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[Thad]

Fun stuff.  Doc Ock mirroring Spider-Man as a nervous bookworm after losing his inhibitions is a nice touch, and you can't beat Coney Island for a Spider-Man-style setting.  The teen drama was good too.

What are we to make of Harry and the Goblin serum?  Obviously we're meant to notice that we saw him taking it right before EACH time the Goblin appeared.  So is it Norman in the costume, or Harry...or, and this would be the most interesting possibility, sometimes one and sometimes the other?

Amid the Big Man reveal the other week and all the "Kingpin vs. Tombstone" talk, the most interesting new character to show up in this ep was Frederick Foswell, who Spidey buffs will know was the Big Man in the comics.  It'll be interesting to see how his character arc will play out in this version.  In the original, he reformed and died taking a bullet for Jameson.

(EDIT: Apparently he's shown up a couple times before -- in fact, he was the one who pointed Peter toward Lincoln; iiiiinteresting --, but the name just clicked for me.)

[Thad]

This weekend's was one of the best yet -- and why not?  It was an adaptation of one of the all-time best stories, Spidey Saves the Day/The End of the Green Goblin.  And, demonstrating this show's absolute greatest strength, it stayed true to the spirit of the source material while giving a fresh take and surprising longtime fans.

This episode also served to humanize the series' two biggest hardasses, J Jonah Jameson and Norman Osborn, who are, beneath their rough exteriors, both loving fathers.  We get a very sensible explanation for Jolly Jonah's vendetta against Spider-Man, and more development on the Bugle family.

All that and a Black Cat cameo.  Great episode all around.

[Niku]

The Black Cat cameo was fantastic and the rest of the episode was even better.  I'm really, really loving the Tombstone / Spidey dynamic which .. well, it wouldn't feel quite the same to have the Kingpin leaping around a burning refinery as they watch out for one another's mortal safety, if nothing else.

[Niku]

Spectacular Spider-link.  Will watch soon.

[Mothra]

Damn good one, I thought. I've never really liked Black Cat all that much, mostly on the basis that she was really only 'bad' in a harmless playful sort of way that bored me to tears, but it looks like she's genuinely a pretty terrible influence on Parker here. Couple that with the older Out-of-Parker's-League angle, some grade A banter, and absolutely spot-on voice acting, and I'm really digging the new Cat. She's perfect for subtly and believably goading him on during the black suit saga, and hopefully keeping up romantic tension afterwards.

It's been a little rushed in the past few episodes, but the steady butting of heads between Parker and Brock has been panning out a lot better than I'd hoped. As cool as Venom was, his random irrational hatred of Spidey in the comics/90's show/movies never really had me taking him all that seriously. I'd be pretty cheesed if one of my best friends snuck into my work the night I'd said it was off-limits and took a bunch of pictures of a robbery-in-progress, instead of calling the cops - the fact that Spider-Man basically ended up stealing the suit, along with Connor and Brock's only active project, is only gonna make things worse once Eddie unmasks Peter.

Working Chameleon in on the side as an eccentric French superbugler, possibly the only incarnation of the guy I've liked, is icing on the cake at this point. Bravo, Weisman, bravo.

[Rosencrantz]

Yeah, it was a good episode. Was it just me, or was Chameleon-as-Spidey modeled after the 90's cartoon Spider-Man? He had the more muscular body, a smaller head, and much smaller eyes.

[Guild]

I'm positive he was. The symbol on the chest is the giveaway.

[Thad]

"Ohhh, you better not get your goop in my hair."

Cat was a ton of fun, though she couldn't have POSSIBLY been more derivative.

Huge grin when Chameleon unmasked; the use of the early, lesser-known Spidey villains is one of my favorite things about the show.

And this is easily the best version of the black costume story I've ever seen.  (Makes Spider-Man 3 look pretty bad, but that's not exactly tough.)

Plus, that line about the Parkers and the Brocks dying in a plane crash was snuck in quite nicely.

[Thad]

Not bad at all.  Not the best iteration of the Sinister Six -- Rhino is a one-trick pony, and Shocker was downright redundant -- but I can understand holding off on Mysterio and Kraven until season 2.

Of course, the ep was REALLY about the SEVENTH villain.  The symbiote fight scene was downright creepy, and while Eddie's breakdown seemed rather abrupt, it was understandable.

Last time showed us the begginings of Pete's corruption; here he's downright self-absorbed, not even realizing Aunt May's in the hospital.

All things considered, a downright dark story for a Saturday morning cartoon, with none of the dance floor comic relief that the movie offered.

[Niku]

Not bad at all.  Not the best iteration of the Sinister Six -- Rhino is a one-trick pony, and Shocker was downright redundant -- but I can understand holding off on Mysterio and Kraven until season 2.

On the other hand, the actual interplay between the six was great.  I liked how Shocker was actually trying to verbally keep the team together to at least give him a purpose there, and Doc is a delightful sociopath.

[Thad]

True.  There are character relationships that have been built up over this series; Shocker and Sandman together again is just natural.

And again, they went in knowing they'd get another season; holding off on some of the classic rogues is a good idea.  I'm looking forward to Kraven and Mysterio, and I'm sure they'll be worth the wait.

[Rosencrantz]

Mysterio (as Quentin Beck) was one of Chameleon's goons, which was a cool touch. Looking forward to seeing him again on his own.

Doesn't really need to be said, but I loved the Sinister Six episode - it was great seeing the interaction between all the characters.

[Thad]

Mysterio (as Quentin Beck) was one of Chameleon's goons, which was a cool touch.

Oho, nice catch.  There's a lot going on that's easy to miss -- remember that I didn't immediately catch that Foswell was the one who fingered Tombstone as Big Man; I still expect we're going to see some payoff to that story later.

[Niku]

Chameleon's other goon, it's worth noting, was Phineas Mason (aka The Tinkerer).

[Thad]

Best Venom origin ever, and juxtaposing with the Spidey origin was a cool touch.  The nods to both the movies and the comics were good too.

I want to know more about Eddie -- who raised him?  What happened after his parents died?  Because the clear distinction between him and Pete is that he didn't have an Uncle Ben in his life.  (I rather expect we'll get more on that in next week's episode, given that its title is "Nature vs. Nurture".)

And so this Venom is the ESSENCE of Venom, what he was always intended to be but never quite clicked as: Spider-Man through a dark mirror, Peter Parker if he had -- justifiably -- sought vengeance against an unjust world rather than accepting the responsibility to make it better.  A little Harry Potter, perhaps, but satisfying just the same.

It also included elements of the greatest Spider-Man arc of all time, If This Be My Destiny/Man on a Rampage/The Final Chapter.  That was the one with Aunt May in the hospital and Spider-Man fighting Doc Ock trying to get an antidote, and with Peter starting college at the same time.  He met Harry and Gwen for the first time and, preoccupied with his aunt's condition, cold-shouldered them and came across like a huge jerk.  This was followed up in How Green Was My Goblin? when Peter apologized and he and Harry started to become friends.

A notable thought bubble from Flash in that issue:

"Peter's a funny guy!  After all the NEEDLIN' he's taken from him, there he is talking to HARRY like a Dutch uncle!  He's either a real weak sister -- or a lot more MAN than we ever thought he was!"

This was a seminal moment in Flash's development beyond a two-dimensional character, and paved the way for a mutual respect and eventual friendship between the two.  And that was present in this episode too -- while Uncle Ben's memory played the angel on Peter's shoulder through his psychic battle with the symbiote, Flash was the one who put things into perspective for him and reminded him who his friends were.

In the end, what we have here is a show about really rich and complex characters.  I'm greatly looking forward to next week's season finale, and not at all looking forward to the season being over.

[Thad]

A great conclusion to a season that hasn't had a bad episode.

Pluses:
Flash
Gwen
MJ
Setting
Fight right outside Peter's house (another ref back to the Green Goblin unmasking arc)
And poor Eddie.  [spoiler]Even the symbiote rejected him.[/spoiler]

Minuses:
Eddie's description of his lonely upbringing was brief and awkwardly-delivered.
Eddie going after Gwen -- it strikes a false chord.  As Pete notes, Eddie always liked her.  I get it as a sign that he's not himself anymore, that he's become consumed by jealousy and vengeance to the point that he's lost everything he was, but it still seems like MJ would have been the more sensible target.  (That said, the Gwen bit was obviously important in setting up the ending.  Albeit maybe not completely necessary.)

Bottom line: love this show; will buy it on DVD when it comes out; wishing it would pull a Transformers Animated and jump right into season 2.

[Thad]

Jonesing for more Spectacular Spider-Man; decided to do some Googling and see if there was a date for the new season yet.  Haven't found one (sounds like probably March), but I found a great IGN interview with Weisman from back in June.

I love everything about this interview.  Weisman is a guy who I just want to grab a beer with and listen to him bullshit.  Perhaps moreso even than Dini and Timm.  He's just got so damn many ideas.  I pulled up the Gargoyles entry on Wikipedia recently, and damn, he had pitches for like four different spinoffs.

Some highlights:

We made a decision very early on that we didn't want to have a single name character, no matter how small, that didn't come from one of the sources, whether that's Ultimate or the main continuity or the movie – we would take all name characters from the source. It's a strange thing to say, because I've done entirely original shows like Gargoyles, but we actually made a conscious decision early on that we weren't going to create a single original character for this show. So the actor who has one line in the Sinister Six episode, the guy who's playing Falstaff, his name is St. John Devereaux, and that's a character right out of the comic books and he'll be appearing again. It did a lot for us in a lot of ways, because it also allowed us to plant seeds. It kept our head in the game all the time. If we're going to have to bring a character from the source material to life, you think about, "Well, who's this character going to be in the long-term for this series?" Not just, "Okay, let's call Chameleon's boys Tom and Dick." Instead, it's Quentin Beck and Phineas Mason, and that helps us set up what we're going to do with Mysterio and Tinkerer in Season 2.

[...]

A lot depends on how successful the series continues to be, but I've said before -- and this is not official, this is just my dream -- but my hope is that we do 65 episodes of this series set in high school and that the audience ages with us. And that after we do those 65 episodes, ending with Peter's graduation from Midtown High, he goes on to college at ESU and we do direct-to-DVDs with a slightly older, Superman: Doomsday / Justice League: The New Frontier [vibe], so we can do some of the more adult stories in the setting where that's appropriate, which is when he's over 18 and he's in college, as opposed to in the high school setting.

Then he talks about maybe killing Gwen off if they get that far, which sorta kills the mood, but I'm totally with him up to that.

He also mentions no team-ups in season 2 but he'd love to work Torch into season 3 if he can get the rights, and he also mentions a classic Spidey/Hulk teamup from the Ditko era that I remember enjoying (it had Goblin and the Enforcers IIRC).

He also namedrops the Busiek/Olliffe Untold Tales of Spider-Man series from the mid-'90's, and mentions the webs in the costume's armpits.

I really feel like Season 1 sort of established the universe and Season 2 is where we try and go into more depth on a lot of these characters. Flash Thompson has a big arc in Season 2. Frederick Foswell has a big arc in Season 2. Liz Allen, Gwen, M.J., Harry… Pretty much everyone has an arc of their own in this season. Even Coach Smith has a little arc. It's a rich cast and a rich group of characters and I'm dying to do more, frankly. I can't wait for them to pick up Season 3.

That's what I love about Weisman: he's as enthusiastic about this as I am.  Fingers crossed for a full five seasons.

Also: description of the season 2 preview from SDCC; pics of Kraven and Mysterio.

[Büge]

Fingers crossed for a full five seasons.

Isn't this on Cartoon Network though? Where the precedent is a show with three seasons is venerable?

[Thad]

No, but it IS caught up in the Kids' WB/4Kids/whatever changeover, which isn't exactly a guarantee it'll stick around.

[Rosencrantz]

First episode of season 2 has aired in Canada. Enjoy!

And how is it?