Date of airing: June 11, 1995 (FOX Kids)
John Semper definitely knew how he wanted to end the first season. He probably realized that Marvel and FOX didn’t care a lot about the show, because Marvel had other things to worry about (trying to prevent getting broke, for example) and FOX wasn’t involved in the creative direction of the series at all, so he decided to expand the world of SPIDER-MAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES and put Marvel into it. I was giggling like a six-year-old boy when Nick Fury showed up and introduced S.H.I.E.L.D. to the audience, even though it was kind of expected that J. Jonah Jameson, with Peter in the limousine, would be kidnapped by the secret organization, considering how Fury was introduced before that little twist. And now it looks like Semper was planning to get the show the treatment of the Marvel universe and not just Spider-Man’s universe. And after the rather stand-alone episodes of the first season, an expansion was pretty much the right thing to do, especially since no one outside the production of the show was interested in a particular creative direction. Only Semper and his writers did the work.
The Chameleon was an interesting villain – one I barely know anything about, so I figured he was a mixture of J’onn J’onzz (also known as the Martin Manhunter from DC) and the T-1000, which could have made him particularly dangerous. I was happy to see that the Chameleon had a mission, and was doing the things necessary to get to where he wanted to be, although I would have loved to know why he was so interested in disrupting the peace signing by killing one of the ambassadors and what kind of mission he was on. Because I can’t imagine that the Chameleon acted on his own, which would make this entire thing a conspiracy. Unfortunately, there was no conspiracy to be found in this episode, with made me sad because I really wanted one.
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| Nick Fury is disturbed by tonight's entertainment programming. |
Why Fury needed Jameson’s help this way though was questionable and kind of silly. Fury could have asked Jameson for access to the peace signing from left to right, so that S.H.I.E.L.D. could have guarded the signing, instead of Jameson being the secret agent in this thing, when it should have been obvious that the Chameleon would use Jameson’s likeness as well. Why would S.H.I.E.L.D., a secret organization, ask a civilian for help and turn into an impromptu spy? Don’t they have their own agents for the mission? Still, the action was pretty great. The Chameleon turned into pretty much everyone for a second, creating a sense of paranoia in the narrative that led to some great fun, including a fight sequence between Spider-Man and Peter Parker. You don’t see that every episode.
With the Chameleon being the villain of the episode, it was only obvious that Semper would use the opportunity to have Spider-Man fight against a version of Peter Parker. And of course, that opportunity was being used in the season finale, as if Semper wanted one piece of excellence for the episode that could have been the final moment of the series, if Marvel and/or FOX were to have been unhappy with the show and canceled it after the first season. What a shame that Spider-Man never really commented about the fact that he was fighting against himself here – he could have delivered some thoughtful oneliners about punching himself in the face, but there was nothing. Sometimes I’m disappointed that Spider-Man, the jokester that he is sometimes, didn’t have anything to joke about while fighting another member of his rogue gallery. Is this considered a character inconsistency?
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| Spider-Man vs. Peter Parker: The Ultimate Showdown! |
And finally, Mary Jane and Peter kissed for the first time, only it wasn’t Peter who she kissed. Consider me disappointed. Even more so, because MJ sounded like she and Peter haven’t even locked lips before this episode, making me wonder if the two were dating or just best friends with some form of benefits. Also, when Spider-Man punched Chameleon’s energy device, and Chameleon was going through every person he changed into, that’s when I realized he was part T-1000, because it changed into some of his changes as well, when he was shot and thrown into the lava. I guess it was an homage to TERMINATOR 2? Because the similarities could not have been a coincidence.
