Just a couple of months ago - in January - Columbia/TriStar released
Spider-Man: The New Animated Series Season 1 - Special Edition on a 2-DVD set that had all 13 episodes and was packed with extras. The list price for that was just $29.95.
Now Columbia is "re-purposing" these episodes into a set of individual volumes that, frankly, offer you less for your money. Targeting the "impulse purchase" market, especially with the new
Spider-Man 2 feature film coming this Summer, the studio is recycling 9 of the 13 episodes into 3 "sold separately" releases that arrive on June 1st and will list for $14.95 each. The only extras will be "bonus previews." Here are the details for each of the three DVDs:
Volume 1: The Mutant Menace includes the episodes: "Tight Squeeze," "Law of the Jungle" and "Sword of Shikata."
Volume 2: High Voltage Villians includes the episodes: "The Party," "Keeping Secrets" and "When Sparks Fly."
Volume 3: The Ultimate Face Off includes the episodes: "Spider-Man Dis-Sabled," "Mind Games (Part 1)" and "Mind Games (Part 2)."
Each separate release will be in widescreen, with English Dolby Digital 5.1 sound (unlike the Season 1 release, there's no DTS option), at a running time of 64 minutes per DVD.
So your basic choices here are to either get the 2-disc set for about $30 that contains all 13 episodes of the first season, DTS sound, and gobs of extras, or to buy the above items separately at a cost of about $45 for only 9 episodes, and not necessarily in a particular order, and with pretty much no extras. It's probably not a tough decision, but at least Columbia is providing us with a choice.
