Date of airing: November 4, 1995 (FOX Kids)
story by: John Semper, Carl Potts
teleplay by: Carl Potts
directed by: Bob Richardson
It is probably a good thing that I have not read or seen this high-tech version of the Punisher before, because I probably would have laughed a battle van into existence before rolling my eyes out of the back of my head about how silly the character was in this episode. I cannot imagine that Frank Castle, interested in being more of a killer for hire in live-action adaptations of the comic books, would create artificial intelligence, and place it in a van, so it can give him the weapons and ammunition he asks for during missions. And that van would dutifully spit out those gadgets, even if the van is on ground level, and Frank Castle is standing on a random New York City roof. The Punisher as portrayed in this episode was the twenty-second-century version of KNIGHT RIDER.
That is why I found this episode a little less than solid. Frank turned out to be a bit of a silly adversary for Spider-Man, and I found it rather unbelievable that Frank would just accept Spider-Man as the target, without asking questions about the mission, why Spider-Man was the target, who the person is that hired him to hunt Spider-Man, and to make sure that he is not just hunting down and potentially killing an innocent. I mean, Frank did not even ask why Spider-Man was his mission, and all this after Spider-Man has been the hero for a couple of years now (Frank should have known about Spider-Man then), despite J. Jonah Jameson making him look like a fool on television. Frank did not ask one single question, which made him a dumb and irresponsible character, and I am pretty sure the writers did not want to put a shady spotlight on Frank Castle at all.
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| Even with six arms, Spider-Man tries his best. |
The fights between Spider-Man and Punisher at least looked good, although I needed to get used to Spidey having six arms. How funny would it have been if he created an alternate superhero suit for his extra four arms, and it would have been captured by the cameras? It would have made the premise of a six-armed superhero a lot more interesting, and possibly could have brought back the X-Men, let alone made Frank ask why he is hunting a superhero who has six arms when said superhero had the standard two arms just yesterday. With the six arms being unusually weird, I got the feeling the animators did not quite know how to handle them either, as they mostly just looked like they were added on without any function.
Anyway, Frank tracking down Spider-Man (but how?) seemed interesting enough, although I was surprised that Frank was not checking up on the Queens neighborhood Spidey hung out for a little bit. To hunt down a target, would it not be good to know who the target is, especially if the target hides behind a mask? But I guess there wasn’t enough time in the episode to even get to that part of the story and turn Frank into an investigator of sorts. Also, there did not seem to be enough time for Mary Jane and Aunt May to hear noises coming from Peter’s room. The guy was listening to Morbius’ walkman, and he was playing loud music for a second. I was expecting the two women downstairs to have heard at least something.
Then there was Morbius, who was in-between sucking out the plasma of more innocent people, and trying to find a cure to turn him into a normal human being again. It looked like his mind was affected by what was happening as well, because he was in and out of being a good or a bad guy, creating an opportunity for the character to visually stay the way he is, but be a(n anti-)hero of sorts. It does not happen all the time that a villain-looking dude Spider-Man is fighting against is actively trying to be a good guy, helping himself before doing more harm.
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| Frank Castle is about to face a monster. |
And finally, the cliffhanger. Well, I was not expecting the transformation into the spider monster at all. It is probably a comic storyline I have missed or forgotten about entirely, but how excited am I now, with Peter having transformed into a monster? Very! Now I am only worried about Peter’s mental state: Did his mind change as well and he is now a full-on monster, or is he still the good old Peter, able to control his mutated form, like pretty much all of the X-Men after their transformations? Because it would be a neat idea if the monster spider would be a villain for the next episode, and Spider-Man’s safety was in the hands of either Mariah Crawford or Curt Connors (or maybe even Frank Castle). Or the X-Men, if the writers needed another episode for them to show up in.
