Japanese Spider-Man! Turkish Spider-Man! Wait. What?

In Japan in the 70's Spider-Man became a hit show- but with a giant robot was very different than the U.S. version. Turkish Spider-Man threw out copyrights and went insane! Get ready for fun!

Spider-Man (Japanese: スパイダーマン, Hepburn: Supaidāman), also referred to as Japanese Spider-Man or Toei Spider-Man, is a Japanese live-action tokusatsu superhero television series produced by Toei Company, loosely based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name through a contract negotiated by producer Gene Pelc. The series aired for 41 episodes on Tokyo Channel 12 from May 17, 1978, to March 14, 1979. A theatrical episode aired at the Toei Manga Matsuri film festival on July 22, 1978. From March 5 to December 24, 2009, Marvel uploaded English subtitled versions of the episodes to their website.

While Toei's version of the character, Takuya Yamashiro/Spider-Man (portrayed by Kōsuke Kayama (Shinji Tōdō)), wore the same costume as his Marvel Comics counterpart and had similar powers, the series' storyline and the origin of his powers differed from the source material. In addition to fighting, he piloted the giant mecha Leopardon, which he would summon to fight off enlarged versions of the show's monsters; the giant robot concept would later be used in Toei's Super Sentai franchise.

3 Dev Adam (Üç Dev Adam; translated as Three Giant Men and sometimes referred to as El Santo Y Capitan America Contra Spider-Man or Captain America and Santo Vs. Spider-Man) is a 1973 Turkish superhero film, directed by T. Fikret Uçak and written by Doğan Tamer, based on characters created by Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Joe Simon and Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta, featuring Aytekin Akkaya as Captain America and Yavuz Selekman as El Santo called to Istanbul on a special mission to stop the villainous Spider-Man and his criminal gang.

The Turksploitation film, which went on nationwide general release across the country on November 1, 1973, was completely unauthorized by the copyright owners of the characters depicted. The film was popular and thus spawned other rip-offs of other major Hollywood productions.

Before you swing into the Spider-Verse enter 1970's Japan - it's hilarious Honest Trailers for 'Supaidāman' the Japanese Spider-Man series:

The Crazy Story of Japanese Spider Man (aka Supaidāman) & Leopardon

Ok you are ready for 3 Japanese Spider-Man episodes, with English captions:

Here’s episode 2:

As if all that wasn’t enough here’s episode 3

The True Story of the Turkish "Avengers" [3 Dev Adam]:

Dev Adam (lit. Three Big Men, aka informally Turkish Spider-Man or Captain America and Santo vs. Spider-Man) is a Turkish action Cult Film from 1973. It's about Captain America and El Santo fighting together in order to stop the evil criminal mastermind, er... Spider-Man.

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