Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman

The first episode of Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman was a decent setup to the kind of story that they will be telling with this animated series. I have already raved about the visuals. I really love the title sequence. The fact that it just looks like a moving comic book does bring me a deep sense of joy. They have included some subtle calls to the MCU and in the first episode that makes sense, and I sort of hope it stops there. I also hope we never see this multiverse stuff again, it really undercuts the purposes of the show.

We open with Norman Osbourne visiting Peter Parker which I love. He is pretty much always supposed to be in the orbit of the Osbourne’s and I understand why comic book fans didn’t love the tony stark MCU substitute.

They made Peter appropriately goofy. He is bumbly and late and adorable. It's an appropriate characterization. His best friend is pretty obviously in love with him. Which is also good characterization, certain people that dwell in their mother’s basements like to paint Peter Parker as a nerd who can’t get girls as if the man didn’t have 3 dates with 3 different women within the first 4 issues of Spiderman. The dude has ALWAYS been a ladies man, he’s just also actually a sweet guy and incels can’t reconcile those two concepts.

I will probably praise the animation every single episode. I love the fact that they use panels. I love the fact that it looks like a comic book in motion. I love love LOVE that it feels like I’m watching some of the original Spiderman comics. In any animated film the visuals need to be the best part and they absolutely are.

Peter really wants to work in the robotics department of Oscorp but in his placement exam on his first day he ends up placed in energy research. That could also be because the intern director hates his guts.

The pacing of these episodes is interesting. The first episode definitely felt like 30 minutes and this one felt like it was 10 minutes long. I am not sure if it's because the story had less to do this episode or because it was just paced better but either way it felt really short.

He ruins his first day of his internship when he got caught up in a fight with someone sporting some Oscorp tech. That can only mean bad things. And in addition he stands his best friend up at a party.

And to add to his no good very bad day, Norman reveals that he knows that Peter is Spiderman. Now how will Norman try and use this against him? Or at the very least try and use it to his own advantage?

So far Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman is at least doing a good job of the cliffhangers. It is setting up the next episode really well and wrapping up nothing. We are only two episodes in a 10 episode season. I thought the first episode was a little choppy with it's narrative and delivery but the second episode seems to have gotten it's shit together. So we can only hope that we will only get better from here. There are a lot of characters and storylines opened up that we need to cover. Lonny, Pearl, Harry and then of course all of Oscorp. I am pretty excited to see what they do with this season because I really love the old Spiderman cartoons and I want to add this to the list of great Marvel cartoons.