Date of airing: April 29, 1995 (FOX Kids)
I got so used to the show after seven episodes, I almost got excited that the eighth one was the beginning of the first multi-episode arc. And maybe it was a proper choice to start the first one of these with the more famous villain from Spider-Man’s rogue gallery. Venom, and the Symbiote story in general, has always been one of my favorite arcs of the comics, because the general idea came from a reader, and the fact that the villain was created out of Spider-Man himself is fascinating to me. As I love the premise of a superhero losing all their abilities or their super suit and having to fight crime as their normal self, I also love it when superheroes turn into supervillains. In addition, the Symbiote is pretty much an alien life form, and it introduced extraterrestrials to the Spider-Man universe. What a shame that SPIDER-MAN 3 failed to get to that point, maybe it would have made that movie a little more interesting.
This was a great episode. Multi-episode arcs help to focus on a story, and with it, the first act happened to be pretty stunning. The space shuttle’s crash on the George Washington Bridge looked stunning for a weekend morning children’s cartoon, especially the way the shuttle was flying over New York City for a few moments and then crashed into the bridge’s cables while on its side. There was another realization that the animation of the show was great, and was leading to some actual thrill. The crash on the bridge certainly brought some suspense, especially since there was the question of whether or not the shuttle will fall into the river. Also, I hope that some of the drivers stuck on the bridge exited their cars, otherwise they were pretty much dead. Witnessing a spaceship’s crash landing on a busy bridge is destined to lead to a few dozen casualties at least. Also, who’s going to pay for the repairs of the bridge?
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| The battle for Peter's soul happens in the nightmare realm. |
Eddie Brock’s involvement in the story was to be expected, considering the premise of this three-parter, but I would have loved it if the writers had decided to bring a bit of a backstory into the episode when it came to his character. I still don’t know why he hates Spider-Man so much, and I have no idea why he wasn’t at all interested in Rhino escaping the scene with a suitcase, and just tried to bring down Spider-Man instead by blaming him for the “robbery,” especially the notion that Eddie will most likely tamper with the pictures he took to replace Rhino with Spider-Man. Isn’t there a bigger story in whatever Rhino was doing at the scene than bringing down Spider-Man, and Eddie is unable to realize that? I mean, disgracing a superhero versus a conspiracy theory involving a rhino figure – what would sell more papers? Unfortunately, Spider-Man being a bad guy in the eyes of New York in this episode hasn’t been the first time this season. A couple of episodes ago, it was Mysterio who screwed him over by blaming him for museum break-ins. I can see that the writers were about to use that plot device a couple more times over the course of the series.
The second half of the episode was also great. The Symbiote’s takeover of Peter Parker was intriguing, and I loved the visuals during Peter’s dream. As if Peter has always been the alter ego for Spider-Man, and the wallcrawler was always Peter’s bigger persona, it could only lead to a fight between Spider-Man and the Symbiote over the soul of Peter Parker. In a way, the Symbiote and Spider-Man were fighting each other in Peter’s dream, most likely foreshadowing the actual fight between Venom and Spider-Man later in the story arc. The scene showed that the writers were interested in the mystery and mythology of it all – the Symbiote didn’t just take over Peter in his sleep and that was it, but there was a visual scene depicting the hostile takeover. And when Peter changed as a character, the dream fight sequence had an even bigger meaning. Spider-Man was lost (maybe forever), although some might ask themselves how Peter was able to realize that he changed into a worse person when the Symbiote was running him. I guess the Symbiote beat Spider-Man, but Peter was still there and able to come up for air for a second to see what the new suit was doing to him.
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| Spider-Man and Rhino share a dance. |
Finally, Kingpin was back for some action, although he was mostly sitting on his butt for most of the time, delegating to his “slave” Smythe, who for some reason is still working for Kingpin. One might have wondered why the big guy isn’t more villainous and evil in his statue, but maybe the writers just haven’t come up with anything useful for the character yet and how to depict him as the big bad of whatever is happening in New York. After all, Kingpin doesn’t seem too interested in hunting down Spider-Man, and Spider-Man doesn’t know a lot about Kingpin, so there is the question if the two are, in fact, protagonist and antagonist in their respective storylines, or if Kingpin is just a Spider-Man villain being used as a supporting character in this series for the sake of giving the audience a character from the comics they know about.
