Swinging from a thread, he glides through the night air, dodging bullets, fireballs and flying
villains. He races through the streets of New York, and - look overhead! - launches into
a sideways axel and captures the unsuspecting thieves with his signature web. 
Kids, meet Vic Cook's Spider-Man.
"I wanted to make him really move," explains Cook, sitting at his desk in Culver City,
Calif., surrounded by toys and posters inspired by the famous web-slinger. "I wanted him to
have a kind of flair you haven't seen in a 2-D animation show before."
It's all part of a day's work. Cook, 47, is the producer and supervising director of "The
Spectacular Spider-Man," a family-friendly animated series on Kids' WB!
His job is to oversee the visual aspects of the show. He makes sure the cityscapes have the
right amount of detail, the choreography has the right pacing, the characters' expressions
carry the right emotions - so that when a new episode airs every Saturday morning, the
response will be a simultaneous wow.   
Cook remembers feeling that sense of awe as a child when he was first introduced to the
beloved superhero. Growing up in the '60s, he became a fan through the classic Marvel
comic books and TV spin-off. "Everyone knew that theme song," he recalls.
With his father in the Air Force, Cook and his family moved around often. Born in Japan,
he went to school in Texas, Florida and California before relocating back to his birth
country. Through the years, his pen was a constant companion. At school, he would draw
the characters he remembered seeing in comics and anime/manga books. His parents,
friends and teachers told him he had real talent. Cook knew he found his passion.
He went on to study art at California State University, Long Beach and worked as a
political cartoonist for the school paper. In life drawing class, when all the other students
were trying to draw figures as realistically as possible, Cook would be doodling capes and
horns on them. His teacher suggested he try animation.
After taking some production animation courses, he called Filmation Associates, an
animation production company in Los Angeles. They told him to come in and take a test.
His task was to look at images of He-Man and She-Ra and draw the in-betweens, the
drawings between frames that help create the illusion of motion. He finished the eight-hour
test in four hours. The next day, he had a job as an in-betweener. 
When he got to the studio, he was drawn to the storyboard department. The story panels
reminded him of the comic strips he loved as a kid.
"I realized that animation is about storytelling and filmmaking," he says. "I decided that's
what I wanted to do next."
He eventually became a storyboard artist and was later hired by Walt Disney TV
Animation. The first series he directed was "101 Dalmations: The Series." He also directed
"Buzz Lightyear of Star Command," "The Legend Of Tarzan" and "Lilo & Stitch: The
Series."  
About a year ago, Sony asked him to head up visual development of "The Spectacular
Spider-Man." He was thrilled. So was producer and story editor Greg Weisman.
"There was only one person I wanted to do this with and that was Vic," says Weisman.
"Vic is an incredibly creative guy. He understands the story and he understands animation.
He knows how to make it all work. It's a stressful job at times but he keeps his perspective.
I'm kind of like the bad cop and he's kind of like the good cop. We're a good match."
Based on Marvel Entertainment's famous superhero, the show not only pumps new energy
into Spidey's flips, leaps and spins, but delves into a span of time that TV never explored:
Peter Parker's high school years.
"We just went with our instincts on how to do the show and our instincts were to go back to
our roots, which meant going back to the Lee/Ditko era and contemporizing it," says Cook,
referring to writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, who created the original Spider-Man
comic books back in the '60s.
For Cook, part of contemporizing the show was adding a martial arts a feel a la Hong Kong
to Spidey's fight sequences and making New York appear more diverse.
"That's the reality of the city. It's multi-ethnic, multi-cultural," says Cook, who went to
Korea to work with the show's animators stationed there.
"In the '60s, every person in the series was white except for Robbie Robertson, the assistant
editor. We wanted to reflect reality. We took some of the already established characters and
sort of changed their names and changed their ethnicities. Like Liz Allan is Caucasian. We
made her Hispanic. Ned Lee was originally Ned Leeds. He was Caucasian. He's still the
same guy personality-wise. Ned is Korean. We decided to make Kenny 'Kong' McFarlane
Asian. He's Chinese American." 
Cook resides in nearby Santa Clarita with his wife, Sonia, and children Hanah, 14, and
Jackson, 11, both of whom love the Spider-Man movies. He hopes the effort he's put in to
make the cartoon just as iconic as the films will make the show appealing to both young
and old generations. As supervising director, he has a lot of control and the capabilities to
make that happen. Of course, he recognizes that with great power also comes great
responsibility.