With only two episodes to go, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man has managed to establish itself as possibly one of the best written animated versions of Spider-Man ever presented and alongside the truly magnificent X-Men ’97, there’s a sense that we’re entering a new golden age of mighty Marvel animation. Of course, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here as we’ve still got a couple of installments of Peter Parker’s newest incarnation left to go, but judging by what we’ve seen so far, the show is flying higher than ever.
Of course, swinging high above the streets of New York is once thing, it means nothing if you can’t stick the landing and so, with Spidey in his classic threads, Scorpion still on a rampage and Lonnie Lincoln still in two minds about playing his part in a street gang, the road to YFNS-M’s wrap up begins here. Call it intuition, call it gut feeling, call it spider sense; but I feel we’re in a pair of safe, sticky hands.
As the mask of benevolent philanthropist starts to slip even further and the true face of a ruthless, manipulating businessman is ever more revealed, in victory, Norman Osborn is starting to show more abd more of himself to us. For example, when he goes to visit a recently apprehended Otto Octavius in jail, he not only can’t help openly mock his rival and former Oscorp employee and reveal that he’s done a deal with Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross to claim all of Octavius’ inventions for himself in order to reverse engineer them and make them his own. But if he’s willing to screw over a former colleague so badly to the point that they turn to a life of crime, is there a chance that he could stab his protégé, Peter Parker in the back too?
Speaking of Peter (who recently recovered from being actually stabbed in the back by a robot scorpion tail), he’s taking his brand new costume out for a spin when he gets a chance to take care of a few outstanding debts in one, glorious, action sequence. It all comes about because the 110th Street Gang hungers for payback after having their numbers drastically reduced by rival gang leader Mac Gargan who finally became his gang’s namesake after getting fused into a Scorpion suit supplied by Octavius. Trying to intercept the Oscorp truck transporting Otto’s inventions, the 110th hope to nab some tech for themselves to even the odds, but things go south when Gargan shows up with the Scorpions once again to finish this gang war once and for all.
In the brawl that follows, multiple major happenings occur that mean things will probably never be the same again, such as Peter saving the life of his best friend, Nico, and Lonnie Lincoln coming face to face with a mysterious nerve gas of Octavius’ design. But the major test is whether Peter will follow Osborn’s earlier advice of dropping the nice guy shtick and stop holding back – but if he does that, how far will he go and can he possibly come back?
Oh yeah. It’s all coming together in ways that not only keep your eyes webbed solidly to the screen, but it also desperately has you anticipating what could come next as various plot threads crawl ever closer to their natural finishing points. One of YFNS-M’s strongest points is the juggling of its characters and plots that usually means that it’s legitimately exciting when they meet at various points and in the penultimate episode, we have no less than five main characters who now all seem within arms reach of becoming their more comic book accurate selves. The first of these is, obviously, Spider-Man himself (no big shocker there), but his journey to adding a fully fledged “Amazing” to his name goes a little further than just sticking him in iconic red and blue threads. Not only does our put-upon lead have a rematch with the Scorpion to contend with (the second of our cast to successfully reach his character’s most familiar visage), but he still has the counter productive instructions of Norman Osborn rattling around inside his skull as his benefactor has urged him to get with the programme and stop going to easy on his opponents. After a significantly bruising round two with Scorpy, he finally manages to best the sting-happy psycho but feels that he needs to finish the job and take the gang leader out of the equation once and for all, but after going to stab the villain with his own tail, he’s stopped by an unlikely source.
While Peter remains true to himself and the ideals he cherishes, it’s Lonnie Lincoln who manages to convince him to spare Gargan’s life which, if you know Lincoln’s comic history, is pretty frickin’ bizarre. But even though the man would would be Tombstone is edging ever closer to his villainous birthright, Lincoln is still hanging in there as a force for good despite the breaks life keeps sending him. Not only does the high-schooler inherit the 110th Street Gang from Big Donovan after the former leader quits in the face of a ranting scorpion man, but after a vial of mystery Octavius gas makes him invulnerable, all Lincoln is now missing is the chalky white skin and the murderous attitude, but for now, it’s weirdly nice to see him still be a nice guy before he’s due to fall into super villainy in the future.
So while Spider-Man has passed all the usual Spider-Man tests and trials that mark him out as the hero that we love, Scorpion has become the rage-fueled thug complete with a comic accurate mask and Lonnie is gradually edging toward whatever comes next, that leaves two more characters still teetering on becoming superpowered pains in the ass. The first of these, the difficult, petty and egotistical, Otto Octavius, is pretty much lounging comfortably in supervillian-ville already – he just needs a set of lashing, metal octopus tentacles to complete the picture, but once again, it’s the progression of Norman Osborn that proving to be the most gripping. It seems that with every episode, he’s becoming more and more ruthless as his cutthroat nature rises to the surface like a crocodile on the hunt and our latest evidence is the way he visits Octavius in jail to callously crow over taking legal control over his rival’s life work and folding it into Oscorp. However, while a bit of corporate dick swinging may not completely be proof that Norman is actually piece of shit, the final scene reveals that Osborn has his fingers in quite a few questionable pies – one of which seems to be the creation of more genetically altered spiders in the hope that more people with Peter’s particular powers pop up after getting bitten. After episodes of watching Norman gradually showing his hand, this is the first hint of true, overt villainy he’s actually shown and to say that we’ve all been waiting on tenterhooks for this to happen is something of an understatement. In fact, while all aspects of YFNS-M have been firing on all cylinders, I have to admit, keeping tabs on how much of a problematic ass Osborn is becoming has become one of my favorite things and it’s almost like we’re being required by the state to keep an eye on him in case of any triggering behavior. In fact, the notion that the term “Hero Or Menace” could refer to a few of our characters means that even the titles of this episode are better written than some other shows I could mention.
With only a single episode left, I am genuinely curious to see where the show will end up; will we get a slow wrap up that sees Peter reconnect with his various supporting characters or will we get another super villain blowout like we got with the Scorpion? It’s quite refreshing to say that the show is so good, I actually don’t mind what the writers have in store as I now trust them implicitly.
In fact, you could say I’ll be goblin’ it up.
Sorry, not sorry.
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