We’ve always felt that of all the superheroes out there, the origin story of Spider-Man was the most malleable. Peter Parker gets bit by a radioactive spider, and he gains a spider’s abilities. That’s it. It’s why we’ve gotten a whole lot of different ways that the spider lands on Parker and bites him, but it also allows for a very flexible view of Parker’s early days as the webslinger. A new animated series takes a new look at Parker’s story, using animation that strongly connects the series to Spider-Man’s early 1960s comic book origins.
YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: “QUEENS.” Peter Parker (Hudson Thames) is woken up by his Aunt May (Kari Wahlgren). He gets up and has a magazine on his face.
The Gist: Peter is on his way to his first day at a high school for top students. He misses the subway, as usual, but May picks him up and drives him in. He meets Nico Minoru (Grace Song) as he makes his way in, but he’s interrupted by a portal opening, and a gigantic spider monster falling out. A “wizard man” also comes out of the portal — it’s Doctor Strange (Robin Atkin Downes), though Peter has no idea who he is — and wraps up the monster with an assist from Peter. Of course, that’s not before the school building is heavily damaged via a flying garbage truck (!). Also, a radioactive spider hanging from the portal lands on Peter’s neck and bites him.
“A few months later…” May wakes up Peter again, but now he’s sleeping upside down. It’s apparent that he’s discovered that he’s got the agility of a spider, and he’s started to take advantage of it, creating a contraption to help him sling webs and making a costume, consisting mostly of a mask and a hockey sweater with a spider on it. He also likes to catch bad guys, which sometimes — actually often — makes him late for school.
He and Nico both go to a neighborhood high school while the original one is being rebuilt. There, Peter also has to confront his childhood crush, Pearl Pangan (Cathy Ang), who babysat him when he was a kid — even though she’s only a couple of years older. Of course, Nico busts his chops about it, but also says he should ask her out. When he finally gets the courage, though, he sees that football captain Lonnie Lincoln (Eugene Byrd) has gotten there first. But Lonnie surprises him when he asks Peter to be his lab partner, and shows Peter that he’s a good guy who’s also pretty smart.
Peter has someone else’s attention: Norman Osborn (Colman Domingo), the CEO of Oscorp, who comes by Peter and May’s apartment to offer Peter an internship.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Take the Spider-Man origin story and combine it with some of the old-school animation of the 1960s Spider-Man cartoon, and you have Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. In fact, the show’s theme song is a hip hop remix of the ’60s cartoon’s classic theme song.
Our Take: To put a finer point on the animation aspect of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, the style of the show, created by Jeff Trammell, looks very much like the style of the early years of The Amazing Spider-Man comic book, which was created in 1963 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. The drawing style of Ditko and Jack Kirby is prevalent here, with some scenes even briefly taking place inside what looks like a comics panel.
However, the story is throrougly modern, and many of the action sequences are helped along by CGI that makes Peter Parker’s version of Queens almost epic in scale. Everyone has smart phones, May is more like the youthful Marisa Tomei version from the recent live-action movies than the white-haired grandmotherly version from the early comics. Queens is seen as the diverse borough it is in reality; heck, Nico swoons over Pearl just as much as Peter does.
As usual with a Marvel TV project, the overarching plot is doled out slowly, but in this case, we love seeing the details inbetween the big plot swings. At Oscorp, Peter finds himself working under a ranting research scientist named Bentley Whitman, voiced with hilarious nastiness by Paul F. Tompkins. And seeing Peter stumble through those awkward high school years, navigating a crush that will never be requited, and trying to figure out who he is is always fun to watch, as are his fumbling first forays into crimefighting. At a certain point, Osborn will take interest in Parker as Spider-Man. Whether we see him as Green Goblin at some point this season is still up in the air.
Sex and Skin: None. There’s some mild cursing — “crap” and “hell” — and some comic book violence.
Parting Shot: Norman Osborn introduces himself to Peter at Peter’s apartment.
Sleeper Star: We know that there will be an appearance by Charlie Cox as Daredevil and Vincent D’Onofrio as Kingpin, which should be fun. Also, Zeno Robinson plays Norman Osborn’s son Harry, whom Peter saves from getting robbed by a gang of kids who want to livestream the mugging.
Most Pilot-y Line: Do we need the overt MCU references, like May’s tiny Iron Man dangling from her rear-view mirror? We think this show could stand on its own?
Our Call: STREAM IT. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is a visually-stunning animated series that has a fresh take on Peter Parker’s early days as New York’s only webslinging crimefighter.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’ On Disney+, An Animated Series About Peter Parker’s First Days As A Newbie Webslinger appeared first on Decider.
