Born in 1973, I was raised in the state of Alabama, USA. Seven years into my life, my father finally gave up his constant struggle to try and get me and my older brothers to like sports.  Suddenly my Saturdays were free to do what I has so long desired: watch cartoons!  For years I woke up at 6:00 am with no alarm clock, prepared my bowl of Fruity Pebbles and was in heaven for the next five hours.  When I heard the announcement of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends to the Saturday line-up, I was sure that, in Super Friends style, Spider-Man must be teaming up with Captain America and the Hulk.  I think I was all the more intrigued because that didn't happen.  This show wasn't the Super Friends after all!  This team didn't have a cocky, pompous, preachy attitude.  They struggled with "real" problems like money and relationships...but most appealing of all, they had fun!  I've been sold on Spidey ever since.

  I was born in Eastbourne, a coastal town in the south of England in 1978.  Like most children my younger brother Richard and I loved cartoons and grew up watching many of them.  In the UK we had just about all the same cartoon shows as were on in the States but occasionally they would be released over here a year or two later.  When I was five my favourite show was Marvel's Spider-Woman which I would watch after school at my Aunt Monica’s. Then when I was about seven years old Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends aired and became my instant favourite.  If I remember correctly it was shown on a Monday afternoon after school and was later shown on the children’s Saturday morning show ‘Going Live.’  I think that by including Firestar as one of the Spider-Friends helped to ensure the shows popularity with both boys and girls.  This cartoon's unique formula of fun, action, great storylines, friendship and playful banter really appealed to me and to this day it remains my number one!

     I was 10 years old when Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends came to the airwaves.   I was no stranger to the Marvel Universe having grown up on reruns of the 1960s Marvel cartoons on a local UHF channel.  Even before that I saw Spider-Man on the Electric Company (which I imagine is how many people around my age group first discovered Spider-Man).  Even at that young age I knew how to use the TV guide every week and planned my watching accordingly.  I was there for the live action Spider-Man that aired briefly and sporadically in the late 1970s.  I also was a big fan of the live action Hulk show too.  Yep, I even watched the New Fantastic Four (I didn't find out about the Human Torch until a few years later) and Spider-Woman shows that came just prior to SMAHAF. But when the "new" Spider-Man show debuted it was like no other show I had seen before.  By then I already knew a lot of the Spidey villains and had read the paperback reprints of the old Lee/Ditko classics so I was familiar with most of the villains.  This show really captured the humor and sense of adventure that Spider-Man had in the comics.  It was an instant classic and became my new favorite show.  Twenty something years later it still holds up and can hold its own on ABC FAMILY among all the newer cartoons.