With Mysterio's first appearance in the MCU, I thought it would cool to revisit some of my favorite animated appearances of this Spider-Man villain. We could do a deep dive on great Mysterio moments from the comics, but Marvel has published a great article covering that a few months ago that's worth a look.
Comic Book Origin
Debuting in The Amazing Spider-Man #13, Mysterio is Quentin Beck, a special effects wizard and stunt man working for a major Hollywood studio with dreams of making a name for himself in the film industry. However, he came to see his career in special effects as a dead-end job. His attempts to become an actor were poorly received, but he realized that his expertise in illusions could make him an effective criminal.
In his first battle with Spider-Man, after he frames Spider-Man for robbing the Midtown Museum, Mysterio obstructs the hero's spider-sense with gas and dissolves Spider-Man's webbing with a chemical abrasive. However Spider-Man tricks Mysterio into revealing he robbed the museum, then Spider-Man revealed he had captured it on tape. Mysterio was then jailed, blaming Spider-Man for his ruined career.
My Top 3 Favorite Mysterio Appearances in Spider-Man Cartoons
Spider-Man: The Animated Series (Season 1, Episode 5) - "The Menace of Mysterio"
Based on The Amazing Spider-Man #13. Mysterio acts as one of the first major villains that Spider-Man faces in 90's Animated Series. John Semper has stated repeatedly on his Facebook page/blog about how they wanted to honor the comics as much as possible with their narratives on this cartoon and it's shows here. I thought they did an excellent job bringing the character life while shedding some light on Spider-Man's origins in this continuity.
Spider-Man: The Animated Series (Season 4, Episode 9) - "The Haunting of Mary Jane Watson"
As much as Mysterio comes off as a creepy bastard in this episode in a sense for majority of the first half of this episode's screentime, I came to respect his sacrifice that he made at the end of the episode. People do crazy things when they are in love and his greatest crime was fueling Miranda Wilson's only desire to keep on living with a beautiful lie that there was a way to get her original body back. For Christ's sake, the dude died on a kids' show for crying out loud. That was a big deal for cartoons back then since it wasn't implied or "happened off screen". Nah, they said him and Miranda died together in this episode.
You can tell that John Semper's team had a blast with this episode since this was their means to have freedom with a few villains that would have been off the table otherwise. We see robotic duplicates of Lizard, Doctor Octopus, Rhino, Carnage and Venom used by Mysterio against Spider-Man. This was probably done to give viewers another chance to see those villains, particularly Carnage and Venom, who were unable to truly appear again after the events of "Carnage".
Trivia: Producers proposed for Mysterio to return in an episode of the fifth season, and team up with Dormammu against Spider-Man and Ghost Rider, but the episode was not allowed to air because Ghost Rider was planned to appear in The Incredible Hulk animated series on Fox's rival network, UPN.
Spectacular Spider-Man (Season 2, Episode 1) - "Blueprints"
I've raved about the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon a lot off and on, namely for it's homage and influences from the popular Steve Ditko era of Spider-Man lore, but Mysterio's first appearance in this series serves as the kickstarter for it's second season. Here, Mysterio introduces himself as some kind of sorcerer in the vein of Dr. Strange, with summonings and spells that one would expect to see in World of Warcraft or some other popular MMORPG.
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