Screenwriters John Semper and Ernie Altbacker have worked together in superhero animation for a long time, with their latest collaboration being the upcoming animated DC Animated Movie Green Lantern: Beware My Power. The projects Semper and Altbacker have worked together on include the classic '90s show Spider-Man: The Animated Series, with Semper serving as showrunner. Over twenty years since the series concluded, the show continues to loom large in the Spider-Man mythos.
In an exclusive interview with CBR while promoting Green Lantern: Beware My Power, Semper and Altbacker took the time to share some of the behind-the-scenes secrets of crafting Spider-Man: The Animated Series.
CBR: Growing up, we heard Standards & Practices gave notes on Spider-Man frightening pigeons on rooftops and Morbius having hand-suckers instead of using his fangs, which is somehow worse.
John Semper: The funny thing is every show gets S&P notes, and they're always foolish. They're always exactly like that. I used to go to conventions and didn't have a lot to say, so I thought it would be funny if I read some of the S&P notes as my convention schtick. This was before the internet and any kind of social media, going to conventions, [and] doing these things. Then I did an interview for an online site called Toon Zone, and I mentioned some of these S&P notes like a joke. What I didn't realize is that this little bit of information would get magnified, [with people thinking] the show was crippled by censorship. In fact, it wasn't. We didn't have any more censorship than shows like X-Men or Batman or any other show. That's the urban myth ever since I stupidly got it started.
To answer your question, yes. I did get the note, "Be careful when Spider-Man is landing on the roof that he doesn't harm any pigeons." The reason that I got Spider-Man was that I was already an established showrunner. Back in those days, when a company wanted to spend millions of dollars on an animated show, they only want to hand it over to an established showrunner, and I had already run a couple shows before I ran Spider-Man. I already knew -- I didn't need the S&P to tell -- I knew I wasn't going to be able to have a vampire sucking blood. I didn't even get an S&P note. I just knew I couldn't have a vampire and blood.
Because Morbius wasn't really a vampire -- later, I did introduce Blade and that vampire group -- back in Season 2, I thought I'd just play it safe and not even try to make him a vampire that bites necks. He was a biological accident, so I just thought it'd be really cool to give him hand-suckers. [laughs] The inspiration was probably the salt monster from the first episode that ever aired of Star Trek, which I watched. I thought that was really creepy, so let's just do that. That wasn't S&P, and the whole idea that I was hampered by censorship, I never was. In fact, Avery Coburn, the Fox Standards & Practices person, would contact me to do this and that. We'd have a little conversation, and I got along great with her. That aspect of doing Spider-Man was actually very easy.
Ernie Altbacker: The word was that you tried to do the very first thing with Ghost Rider, and Ghost Rider was shot down because the note was, "This might be imitable. Some kid might pour lighter fluid on himself and go down with his Big Wheel on fire."
Semper: That's not true. I did have a Ghost Rider, and I think Jim [Krieg] might have written it, either Jim or Mark Hoffmeier. We were going to do a Ghost Rider story, we had it outlined, and then the network found out Avi Arad was shopping around a Ghost Rider series to the UPN network. They said there was no way they were going to let an episode of Spider-Man serve as a pilot for a cartoon that's going to end up on a rival network, so you cannot do this Ghost Rider story. We had outlined the whole plot, and it was a good story. I got really pissed because it was a good story, we had already figured it out, and then I had to throw it out. That's the truth behind that story.
Directed by Jeff Wamester from a screenplay written by John Semper and Ernie Altbacker, Green Lantern: Beware My Power will be released July 26 on 4K UHD/Blu-ray and digital HD.