Date of airing: November 11, 1995 (FOX Kids)
written by: John Semper
directed by: Bob Richardson
While it was obvious that Mariah would successfully turn the
Man-Spider back into Spider-Man and his secret alter ego Peter Parker,
making this episode predictable, it was still a very impressive half hour of television.
Almost twenty minutes without either Spider-Man or Peter would
have probably been a no-no if either FOX or Marvel had been involved in the
production of the show or supervised it in any other way, or would have had an interest in following up on
production, giving the writers’ room notes on a regular basis (which I
understand might not have been the case). If the studio or the network had seen
where this episode was going, would they have noted the episode to
death, telling the writers that they should bring actual scenes with Spider-Man in them? Would they maybe have canceled the Man-Spider storyline, because
there simply could not have been an episode without Spider-Man, let alone
allowing the Man-Spider to be this kind of horrendous monster for a
kids’ show? Especially for an animated series, it seemed quite a
surprise that the writers decided to mix things up and make life hard
for the characters, maybe even make the titular character the villain
for an episode. Because this episode was as close to a horror episode as animated kids' television allowed it to be.
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| Man-Spider faces his predecessor's could-have-been girlfriend. |
But there is the question of whether or not Man-Spider still had Spider-Man and Peter’s minds inside and active, and it was not as evil as it might have looked like. It defended itself against the Punisher because he was hunting it down. It fought Morbius because he was about to kill Flash. And when it came to Debra, Felicia, or Mary Jane, it was not attacking. Maybe Peter’s mind was still in there somewhere, making Man-Spider remember people, seeing them as no threat, while Peter himself was trapped sunken-place style, but able to control Man-Spider in certain times, up until the monster would have won the upper hand anyway. That made me wonder how a story would have worked with Man-Spider being the villain for more than just this one episode, especially with Peter’s mind trying to find the monster from within and fighting his way out, possibly creating the same kind of inner conflict he had when the Symbiote was taking over his body and mind. Remember that Spider-Man and the Symbiote had a huge fight in Peter’s dream, with Peter eventually getting swallowed whole by the big black monster?
Kraven’s return was pretty good and surprising, although it was to be expected, considering Mariah’s involvement in the story. At some point, her greatest love would have to make a return, especially since Kraven was, directly and indirectly, mentioned a couple of times already. That Kraven and the Punisher would be hunting down the monster at the same time was a nice little plot device to have the two fight it out for a little bit and depict a story in which two former villains were the main characters of the episode. Plus, who at Marvel was expecting a supervillain and an antihero to fight each other over the soul of Spider-Man in an animated series? In a way, this kind of proved that a TV animation adaptation of a comic could do quite a lot more than a comic could do. Probably, because it does take ten to fifteen minutes to read a 22-page comic issue, which is close to the length of a half-hour TV episode.
I liked that the episode went into Aunt May’s fear of having lost her nephew to the Man-Spider, making this a more character-centric episode than simply just a battle between a superhero and a supervillain. I liked that the recurring characters of the show were given a spotlight here, with even Debra returning for a hot minute to give Flash the business about not having a brain, because he is a jock (I laughed). And I especially liked Man-Spider’s lair. Seriously, writer John Semper used the bombed-down parking garage of the World Trade Center for that? I was quite impressed that the episode went into a specific piece of New York City history and mentioned the terror attack from 1993, something that does not just happen in any kids’ show. I was already wondering why the World Trade Centers were visible in the New York skyline throughout the episode, and then it happened to be the monster’s secret lair. Yes, please remind the watching children that two years before the airing of this episode that there was a terrorist attack in a major metropolitan city. No one minds a history lesson. Except maybe today’s Republican politicians.
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| Spider-Man: The Animated Series: The XXX Parody |
All in all, this might be my favorite episode of the series yet. After the season started almost as the first season ended, the writers’ room slowly built a story that could be considered “concluded” with this episode, despite the fact that the “Neogenic Nightmare” storyline stillwent on for another five episodes. Color me impressed that an animated series targeted at kids has an eight-episode story arc in the first place, and the “finale” of it (if it really was the finale, since I cannot imagine what could follow after this) is kind of terrifying. What could this episode have been if the writers and producers had decided to truly make this a monster horror special? The series was close to doing that, since Man-Spider already looked horrifying.
