Hey kids, let’s watch the first episode, now…

The Triumph of the Green Goblin
Written by Dennis Marks

As one might expect, this episode features long-time Spider-Man foe, The Green Goblin. It does not feature his triumph though, so the titles a bit misleading.

The episode opens with Spider-Man watching a car drive erratically through the rain, which he promptly decides to jump on top of, and then cover the windshield, because if they had trouble driving before, having Spider-Man on the hood would certainly help them. Luckily, it turns out that the drivers were actually jewel thieves, rather then, say, drunk. Or had lost control of their car. The thieves toss Spider-Man off the roof and then back up to run him over, Iceman shows up out of nowhere to build a loop-the-loop out of ice and wreck the car instead.

So, two minutes into the episode and Spidey has endangered two peoples lives and nearly been killed, and Iceman has saved Spider-Man by nearly killing those same people himself. I’m going to give the point to Iceman for being a very-slightly-less-awful superhero.

Oh, and Spider-Man just webs up the thieves and leaves them stuck to a light pole rather then alerting the cops because he is late for a date with his not-actual-girlfriend. I’m deducting a point from Spidey for that.

Spider-Man: -1
Iceman: 1

MEANWHILE IN THE SKY! A low flying plane is nearly struck by lightning, and who is in the plane by Norman Osborn; the alter-ego of the Green Goblin, who was just released from the insane asylum with a certificate of Sanity. So he immediately charters a private lane to take him away. During a thunderstorm, all the while raving about how good it feels to have all his eggs in one basket again. Which is kind of sending up all kinds of red flags for me, but then, they don’t pay me to fly mental patients away from asylums…

As it would happen, the plane is immediately struck by lightning, and the pilot and Norman both jump out, though only Norman has a parachute, and as he lands the stress from having hopped out of a plane and being electrocuted causes him to go nuts again and The Green Goblin is back. In the comics, the Goblin was just a costume that Norman wore whenever he was feeling a bit… murder-y, but here he just… goes all Goblinny whenever he’s stressed I guess. Whatever, I can accept that.

Weird that his clothing changes too though.

Back at the Spider-Friends apartment, we have our episode-required Adorable Hijinx courtesy of Peters aunt Mays pet dog, Ms. Lion, who has somehow put on a goblin mask and then frightened herself by looking in a mirror. Yes, it is Halloween and all the Spider-Friends are going to a costume party dressed as different superheroes; Firestar is dressed as Spider-Woman, Iceman is Captain America, NAMED FEMALE FRIEND is Medusa: Queen of the Inhumans, and Spider-Man is dressed… as… Spider-Man.

Even Aunt May thinks that Pete is being a damn fool.

The costume party itself is mostly an excuse to toss as many different superhero cameos as possible into a crowdscene as possible; of particular note is a skinny white guy as Luke Cage, Fat Vision and Namor the Submarine, which means that someone went to the costume party in speedos. There’s also about five Spider-Mans, and about two Green Goblins.

Petes Spider-Sense starts going nuts, which he states out loud, which causes a some girl dressed as… Caveman-girl, I guess to start hitting on him. She’s really attracted to guys in badly fitting Spider-Man costumes. Spidey leaves with her saying that there’s trouble in the lab. Firestar is understandably upset that her maybe-boyfriend is leaving with a floozy, and that he left with a stupid excuse, so she immediately sets the floozy on fire. Well, she tosses enough steam at her to wreck her hair, costume and make-up at least.

It turns out that Spidey actually WAS going to the lab, despite his hasty stammering sounding like he was either trying to discretely announce he had to use the bathroom, or was expecting imminent make-outs. So Firestar gave the girl first degree burns for no good reason.

Spider-Man: -1
Iceman: 1
Firestar: -1

Also, the lab he was going to was in the OSCORP building, on the other side of town, where it turns out that the Green Goblin was pilfering the technology stored there. How he knew to go there isn’t really ever explained, but the Goblin is ready for him and stuns him with a laser (?) and makes off with his Glider and Pumpkin bombs, he can’t find the one thing he was robbing his own lab for; the serum that made him both Green and Goblinny.

The Goblin puts the frozen Spider-Man on an office chair, regales him with his origin (serum exploded on him, made him crazy, and green) and then put on his Future-Finder Cap (?) to reveal his ultimate goal: to use the Goblin serum to turn everyone in New York into a grotesque monster like him. Well, to turn all the dudes into grotesque monsters. All the women just turn green.

Back at the costume party it is revealed that the NAMED FEMALE FRIEND is actually Norman Osborns niece, and Firestar realizes that Spider-Man still ahsn’t come back from his caveman-girl makeouts, so she decides he’s probably in peril, and heads to the Oscorp labs herself. The Goblin hears her coming and opts to aim a canister of liquid nitrogen at the door, rigging it to spray on whoever walks through it.

It is AMAZING how much liquid nitrogen these villains have on hand at any given moment.

Firestar opens the door and the nitrogen is sprayed, but generates enough heat to cancel out the nitrogen AND unfreeze Spider-Man. It should be noted that Spidey was frozen by lasers, not ice. So Firestar has managed to set electricity on fire…. So that’s one point for doing something that defies the laws of physics, and one more point for saving Spider-Man, and minus another one for Spidey for getting captured so easily in the first place.

Spider-Man: -2
Iceman: 1
Firestar: 2

Firestar and Spider-Man realize that the Goblin has gone after her niece because she alone MUST know where the Goblins Evil Superpowers Drug is. How everyone leaps to this conclusion is beyond me, but Firestar immediately runs off because lives are on the line, and SPider-Man sits there sulking that he wanted the dramatic exit.

Sigh, Spider-Man, I love ya, but GEEZ.

Spider-Man: -3
Iceman: 1
Firestar: 2

Meanwhile, outside, Iceman is walking NAMED FRIEND home while subtly hitting on her by asking if she would like to live somewhere beautiful, like Iceland, or somewhere hot, like Miami, Which I think may be subtle innuendo, when the Green Goblin appears and whisks her away. Iceman lets him because he figures is another guy in a Green Goblin costume, despite the fact that he is flying around on a bat-shaped hovercraft. Named Friend screams “noooooo” as she is forcefully abducted and Iceman cheerfully says that he’ll talk to her later.

…

Spider-Man: -3
Iceman: -15
Firestar: 2

The rest of the Spider-Friends meet up with Iceman and call him an idiot, and opt to do what all the greatest superhero teams do when the going gets tough: Immediately go off and do entirely seperate things from one another; Spider-Man heads to the Oscorp Cereal factory, again, Iceman goes to a different Oscorp factory and Firestar goes to Named Friends apartment. Pete takes this moment to mention that the Goblins sinister plan is to make dudes uglier and ladies green.

At the Cereal Factory it is revealed that Named Friend, against all probability DID know where the Goblin serum was, and he now has it. Spider-Man arrives just in time to… fall into another trap that the Goblin had set up for him; this time being a giant metal box with Goblin faces, each of which having a slightly different gimmick designed to knock Spider-Man into a big chainsaw. Rather then waiting to be rescued, yet agin, Spidey just smashes the stupid thing with his bare hands. Then saves the Named Friend and destroys the Goblin serum.

Spider-Man: -2
Iceman: -15
Firestar: 2

The Goblin escapes after revealing that while everyone was busy standing around and waiting to be rescued, created enough serum to turn the entire planet into a monster, and heads off to dump the concoction into the city resevoir. Iceman shows up and freezes the entire lakesolid before the serum could disperse and Firestar removes it. Meanwhile, Spider-man fights the Goblin YET A THIRD TIME and this time crashes him into an electric power station which electrocutes all the Green out of him, and, as Norman Osborn again, he volunteers to go back to the insane asylum.

I’ll give one point to each Spider-Friend for saving the day. But I am going to deduct another form Iceman for making fun of Norman Osborn for having a serious mental disability. Tact counts, Mr. Drake.

Spider-Man: -1
Iceman: -15
Firestar: 3

Marvel Mondays

All right, let’s get cracking with their self-titled debut album Issue #1: The Fantastic Four. And I won’t lie, it’s a hell of a solid first issue of any comic, though it has a number of oddities to anyone familiar with present-day Marvel. For instance, Ben Grimm isn’t a lovable grump, he’s just a bitter monster, also way too formal. He talks like Captain Holt. Furthermore, the story doesn’t take place in New York, the FF are based in Central City. Probably not related to the one that Barry Allen lives in and I suppose you could interpret that as being a weirdly-worded description of the Center of New York City, but regardless… Stan and Jack aren’t trying to establish a Marvel Universe just yet (that comes incredibly soon, though), so it’s just A City.

And one day, over the skies of Center City, a huge flare explodes, spelling out The Fantastic Four, which eventually changes into a giant flaming 4. And this is the first issue of the comic, so nobody has ever seen a giant flaming Four appear in the skies, and the Baxter Building is not currently world-famous, so the sight of a giant flaming numeral causes a big of a panic in the city. Except among three people who know what this symbol means, and they converge on the unassuming apartment building it lies under. Naturally, these would be the Fantastic Four, and they decide to show off their powers on their way to the Baxter Building; Ben complains furiously that the world is too small for someone as big as him as he throws off his disguise, flattens a car and smashes his way into the sewer system so he can pass unnoticed (police officers also shoot at him because he is a giant rock man smashing property), Johnny turns into a human rocket and flies over the city, causing such a panic that the mayor calls the National Guard and authorizes a nuclear strike over New York City in order to kill him (!!!!!), Reed uses his super-stretchy powers and brilliant intellect to grab the warhead and defuse it in midair and… Sue freaks out a cab driver by paying her fare while invisible.

It will be years before Sue gets any cool powers, and decades before she’s awesome as opposed to an embarrassment. Though I suspect that’s another thing to lay on Stans feet. Dude did/could not write women well.

As they meet in Reed Richards’ apartment, we’re given the teams origins;

A few other notes that have been retconned away since this issue; Reed was trying to beat the Russians in the Space Race and figured the best way to do that was to sneak on to his rocket in the middle of the night BEFORE those Commies could launch their own rocket, and while Sue would eventually be made a brilliant MIT grad and physics researcher who was an assistant to Reed, here she had no reason to be on the rocket except that she’s his fiance.

No one has ever bothered to explain why Johnny was there.

The reason Reed has called the team together is because a global crisis has emerged that would require the four of them; all around the world mysterious fissures have opened up and buried nuclear power plants deep underground, and Reed has traced all the tremors paths to one place; MONSTER ISLAND.. Honestly unsure if that’s supposed to be related to the Godzilla one.

The FF head to Monster Island in their private jet, and quickly find out how Monster Island got its name; volcanic features make it look like a snarling monster-head.

Also; it’s crawling with Kaiju.

After killing one giant monster (some kind of a Dog-hydra thing), the island is suddenly struck by a tremor and the team is separated; Reed and Johnny are buried deep underground and pass out, while Sue and Ben are left on their own on the surface being menaced by the islands other denizens.

Underground, Reed and Johnny wake up to find themselves wearing protective garments, and in the presense of the underground king, The Moleman! A guy I could never really take seriously as a villain. Not because he doesn’t pose a threat (he does have a trained army of kaiju monsters and is a god-figure to a subterranean race of troglodytes, even if he isn’t physically imposing), but just because he’s just so dang sympathetic. Harvey Elder (not Hans, as I always thought, and keep wanting to write) was a little guy who was constantly mocked and called The Mole Man because of his big nose, tiny eyes and love of spelunking, so, in a fit of depression he decides to travel to the center of the Earth and live in seclusion. Fortunately, he finds an entire underground civilization which quickly reverses him as a God, because hes limited faculties are all so much greater then their own and he finally finds acceptance and respect amongst the Moleoids (as he calls them).

Buuuuuut first he’s going to get some revenge on the surface world real quick. You know, destroy every power plant in the world and then release a Kaiju army on a defenseless population, that sort of thing.

Fortunately, Ben and Sue wind up in the Mole Mans throne room by sheer chance right then, just after Moleman illustrates that he’s adapted so well to underground life that his reflexes have become superhuman (okay…) and a quick fight against one of his guard-creatures breaks out. But before the fight can progress too far, Johnny uses the heat from his Torch-form to burn an escape tunnel from the throne-room to the surface, letting the Four escape with their lives.

Also, either burning a hole through miles of solid rock or a failsafe plan of the Mole Mans when he realizes his plan can’t proceed now that it’s been revealed, the volcano over Monster Island erupts, resealing the entrance to Subterrania forever.

Or until the next time Mole Man shows up, at least.

Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

So Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends showed up as a Recommendation on NetFlix and, well, how could I deny what the good people at NetFlix went through the painstaking process of suggesting for me based on my previous viewing history.

The long and short is that this show is crazy, but crazy in a way where you are never quite sure if it was earnest goofiness or the writers plainly not thinking things through, or just saying “screw it, lets have Spider-Man punch a dinosaur”. In many ways, it kind of feels like a prototype for Batman: Brave and the Bold. Except that the special guest star is always Iceman and Firestar (who was actually made up for the show, presumably because Iceman had the exact same personality as the Human Torch, and because Mary Jane didn’t have any super powers and was also never actually mentioned as existing)

And I opted to start watching the show with the second episode; The Crime of All Centuries, with special guest villain Kraven the Hunter, because if there is anything that will catch my attention faster then an episode description that includes the phrases “Kraven the Hunter” and “Dinosaur army”, then I shudder to think of what kind of life I have been leading that I have not yet heard it.

The episode begins with Spider-Man and Firestar on a date/platonically watching a monster movie with a girl that looks exactly like his girlfriend where they announce that the reason that the special effects are so realistic because Kraven the Hunter had supplied the film studio with actual giant fire-breathing monsters that he had been hunting (For the uninformed, Kravens entire thing is that he likes hunting stuff). As they leave the theatre they also beat up a motorcycle gang, presumably because the episodes been on for a minute or so and nobodys had Firestar incinerate anything yet. And then we cut over to The Savage Land for Kraven to explain his evil plan to his henchman “Skeleton”.

Note that the henchmans name is Skeleton. He is not a skeleton-henchman, he does not even look thin. He is a humble man named “Skeleton”, helping a Russian big-game hunter who wears a lions ENTIRE FACE as a shirt capture dinosaurs in the middle of the arctic.

Anyway, it seems that capturing and selling giant fire breathing monsters to film companies to make big-budget science-fiction movies with wasn’t quite enough for Kraven, so he decides to go to the next step and steal a bunch of dinosaur eggs from the Savage Land, then use the mystic gem to make them grow to maturity more quickly, with the help of the Single Greatest Source of Heat on the planet (That would be Firestar. Who’s photo he keeps tucked safely in his crotch. No comments.) then use those same dinosaurs to take over New York City.

So he immediately sets out to lure Firestar into a trap by driving his van into Times Square and secretly releasing his already-captured LIVE ACTUAL DINOSAURS into the public. Which really begs the question of why he’s even bothering with the rest of his plan, since his end game is to get LIVE ACTUAL DINOSAURS to make a DINOSAUR ARMY when he already has a literal truck load of them.

Anyway, as it would happen, Firestar was walking around and reacts to AN ACTUAL LIVING PTERODACTYL flying around, unseen ‘pon the living Earth for millions of years in the same way she reacts to absolutely every-damn-thing: She immediately sets it on fire.

Kraven is impressed by her quick thinking and gives her a ticket to his museum show where he is going to reveal some more dinosaurs he captured. She goes, and Spider-Man and Iceman follow her because she sees nothing wrong with going to a public showing of LIVE DINOSAURS being held by a guy who constantly tries to hunt her best friend like a wild animal. Which… err… considering the location and her tendency to incinerate anything that could possibly be construed as a threat (in a kid-friendly, TV-Y kind of way) is kind of sensible of her, really. But they sneak off anyway, since the show isn’t called [I]Firestar has no Friends[/I]

At the show, Kraven has Skeleton go ahead and open the cages to the dinosaurs which you might THINK is part of his plan to capture Firestar, but no… her being there had nothing to do with anything. He released the dinosaurs so they would serve as a distraction so that Kraven and Skeleton could steal that magic gem I mentioned before and which everyone forgot about up until now, and which ill not get mentioned again.

Firestar realized at this point that Kraven is up to No Good and decides to head off and thwart him herself while Spidey and Iceman fight dinosaurs, but it seems that this HERE was the plan to capture Firestar and he puts his evil plan into action by throwing a Heat-seeking Boomerang full of Liquid Nitrogen at her.

I do not even know how that is supposed to work.

Anyway, Firestar wakes up back in Kravens Secret Tropical Volcano Lair(?), hidden in an old Zepplin hanger(??) where he explains his evil, stupid plan to her. She responds by SETTING HIM ON FIRE. Expecting this, he reveals that the volcanic vents are all chock-full of freezing gas, so she just gets knocked out again.

Fortunately, after all this time, Spider-Man and Iceman show up in Kravens hideout, which they were able to correctly guess was hidden in a Zepplin hanger, which probably would have served as a better hideout if he didn’t have his custom Semi truck parked outside it, with the words “KRAVEN THE HUNTER” stenciled in bright red on the side. They get captured pretty much immediately after setting foot inside, because they are not good at their jobs.

Anyway, Kraven threatens to kill Spidey and Iceman unless Firestar helps him with his sinister plan to make different dinosaurs then the dinosaurs he already has and… I guess hope she doesn’t just decide to set him on fire a third time. Honor system I guess. Anyway, she agrees to make some dinosaurs for him, while Iceman wakes up and breaks out of his death trap cage by shaking it really hard. Iceman doesn’t have super strength or anything, and his freezing powers were canceled out from the fact that he was in a volcano, so I guess it was a really shoddily made cage. Iceman then sets Spider-Man free, but not before Kraven gets his hands on a T-Rex, which immediately knocks Iceman back into the volcano, which then erupts. Firestar stops the volcanic eruption by doing the only thing she knows how to do; SHE SETS THE LAVA ON FIRE.

I want to type that sentence again, please indulge me.

“FIRESTAR SETS THE LAVA ON FIRE”

In less then twenty minutes Firestar has become my new favorite character in the Marvel universe.

Oh, and then they knock the T-Rex into a tar pit, and also toss Kraven into the tar pit, and Firestar puts the magic crystal into reverse and turns the dinosaur into a baby, and Kraven goes to jail, and the ACTUAL LIVING DINOSAURS go back to the Savage Land (rather then doing absolutely anything else, at all) with them, and we finally have closure on the running joke about Iceman hitting up everyone he sees for rent money with the revelation that he already paid and just plum forgot about it.