Spider-Man
01-11-2002, 04:42 PM
This comes from a John Semper interview at http://hometown.aol.com/drg4/index.html (or http://members.aol.com/drg4/index1.html) which I thought was sorta funny. It shows how crazy and weird the censorship was at FOX KIDS around 1994:
"John Semper: By the time Spidey came on, there was a LOT of censorship at Fox. They were having whole countries like Canada ban some of their shows (Power Rangers, for instance) and they were very nervous about violence. When I watch the older episodes of Batman that first aired on Fox, they do all kinds of things that we couldn't do. By the time Spidey came on, Fox wouldn't let us do anything like that. No fists to the face, no realistic guns, no fire, no crashing through glass, no children in peril, no mention of the words death, die, or kill. I used to read notes from the censors when I made personal appearances for the show. Some of them were quite funny. Like, "When Spider-Man lands on the rooftop, be sure that he doesn't harm any pigeons." Stuff like that."
And what they had in store...
"John Semper: Just briefly, with Spider-Man in limbo too, I wanted to do a mini-series in which he would end up chasing Mary Jane through the past, trying to find her. Not a big thing, just four or five episodes. I thought it'd be interesting to see Spidey deal with certain historic moments in time {one place would be Victorian England during the time of Jack the Ripper, being portrayed by the real Carnage}, not just the nation's history, but his own personal life, too. And somehow, this would lead back to the present. I had more specific ideas, but that's where it was headed. But then again, I really didn't want to go any further. Everything Everything had been wrapped up neatly. All the important stuff...Spidey now liked himself, he'd met his creator and said, "You know what, I beyond you now...I've grown." That's really the end of Peter Parker's story. He'd saved all reality. You can't really top that. If we had continued, I'd just have been doing it for the money. My real saga was done."
The interview can be found here:
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/drg4/spinterviews.html
"John Semper: By the time Spidey came on, there was a LOT of censorship at Fox. They were having whole countries like Canada ban some of their shows (Power Rangers, for instance) and they were very nervous about violence. When I watch the older episodes of Batman that first aired on Fox, they do all kinds of things that we couldn't do. By the time Spidey came on, Fox wouldn't let us do anything like that. No fists to the face, no realistic guns, no fire, no crashing through glass, no children in peril, no mention of the words death, die, or kill. I used to read notes from the censors when I made personal appearances for the show. Some of them were quite funny. Like, "When Spider-Man lands on the rooftop, be sure that he doesn't harm any pigeons." Stuff like that."
And what they had in store...
"John Semper: Just briefly, with Spider-Man in limbo too, I wanted to do a mini-series in which he would end up chasing Mary Jane through the past, trying to find her. Not a big thing, just four or five episodes. I thought it'd be interesting to see Spidey deal with certain historic moments in time {one place would be Victorian England during the time of Jack the Ripper, being portrayed by the real Carnage}, not just the nation's history, but his own personal life, too. And somehow, this would lead back to the present. I had more specific ideas, but that's where it was headed. But then again, I really didn't want to go any further. Everything Everything had been wrapped up neatly. All the important stuff...Spidey now liked himself, he'd met his creator and said, "You know what, I beyond you now...I've grown." That's really the end of Peter Parker's story. He'd saved all reality. You can't really top that. If we had continued, I'd just have been doing it for the money. My real saga was done."
The interview can be found here:
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/drg4/spinterviews.html