Why Stan Lee Thought the First Live-Action Spider-Man Missed the Mark

So, Spider-Noir has finally arrived, and by all accounts, it’s absolutely nailed it—reviews are glowing across the board. It must sting a bit for Kevin Feige and the Marvel Studios crew, given their recent run hasn’t exactly set the world alight. Instead, it’s Sony Pictures Television and Amazon MGM Studios basking in the glory, as Marvel’s grand overseer is left watching from the sidelines. Funny how that works out sometimes.

I’ll admit I was a little wary when I first heard Nicolas Cage would be headlining as Spider-Man Noir—known here as 'The Spider'—because, let’s face it, the man has made some very questionable film choices lately. But, judging by reactions, 2026 Cage has still got the magic that made him a legend in the '90s. He’s not ready for the cinematic glue factory yet.

With eight episodes, this live-action Spider-Noir is actually only the second proper Spider-Man TV series in history. You might think there’d be more, considering Spidey’s popularity, but nope—before this, it was just The Amazing Spider-Man over on CBS back in the late '70s. That show starred Nicholas Hammond as Peter Parker and somehow survived two seasons before being cancelled in fairly unceremonious fashion. The kicker? Stan Lee himself absolutely hated it.

Stan Lee vs. CBS: The Grudge Match

Back in the mid-1970s, Stan Lee actually signed over live-action rights to Spider-Man to CBS for a shiny new primetime series. The man behind the mask was supposed to be one Daniel R. Goodman—someone CBS trusted with delivering decent telly. But it didn’t take long for Lee to regret handing over his baby.

Several times across the years, Lee voiced just how unimpressed he was with the resulting series. He did a long interview with the Television Academy in 2004, laying out what CBS had missed:

'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. They left out the humor. They left out the human interest and personality and playing up characterisations and personal problems.'

To make matters worse, Lee actually suggested fixes. Goodman more or less ignored him, despite promising to tweak things. According to the book Science Fiction Television Series, Goodman admitted he intentionally ditched the comic’s tone because he was aiming for a broader TV audience:

'My concept was to make Spider-Man more acceptable to a general audience than just to kiddies. We had to compromise as CBS was sold on my original sales presentation of a prime-time general audience show.'

Pretty daft, really, when you consider the end result. The more seriously they played it, the more childish it apparently came off—at least, if you believe Stan Lee. In Pizzazz magazine in 1978, he even called it 'too juvenile' and knocked how they totally lost what made Peter Parker great: 'the whole appeal of the character is the contrast and conflict between his private life as Peter Parker and his life as Spider-Man.' He didn’t mince words either; Lee was convinced the comic book version was "more adult and sophisticated" than the TV take.

CBS tried to right the ship in Season Two by bringing on Lionel Siegel (known for The Six Million Dollar Man). Things did improve, but not enough—the series still got the axe. Also, there was a behind-the-scenes panic that CBS was starting to look like a one-trick superhero network, given it also aired The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Doctor Strange, and a Saturday morning Captain Marvel show from DC.

The Incredible Missing Villains (and Quality)

Good luck trying to actually watch The Amazing Spider-Man now. It’s vanished from all the streamers, and even the eBay DVD listings are looking scarce—one listing just laughed at me with a 'no longer available' sign. Thankfully, all 13 episodes are lurking around on Internet Archive if you’re desperate enough. And I can confirm: Stan Lee was definitely onto something. This show just doesn’t work.

• No classic Spider-Man villains. Forget seeing Green Goblin or Doctor Octopus—you’re stuck with embezzlers, everyday crooks, and bizarrely specific cult leaders. Might as well be any hard-boiled '70s cop drama with a man in tights running about.
• Peter Parker is as bland as plain toast. There’s barely any origin stuff—Uncle Ben isn’t mentioned, so there’s none of the heart or motivation that makes Spidey Spidey.
• The costume looks straight out of a sixth form panto. Even grading on a '70s TV curve, it’s bad. Lee admitted that for the time, the climbing effects and stunts were fairly impressive, so there’s that.

Weird little aside—the very first live-action Spider-Man actually snuck onto TV a few years earlier on PBS, of all places. The Electric Company ran 'Spidey Super Stories' as short educational skits. But with next to no effects, you can’t really count those as proper superhero telly.

Technically, The Amazing Spider-Man was the first to deliver on action and atmosphere, and Lee even threw them a bone for that: 'On a technical level, I think they did a good job. The scenes of him climbing on the wall – in those days, they didn’t have the tech that they have today, and they did a very good job with that.'

There were even grand plans for superhero team-ups, if you can believe it. CBS floated the idea of mashing up Hammon’s Spider-Man with Bill Bixby’s Hulk (it never happened). Even wilder, comic writer Dan Slott recently shared that he tried pitching a crossover between Nicholas Hammond’s Spider‑Man and Christopher Reeve’s Superman—could have been surreal telly, that. Ultimately, licensing and rights killed the dream, and, let’s be honest, CBS probably didn’t want their lacklustre wall-crawler standing next to Reeve’s Superman.

The Amazing Spider-Man Cast

Nicholas Hammond as Peter Parker / Spider-Man
Michael Pataki as Captain Barbera
David White as J. Jonah Jameson
Ellen Bry as Julie Masters
Chip Fields as Rita Conway
Lisa Eilbacher as Judy Tyler
Hilly Hicks as Robbie Robertson