The Spectacular Spider-Man voice actor Josh Keaton has looked back on being replaced in Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes without being notified.
Who replaced Josh Keaton as Spider-Man?
After playing Peter Parker/Spider-Man in The Spectacular Spider-Man for two seasons, Keaton provided voice work for the character for The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes Season 2 episode “New Avengers,” which would see Spider-Man meet the team.
Unknown to Keaton, his lines were redubbed by Drake Bell, who would go on to play Spider-Man in the then-unannounced Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon series. Since he was never informed, Keaton only found out that he had been replaced the night the episode aired.
“Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes was going to be kind of like my sendoff, so I was like ‘Alright, that’s sweet! At least I get to play Spider-Man in this last thing. That’s cool, that’s awesome,'” Keaton revealed (via Toonado and @SpiderMan3news). “And then, the night that it aired, I was going to watch it. I watched it and I was like ‘Wow, that’s not my voice!’ He’s hitting all the same beats I am hitting as me because the animation was probably already all done so they had him just kind of listen and repeat to what I did and say ‘Now, you do it.’ Then when I looked at the credits, it said Drake Bell.
“That’s around when they announced ‘We are coming out with Ultimate Spider-Man!’ and Drake Bell is going to play Ultimate Spider-Man.’ I was like ‘That sucks! That sucks that they did that to me!’ Like, they could have at least called me so I wouldn’t have gotten so excited.”
The Spectacular Spider-Man premiered in 2008 and ran for two seasons. The series was critically acclaimed and featured a new Spider-Man universe that adapted many of the best and most beloved elements of Spider-Man stories from across different mediums into one cohesive story. Keaton also voiced Spider-Man in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and the recent sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
