Comic Books and Hulu

Here’s where the non-American contingent checks out on me.

Anyone who pays attention to such things as innovations in free video content on the internet knows about Hulu. It’s almost impossible not to know about it at this point if you are into internet video. What is Hulu you might ask? Well, Hulu is a website that features video-on-demand and features television shows from NBC, FOX, and their sister cable stations. It also features some feature films. All free (just a few ads to watch). The quality and convenience are amazing. Sadly, as of right now the service is only available to people in the United States, although they are supposedly working on bringing it to Europe.

For someone like me – a guy who works all night long on the computer set-up that has two monitors — Hulu has been a godsend. I fire up Hulu on one of my monitors and work on the other and it really helps to pass the time and provides some nice background noise with which to work. Lately I’ve been blazing through old episode of The Pretender.

One night I thought to myself, “Hey, I wonder what kind of comic book content I can find on here.” And lo’ and behold I found a bunch of stuff, some of it pretty great.

Here are some of my favorites from what I found:

This first clip is probably my favorite. It’s an old Saturday Night Live sketch from very early in the show’s run and features Margot Kidder as Lois Lane hosting a dinner party with Superman (played by Bill Murray) for all of his super hero buddies. There are some surprising characters that show up in this one, and it’s really long and really funny.

Next we hop over to some full length shows.

The Tick had a big cult following in the 1990s, mostly due to its very funny animated series. In 2001, FOX tried its hand at a live action version of The Tick starring Patrick Warburton and that bombed pretty spectacularly, proving once again that niche cult hits rarely translate to mainstream success. Still, the live action show was really funny and Warburton was perfect as The Tick. You can check out all nine episodes here, or watch the pilot below.

Finally, we have everyone’s favorite webhead. In 2003, MTV launched Spider-Man: The New Animated Series which featured a Spider-Man loosely tied to the movie continuity, and listed Brian Michael Bendis as a producer. He would later say that his involvement past the pilot stage was practically nil. Regardless, I really liked this show. I know that a lot of people didn’t, but I did! I liked the characterizations and I enjoyed the experimental computer animation style. I like risk takers, and this show was certainly one of them. Plus, it features some great voice talent, with Neal Patrick Harris as Peter Parker, Lisa Loeb as Mary Jane Watson, and a whole bunch of top notch guest voices which included James Marsters, Michael Clarke Duncan (playing the Kingpin, which kind of ties the show in with Daredevil), Jeremy Piven, John C. McGinley, Harold Perrineau Jr., Gina Gershon and Michael Dorn. You can check out all thirteen episode here or watch the pilot below.