To relatively little fanfare, Amazon Prime Video just launched Spider-Noir, the new Nicholas Cage series about “The Spider,” an alternate universe Spider-Man with a private detective day job. The project always seemed rather ambitious, attempting to emulate decades-old noir films, and it would have been easy to have things go wrong.
Instead, things have gone very, very right. Spider-Noir is fantastic, thanks in no part to the unparalleled Nicholas Cage, and it has now set an audience score record for all of Marvel, not just the MCU (it is not an MCU show), on Rotten Tomatoes. At a 92%, at the time of this writing, that places it above every single other Marvel series in recent memory, including the biggest fan-favorites like X-Men ’97, Agents of SHIELD and the original Daredevil.
Here’s the full list of every Marvel series, where none measure up.
- Spider-Noir – 91% critic score, 92% audience score
- Agents of SHIELD – 95% critic score, 91% audience score
- X-Men ’97 – 99% critic score, 91% audience score
- Daredevil (Netflix) – 92% critic score, 90% audience score
- WandaVision – 92% critic score, 88% audience score
- Hawkeye – 92% critic score, 88% audience score
- Moon Knight – 86% critic score, 88% audience score
- Loki – 87% critic score, 87% audience score
- Daredevil: Born Again – 87% critic score, 83% audience score
- Wonder Man – 91% critic score, 87% audience score
- Ms. Marvel – 98% critic score, 80% audience score
- The Falcon and the Winter Soldier – 85% critic score, 80% audience score
- Jessica Jones (Netflix) – 83% critic score, 80% audience score
- The Punisher (Netflix) – 64% critic score, 79% audience score
- Luke Cage (Netflix) – 88% critic score, 71% audience score
- The Defenders (Netflix) – 78% critic score, 70% audience score
- MODOK – 87% critic score, 68% audience score
- Marvel Zombies – 66% critic score, 68% audience score
- Iron Fist (Netflix) – 38% critic score, 66% audience score
- Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man – 97% critic score, 62% audience score
- What If…? – 85% critic score, 62% audience score
- Echo – 71% critic score, 57% audience score
- Cloak and Dagger – 67% critic score, 56% audience score
- Secret Invasion – 53% critic score, 43% audience score
- Inhumans – 11% critic score, 42% audience score
- She-Hulk – 80% critic score, 32% audience score
Despite criticism of Marvel TV, its history is actually full of quite a lot of wins. More than half of these shows (13) have an 80% audience score or above. Eight have above a 90% from critics.
As for Spider-Noir, the series has been dropped as an eight-episode binge on Amazon Prime Video. Here’s the official synopsis:
“Private eye Ben Reilly is living easy and lazy until mobsters, monsters and a femme fatale drag him back to his former life as NY’s only superhero.”
The show will give you two options to watch, color or black and white. I cannot recommend black and white enough, as it is absolutely gorgeous and captures the noir vibe excellently. Enjoy.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
