Spider-Friends, go for it!

I was happy to see Spider-Man, pleased to see Iceman and absolutely mystified at Firestar's appearance. I thought that I had overlooked something. I found out later that the fiery redhead was created specifically for the show.

With a rallying cry of "Spider-Friends, go for it!", the heroes would tackle the Beetle, Dr. Doom, Magneto and other supervillains.

At 7, I was a veteran cartoon viewer. I mean, I had seen plenty of Spider-Man cartoons. What made this one so enjoyable was the voices were perfect.

Spider-Man sounded just like I imagined he did in the comics, making lame wisecracks, taunting supervillains and mocking J. Jonah Jameson.

From that point on, and to this day, when I read Spider-Man comic books, I hear Dan Gilvezan, the voice behind the wallcrawler. And unlike too many voice artists who lended their considerable talents to my favorite cartoons, I learned what he looked like.

Not only was there a behind-the-scenes documentary (man, I wish I had taped that), but Gilvezan would also be known to my friends and me as "That Jack in the Box Guy," thanks to a series of commercials he did in the 80s.

Kathy Garver ("Family Affair") made Firestar sound young but not stereotypically teenaged. I even convinced myself that if you listened really hard, you could notice a difference in Firestar's and Angelica Jones' voices.

Iceman was voiced by the amazing Frank Welker, who, no offense to James Brown, has to be the hardest working man in show business. If you grew up in the 1970s and '80s, you couldn't help but hear a character voiced by him. Even now, you can still hear him in movies and TV as well as videogames.

Some have criticized the show for making Spidey part of a trio - he's usually a loner - but in this case, it works. Others have criticized it for the presence of Ms. Lion, the annoying yap-yap dog, voiced by (you guessed it) Frank Welker.

Had Ms. Lion been just a dog that Aunt May took in, it would have been fine. Alas, she ended up with way too big of a part in some episodes.

The Spider-Friends had a very cool headquarters/laboratory. Of course, it was at Aunt May's house, but it was still cool. In one episode, the computer is acting up, and they realize that the problem is not a cranky operating system - Aunt May is running the vacuum. So Peter Parker crawls on the ceiling and unplugs it without being spotted by Aunt May. A cute moment.

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