The Spectacular Spider-Man is now on Disney XD and to celebrate ComicsOnline is bringing you EXCLUSIVE interviews and coverage!

This week's interview is with a man who is no stranger to bringing superheroes to life, Kevin Altieri. Kevin's credits include Batman: The Animated Series, The Real Ghostbusters, and has recently worked on the Marvel Direct to DVD feature, Hulk VS. This season on Spectacular Spider-Man, Kevin is directing "Destructive
Testing", the second episode of the season which introduces the villain known as Kraven the Hunter.

The following are the highlights from our interview with Kevin:

KA: For me growing up, I always really liked Kraven. Coming into Spider-Man like I did, the one thing that I really liked was that I got to do the first episode of one of the villains. I liked Kraven because of the fact he brandishes knives and spears and a crossbow…no high tech weapons. Any of the changes I did to Kraven we minimal, the design itself was done by Sean.

CO: What was your favorite part of the Kraven Episode?

KA: I really liked the fact that it starts out in Africa. I loved the fact that I got to do this thing with Kraven tackling a Rhino and something with African landscapes that were all natural. But my favorite part was Kraven stalking Spider-Man through New York.

CO: The Africa sequence was a very nice dynamic since the show has been set entirely in New York and we really haven’t seen much, if any, of the outside world in the first season.

KA: I didn’t get to do it much with Batman either. We didn’t get to do many episodes that were outside of Gotham City. But I liked the idea that if kids turned on the TV you wouldn’t know that you were watching an episode of Spider-Man. I like doing that (laughs).

CO:How was directing this episode of Spider-Man different than directing an episode of Batman?

KA: It’s quite a bit different. In many ways Batman was a bit tougher because we had to do layouts and everything there, but because of that we had more control on Batman. Every layout came across my desk and I got to re-draw, but that is not the situation with Sony.

CO: Is it because Sony is more hands on with Spider-Man?

KA: Not as many people are employed by Sony as Warner Brothers would employ. Warner Brothers has more artists in house that we could throw stuff at, while with Sony we have one storyboard artist. They just don’t have a bigger crew. Budget wise the episodes had a pretty similar amount.

CO: Did you have a choice as to which villain you got to work with?

KA: Oh I think that getting Kraven was one of Vic Cook’s shenanigans. He really wanted me to do Kraven. I got the script and I was excited. It was just happenstance that Kraven was the one I got to work on. I think Vic figured that I would be very good for this one.

CO: I enjoyed the fluidity of the fight sequences in this episode. Spider-Man is all over the place and just in constant motion while fighting Kraven.

KA: One of the things I liked about Spider-Man was that he is slippery. His Spider-Sense just gives him that ability to get out of the way of danger. While Kraven is shooting arrows at him he doesn’t even try to stop the arrows, he just avoids them. The writing is something that I also like about the entire series. I have to hand it to Greg because of how well he has handled the whole story arc and the whole adaptation of. He has done a great job of taking classic Spider-Man stories and updating them to the modern world and using stuff like cellphones that hadn’t existed before. He works the High School dynamics perfectly and if you read the original comics you know that that was what it was all about. It wasn’t about this guy and his supermodel girlfriend. It was about a kid in school dealing with his normal life and trying to save people and to show that you just go back to the beginning. I think that was something that we did with Batman as well…you go back and tell the Year One story.

CO: Do you have a favorite moment from working on Batman: The Animated Series that you could share?

KA: One of the moments that really stands out for me was during a screening at WonderCon in the early 90's. We were doing a screening of the first episode, "On Leather Wings". I was sitting in the audience since we didn't do a panel or Q&A and just getting to watch with people who hadn't seen the pilot yet was a real experience. I remember about half way through the episode the kid in the row in front of me
starting mumbling to himself, "they did it…I can't believe they did it." The kid got to see his hero in action and you could see how much he loved it. That was one of those moments where I knew we had done something right.

Special Thanks to Vic Cook for making this interview possible.

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