I kinda badmouth the source material, but I still bought that figure...

So from 1993 to 1998, Spider-Man Unlimited was a quarterly, extra-sized book...of wildly varying quality, if I recall. The first two issues were part of the Maximum Carnage crossover, which kinda tells you how long that thing ran. Then, in 1999, Fox aired one season of Spider-Man Unlimited: let's see, the first episode aired October 2, 1999. The first episode of Batman Beyond aired January 10, 1999. I point that out, because Unlimited seems like maybe they wanted to do a futuristic setting--probably Spidey 2099--but didn't. His little webby cape feels stolen from 2099; I was initially figuring the producers intended to swipe from that and Beyond but didn't hit either.

I won't tell you how old I was in '99--far outside of the target demographic for this, certainly--but of course I watched it. And the first episode kind of annoys the crap out of me? John Jameson's rocket launch to the newly discovered "Counter-Earth" on the other side of the sun, goes awry when Venom and Carnage sneak aboard. Spidey, as you'd expect, gets blamed by J.Jonah for this, and of course has to kit up and go try and rescue John...which meant leaving Mary Jane behind. The wiki page indicates they were married, which, honestly, I don't recall picking up? It felt more like, Spidey was ditching his longtime girlfriend when things got too serious. Meanwhile, John is leading the Rebel Alliance of Counter-Earth, basically; against the furries. No! The 'Bestials,' the animal-men creations of the High Evolutionary; who are largely charmless. However the Evolutionary either created or found Counter-Earth, which was mostly like the earth we knew, he had also filled it up with his Knights of Wundagore and Machine Men soldiers. Normo humans were basically oppressed second-class citizens, and John had taken up the fight for their rights, probably in large part to score with the hot rebel Karen, the High Evolutionary's granddaughter. What I'm getting at is, yes, power and responsibility, there are arguably reasons for Spidey to be there, but it also largely felt like man, why is this his problem? Oh, because Venom and Carnage are being weird, and probably going to bring about some horrible symbiote apocalypse that takes out both earths. The series only ran 13 episodes, and for good measure, ends on a cliffhanger. Marvel and Fox had been chasing that high, from the success of X-Men and the first Spidey show; but this, Silver Surfer, and Avengers: United They Stand didn't hit the same. Actually, I'm not positive any of them had terrible ratings, but they may have been more expensive, and the market was changing: Pokemon and Digimon were taking over. Oh, and Batman Beyond would run three seasons and a direct-to-video film. And a better theme. And the third season has the great episode "Out of the Past," with Batman: the Musical! And one of my favorite Kevin Conroy Bat-lines ever... Anyway, Spider-Man Unlimited. Maybe I'll leave that on over the weekend, see if that inspires me to open him up. (It's a nice card!)