The show has contemporariness to it unmatched in Spider-Man history. Sony is working with Mainframe Entertainment, the cutting-edge computer animation company, on producing the animation. And it is being geared for an audience demographic more closely resembling that of readers of the comic books.

"This a dream show," producer Audu Paden of Sony says. "We will not disappoint."

Thirteen episodes are being created for the first season. Spider-Man will be produced with 3-D animation, but the show won't look like a Reboot because it is being animated with a computer program called Toon Shader.

"It's a cartoon-like way of rendering a model," producer Steven Wendland of Mainframe says.

"This is one of things that makes this series really unique to what's been on television before," Paden says. "Just like a traditional 3-D show, everything is sculptural, everything is being thoroughly modeled, but what we're doing in our final render process, we're processing it, not as fully sculptural 3-D like you'd see in Max Steel or Starship Troopers, but we're having the computer assign colors that are like paint colors.

"So the ultimate look will be a prohibitively expensive 2-D feature film - on a TV budget. The characters will always be on model. The range of performance will be something that we can tap into things that worked before, and play them forward again. There is exquisite control over lighting and mood.

"Of course the most significant issue is perspective. We can have Spider-Man swinging through the city, and our camera can be moving around him. It's going to be cinematic. All the things that they can do in a live-action feature film, we can do with the disciplines of our model domain."

Paden says that the look of the show will be influenced by current comics artists John Romita Jr. (Amazing Spider-Man) and Mark Bagley (Ultimate Spider-Man).

"This is the current draft; this is the place we jump off from," Paden says. "I love Romita Jr.'s character drawings. He just does great design. And Bagley's attitudes, and his Spider-Man in motion - you have him poised in mid-air in extreme posed and limbs stretched to the point where real human ligaments would be under great strain - so we're really going to Bagley for the way we're moving our Spider-Man. We're looking to them for the way the characters are crafted."

Paden and Wendland have worked together before, including the recent Heavy Gear. "There's a familiarity that helps," Paden says.

The show will feature Neil Patrick Harris as the voice of Peter Parker, Lisa Loeb as Mary Jane Watson and Ian Ziering as Harry Osborn. Look for lots of musicians to guest-star, including Rob Zombie as the Lizard.

"It's a music television station," Paden says. "There's a lot of things that we're playing with and experimenting with in terms of drawing in some really famous talent to participate."

Rob Allstetter, Deputy Sports Editor for the Detroit News, has been a comics journalist for the past decade, having written for numerous publications. He currently publishes The Comics Contiuum. He can be reached at: RobAlls@aol.com.

The Trailer Park Archive

July 2 2003 - Hellboy June 25, 2003 - Ang Lee June 18, 2003 - Eric Bana June 11, 2003 - Spider-Man Animation June 4 , 2003 - Lou Ferrigno May 27 , 2003 - Teen Titans May 20 , 2003 - Bryan Singer May 14 , 2003 - Al Gough May 8 , 2003 - Kelly Hu April 22, 2003 - Aaron Stanford April 18, 2003 - James Marsden April 15, 2003 - Jaime King April 8, 2003 - Halle Berry April 2, 2003 - Anna Paquin March 26 , 2003 - Scott McNeil March 21 , 2003 - Alan Cumming March 18 , 2003 - Michael Rosenbaum March 14 , 2003 - Ted Raimi: The "Other" Raimi Is Coming Back March 11 , 2003 - Maria Canals likes the call of the wild March 7 , 2003 - John Shea - Welcome to Mutant X March 4 , 2003 - Anthony Cistaro - Witchblade February 27 , 2003 - David Kaye - Professor X February 18 , 2003 - Victor Webster February 14 , 2003 - Ben Affleck February 11 , 2003 - Colin Farrell February 7 , 2003 - Comic Controversy? January 31 , 2003 - Static Shock January 24 , 2003 - Jennifer Garner