vs. The Kingpin. Unfortunately, Santa's elf got them in Japan and I had another month to get an adapter to play the bugger (although I later learned that if you saw the side of a Japanese Mega Drive cartridge off, it will still remarkably work on a British system!)
For those of you pour souls who don't own or haven't played the game, the story is a simple one; The Kingpin has planted a huge bomb that will destroy New York in 24 hours and has blamed it on Spider-Man. Offering a $100k reward for Spider-Man's capture, Fisk has turned the entire city against Spider-Man. Upon hearing rumours of Dr. Octopus hiding in a warehouse, the player breaks in and laying a beat down on Ock, he reveals that The Kingpin has hired plenty of his old villains to stop Spidey and they each hold a key to disarm the bomb. His investigations lead him the sewers to fight The Lizard (and we learn Foggy Nelson is right, there are alligators in the sewers!), Electro at a power plant (stopping the transmissions, clever boy Spidey) and The Sandman in Central Park, where all the thugs hang out. Upon realising that he has no further leads after that, he simply comes out into the open as Spidey to see "who else tries to beat my brains out?" before further confrontations with Hobgoblin and Venom (who later kidnaps Mary Jane eventually lead to a final confrontation with The Kingpin with Mary Jane moments away from sinking into a vat of acid.
The game is based on then Amazing Spider-Man artist Todd McFarcline’s models and they look outstanding for a 16bit game. The people behind were clearly Spider-Man fans or did their homework there's plenty of nods here, including a cameo from J. Jonah Jameson and one of the game's coolest functions; in order to clear your name, you can take photos of Spidey fighting crooks which are sold to The Daily Bugle and the money you earn increases your web fluid.
As much as I love the game, it was the bane of my video gaming existence for years and try as I might, I couldn't complete it without cheating. I kid you not True Believer, last year I literally sat down and played the game, was defeated by The Kingpin (I ran out of web fluid and was helpless to save MJ from sinking to her doom) and then played it AGAIN, right the way through before again, tasting defeating from the fists of Fisk. I couldn't blame MJ this time either as The Kingpin kicked my ass in a matter of seconds.
I recently actually managed to defeat the behemoth last month without cheating on a Saturday morning before I went out. As far as video gaming prowess goes, it is the one trump I hold over my brother, to counteract his boasts of achieving 100% on Arkham City, while I fail at a mere 98% as I cannot do complete the Nightwing million point challenge to save my dignity.
So now we've covered his comics and video game/childhood traumas, how does he fair up in animation?
As one of the main villains back from the Romita days, The Kingpin was bound to make his debut on the small screen sooner or later. Spider-Man himself made the translation over to the small screen in 1967 and Kingpin would eventually feature in the second season of the show.
Sadly, the production company behind Spider-Man 67 (as it would later become known) Grantray-Lawrence animation in Canada, would file for bankruptcy after the first season of Spider-Man concluded. They were none for having notoriously cheap budgets, which explains the use of stock footage found throughout the Spider-Man cartoon, and why the Marvel Superheroes Show simply added moving mouths to the panels from the various comic books which they adapted.
Following the bankruptcy, Ralph Bakshi Studios took over production from Spider-Man. With the budget slashed again, Bakshi went to work on the show and sadly, ruined it. The show was cheap and cheerful before the change, but Bakshi, despite claiming to be a comic book fan, clearly had little regard for either Peter Parker or Spider-Man, nor the assorted villains from the comic book which the first season managed to adapt. The clean, simple background of New York were replaced by trippy messes which had no resemblance to the city that never sleeps. Amongst the numerous oddities were the fact that most of the villains now had green skin. Stock footage was used to an embarrassing degree, regardless of whether it made sense to the story or not.
Kingpin himself would appear in the second episode of season two, which actually serves as a prequel to season one. Following the death of his Uncle Ben, Peter Parker attempts to find work as a copyboy at The Daily Bugle, in which Jameson offers him a job simply because he is the nephew of a murdered man, citing it as his good deed of the day.
The story sees Jameson attempting to rat out The Kingpin over a drugs racketeering run, in which The Kingpin is forcing chemists to buy his imitation drug at gunpoint and Peter overhears The Bugle star reporter Foswell (nice nod) working as The Kingpin's stooge. The Kingpin later attacks Jameson in his office and kidnaps, ordering him to kill the story. Jameson isn't presented as the coward he was in the first season (while hilariously declaring himself the "fearless publisher" of The Daily Bugle). As far as plots go, this episode is probably the seasons best, however it has terrible pacing; just as the story gets moving, we are treated to an endless montage of webslinging shots, marred by horrendous red and black backgrounds. There is even a scene in which Spider-Man has only 2 minutes to get to the Daily Bugle to stop a bomb; what should be a fast paced race to save his new workplace is again turned into a web slinging highlight montage. The story would've worked better as two 10 minutes episodes rather than 20 minute stories, in order to cut down on the excessive reuse of animation.
The designs had gone to hell by the time season two started, but Kingpin looks decent enough. His skin isn't green, which is a bonus. He doesn't have the presence that John Romita Jr drew him with, but that is to be expected for a show made his cheaply. Casting again is fine, the Canadian cast were kept for season two, so Paul Soles is still Peter Parker and his crime fighting alter ego. Kingpin, along with numerous other villains in the show, is portrayed by Tom Harvey.
Kingpin would return in season three, in a rarity. The villains in the later seasons were not known for appearing more than once but Kingpin was always the exception in these seasons, as sadly, no other new villains from the comics appeared. The Big Brainwasher is actually based on The Amazing Spider-Man #59-61 as Mary Jane (in her only appearance in the show) invites Peter to watch her dance at a new club she works at, but unfortunately for her, the club is owned by The Kingpin. Tom Harvey returns to voice The Kingpin, but he is redesigned and... he's skinny. It just looks odd seeing a skinny Kingpin, I cannot lie. The animation and models in the show just got worse and worse as time went on, but seeing Kingpin change from newly animated skinny to the bigger model from the repeated animation; even sillier is when a clearly skinny Kingpin announces himself as 300lbs of pure muscle.
It's not as good as Kingpinned, and Kingpinned isn't as good as some of the earlier efforts from the first season. It is a shame, I always rather enjoyed the original series of the 67 show, despite how crude and occasionally camp they were. There was a lot of enjoyment to be found from them, whether it be via nostalgia or just appreciating the long sought after jazz scores; sadly, the second and third seasons are all too often a trip down memory lane not worth taking.
Moving on to the 70's and perhaps Marvel's most obscure cartoon. The Spider-Woman cartoon of the late 70's has always been an oddity to me. There were certainly more popular characters to make an animated series from in the 70's, especially considering Spider-Man himself was absent from television at the time and a female lead in an action show can't have been a massive priority back then. There are rumours circulating that Marvel actually created Spider-Woman simply to licence the name Spider-Woman and a similar themed Spider womany show was planned at the time.
Whatever its origins, Spider-Woman debuted in 1979 and only lasted one season, quickly forgotten following its initial airings. One of my earliest cartoon memories is actually watching the premiere episode on an old Spider-Man VHS I had, which featured 67 Spider-Man episodes Return of The Flying Dutchman and Farewell Performance and Spider-Woman's Pyramids of Terror which I watched over and over again as a child. I have fond, nostalgic memories of the episodes and thanks to the wonderful people of Clear Vision, I now own the complete series on DVD so have had the opportunity to view the show in its entirety. I actually bought the full 80's Spider-Man show, Spider-Woman and all of Spider-Man: The Animated Series as soon as I could, as I thought that the DVDs would be shortly discontinued. I haven't actually made my way through all of Spider-Woman yet (I was eventually planning on a Spider-Woman site for Marvel Animation Age... haven't started that yet either). The few episodes I did watch had little to no reference to the comic books but for the sake of completeness, but following our very own Spider-Friends informing me that The Kingpin appeared in one of the episodes, I unearthed my DVD watched the respective episode.
He bears very little resemblance to The Kingpin of Crime of the comic books. He is a short, fat criminal, who is seen constantly chowing down on food. His henchmen are clearly inspired by The Enforcers, but are not known as Ox, Fancy Dan or Montoya. The main plot of the episode sees Kingpin and his enforcers steal a paint that will make them invisible.
The invisible paint storyline is as stupid as it sounds, but cartoons were far more juvenile back then. The show has Jessica Drew serving as the editor of Justice Magazine and there is something of a romance between Jessica and her photographer Jeff, who is clearly modelled after Peter Parker (hence why Parker doesn't appear in the show) and her nephew Billy, who usually manage to get themselves involved in the episode while never quite twigging that Drew is Spider-Woman. It's the Clark Kent/Lois Lane/Superman triangle but the girl is the hero this time around. With the show being set at a magazine/newsroom, I doubt this was unintentional, especially as I believe this debuted around the time of the superlative Superman: The Movie (still the best Superman movie to be seen on the big screen.)
The most interesting part of the episode is that the invisible Kingpin actually sees Jessica do her Wonder Woman transformation twirl and deduces she is Spider-Woman and he announces to the world that Drew and Spider-Woman are one as the same. Spider-Woman eventually apprehended the Kingpin and his goons, and uses a Spider-Woman robot to trick Kingpin into thinking they are two separate people. It was a disappointing ending that came from nowhere, but given the time, one can't expect much more.
I found the episode to be enjoyable. Realising there was another Spider-Man team up that I had never seen before, I watched that immediately following this episode and the Kingpin appearance was by far the better of the two. From what little I have seen of the show, it was a refreshing change to see a supervillain from the comic books features, but its not something I would suggest anyone go out of their way to see unless they have a massive desire to see John Romita Sr's beautiful Spider-Woman costume animated, but as a curiously glance, it was an enjoyable way to spend half an hour of ones time.
Bigger and better things were to come for Kingpin, of course.
Next: Acceptable in the 80s?
