How Spider-Man and Captain Nemo Stole From Rocket Robin Hood

If you were a latchkey kid in Canada during the 1970s, there was no escaping Rocket Robin Hood and Spider-Man. Both seemed to live in permanent reruns, popping up on television so often that they became part of the after-school routine. Tucked away among those familiar favorites was another animated series that many people have forgotten, Captain Nemo. What fascinated me when I started digging into its history was just how closely connected it was to Rocket Robin Hood.

The link begins with two pioneers of Canadian animation, Al Guest and Jean Mathieson. The husband-and-wife team was the creative force behind Rocket Robin Hood (1966-1969) and later founded Rainbow Animation in Toronto, where they produced The Undersea Adventures of Captain Nemo in 1974. While one series reimagined Robin Hood as a futuristic space-age hero and the other adapted Jules Verne’s legendary submarine captain, both sprang from the same creative DNA.

The connection becomes even clearer when you look at the voice casts. Because both productions relied heavily on Toronto-based talent, many familiar voices carried over. Len Carlson, who stepped in as Rocket Robin Hood’s voice during the third season, voiced virtually every male character in Captain Nemo, including Nemo himself. Chris Wiggins, remembered by many as Will Scarlet in Rocket Robin Hood, was another frequent collaborator on Guest and Mathieson’s projects.

Both shows also shared a love of taking classic literary characters and giving them a futuristic makeover. Rocket Robin Hood launched the legendary outlaw into the year 3000, complete with jetpacks and advanced weaponry. Captain Nemo updated Verne’s undersea explorer with a nuclear-powered Nautilus capable of tackling modern ocean mysteries. They were adventure cartoons, but they also tried to give kids something to think about. Rocket Robin Hood leaned heavily into themes of justice and standing up to tyranny, while Captain Nemo took an educational route. Airing as part of Captain Kangaroo, its scripts were reportedly reviewed by marine experts from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to ensure children learned something about oceanography and marine science along the way.

Of course, no discussion of Rocket Robin Hood is complete without mentioning its strange relationship with the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon.

When the studio producing Spider-Man ran into financial trouble, producer Steve Krantz brought in animator Ralph Bakshi to keep the show alive for seasons two and three. Working with almost no budget and brutal deadlines, Bakshi turned to an unconventional solution. He began reusing animation from Rocket Robin Hood.

The most famous example appears in “Phantom from the Depths of Time,” where entire animation sequences from the Rocket Robin Hood episode “From Menace to Menace” were painted over frame by frame. Robin Hood disappeared, Spider-Man was painted in his place, and the show moved on. Another episode, “Revolt in the Fifth Dimension,” recycled much of the surreal artwork and visual design from the Rocket Robin Hood adventure “Dementia 5.”

The rushed production occasionally led to amusing mistakes. Eagle-eyed viewers have spotted background shots where silhouettes resembling Little John and Friar Tuck briefly appear in scenes that were supposed to belong entirely to Spider-Man. Even portions of scripts, sound effects, and dialogue were repurposed, resulting in Spider-Man battling villains and navigating storylines that often felt more at home in a futuristic Robin Hood cartoon than a Marvel superhero adventure.

That brings us back to Captain Nemo. When legal disputes and production changes shifted Rocket Robin Hood to New York, Guest and Mathieson moved forward with Captain Nemo. They brought with them many of the same production techniques, artistic shortcuts, and visual sensibilities they had developed on Rocket Robin Hood. The distinctive character designs, limited animation, geometric layouts, and economical movement cycles all made the jump.

Looking back today, it’s remarkable how intertwined these three series really are. Watch Rocket Robin Hood, Spider-Man, and Captain Nemo side by side and you’ll notice echoes of the same artwork, the same voices, the same storytelling approach, and in some cases, the same animation. What might look like a coincidence is actually a fascinating piece of television history, one born from tight budgets, relentless deadlines, and the ingenuity of animators determined to keep cartoons on the air. For a generation of Canadian kids planted in front of the television after school, they weren’t just cartoons. They were three branches of the same wonderfully recycled animated family tree.