A bit of history here. While North America spent years haggling over the live action rights for Marvel Comics creation Spider-Man before finally bringing the hero to the big screen, other nations were much quicker off the block. A totally unauthorized version of the character appears in a number of Turkish productions from the seventies and, in 1978, a fully authorized and properly licensed version of Spider-Man was the subject of an ongoing Japanese television series of the same name.

Now, this being Japan, this wasn’t your typical Spidey. No, the back story was completely changed - he’s not Peter Parker in this version, nor does he get his powers from a radioactive spider bite - and the character completely re-envisioned as a full on tokusatsu hero, battling an array of giant robots and crazy, rubber suit monsters. The series has been highly sought after by collectors for years, collectors who figured that their day may have finaly come when the Japanese studio behind the series released a re-mastered DVD set of the complete series just a while back. Now, that release didn’t include any English language options but the collector set were right, in a way. Why? Because Marvel have bought back rights to the entire series and are now posting the complete series - an episode at a time, one per week - for free viewing on their official website. Here’s hoping a subtitled DVD release is not far behind!