Spider-Man (1967) Episode Eleven: The Night of the Villains / Here Comes Trubble

The Night of the Villains

First Aired: November 18th, 1967

Synopsis: Investigating the sounds of a crime on a boat, Spider-Man is surprised to find Blackbeard the pirate behind the crime. Although he attempts to stop Blackbeard, he's knocked overboard, and in that time Blackbeard escapes. Blackbeard takes a chest of gems he stole to the wax museum of Parafino, who plans on using Jesse James for a bank robbery. Spider-Man runs into Jesse James as the robbery is happening, but is forced to flee when a police officer James knocked out comes to and thinks that Spider-Man is trying to rob the bank, as he can't see James from his viewpoint.


Parafino declares that James failed since Spider-Man isn't dead, and he sends out the Executioner of Paris to fix that mistake. Spider-Man is able to defeat the Executioner, and upon examining him, discovers that he's made of wax. He works out that Parafino must be behind the crimes, heads to his wax museum, and after a brief fight is able to defeat him.

Webbing Does Not Work That Way

• Parafino lobs several globules of wax at Spider-Man, who creates a small net of webbing to catch them in with a single press of his web shooter's button. I think that I'm starting to get Stockholm Syndrome with regards to Spider-Man's webbing, because there were more silly webbing uses than this, but they didn't feel that ridiculous to me.

Miscellaneous Notes

• There's a bit of a subplot with Spider-Man wondering whether he was imagining the villains he faced, since no one else reported seeing them. This leads to the best line of the episode - "In that fog, anyone could be mistaken for Blackbeard!" I like to think that this isn't hyperbole, and that there were dozens of reported sightings of Blackbeard in the city that night.
• Jesse James is specifically chosen for the bank robbery due to his skill at the act. He then demonstrates how to rob a bank by knocking out a police officer by hitting him with the butt of his revolver, and then slowly approaching the front door of the (closed) bank. I can see why he's the expert.

Review: If you had to choose one of the original villains to this series to return, Parafino isn't a bad one - he had ambiguous powers regarding wax, and the plot of the episode allows us to have Spider-Man interact with some famous historical villains without it being completely ridiculous. Much like Parafino's debut episode, the core concept isn't bad, it's the execution which botches up the quality.

Easily the biggest flaw of this episode is the reveal early on that Parafino is behind these crimes. As mentioned, there's a subplot wherein Spider-Man isn't sure whether he really fought them or not, and without Parafino appearing, it would have led to us wondering what was happening with them - were time travel shenanigans involved? Has Mysterio returned? Or are they just robots? By revealing the villain, we lose the mystery aspect of the episode, something which it seems to recognise and compensate for by hiding Parafino in shadow or off-screen throughout the episode...but which utterly fails because an establishing shot when Blackbeard returns to his museum clearly displays the sign with his name on it.

On top of that, we once again have the writers unsure of who is and who isn't a wax figure in this episode. When Spider-Man runs a finger down the Executioner's arm and gets wax on it, that would seem to answer that question, but then at the museum, Spider-Man is able to shut down the wax figures by destroying a box clearly labelled ROBOT CONTROL. Could someone please decide once and for all what Parafino can and can't do, and clearly exposit it to remove any ambiguity? Once we've done that, I think we might be able to get a decent episode out of Parafino, but until then, we've got to put up with stuff like this.

Here Comes Trubble

Synopsis: Spider-Man is posing across the city when he hears a loud noise from the museum of art. Investigating, he finds a stone centaur trying to steal a vase, which disappears into smoke after a brief fight. Meanwhile, J. Jonah Jameson receives a call from a book shop owner named Miss Trubble, who wants a column on mythology in the Daily Bugle. When he says he won't put one in, she says he'll regret it and then summons up a cyclops from a mysterious box she has. Spider-Man is able to defeat it without much difficulty, but she next releases a specific figure to destroy him, which turns out to be Diana, Goddess of the Hunt.

Spider-Man is able to defeat Diana, too, and is at the Daily Bugle as Peter Parker when Miss Trubble calls up Jonah again. Between the mythology connection and the fact that he fought Diana in front of her shop, he realises who is behind it all. After failing to get in as Peter Parker, he returns as Spider-Man, and finds out that Miss Trubble has been summoning the figures from Pandora's Box. Miss Trubble releases Vulcan, god of fire, who imprisons Spider-Man in magical chains, but then unintentionally sets fire to the books in her shop. Miss Trubble tries to stop Vulcan, who lashes out at her, but the distraction gives Spider-Man the opportunity to destroy Pandora's Box in the fire, thus destroying Vulcan too. Spider-Man frees Miss Trubble from the fire, then hands her over to the police.

Webbing Does Not Work That Way:

• When Spider-Man sees the centaur stealing the vase at the start of the episode, he shoots the vase with his webbing, which slooooooowwwwllllyyyyy moves the vase back to its display case and gently puts it back in.

Miscellaneous Notes

• Weeellll...technically Diana and Vulcan are the Roman gods; their Greek equivalents are Artemis and Hephaestus respectfully. I'll give it a pass though, since they could have used a much worse character named Vulcan.

Review: After the first story this episode, I went into this fully expecting it to be of about the same level of quality, if not lower. How wrong I was! Miss Trubble is a delightful villain, with her wanting a column about mythology in the Daily Bugle being a natural extrapolation of the nosy, unable-to-be-silenced old woman trope. Much like Dr. Magneto last episode, she's got a pretty relatable and human motivation, it's just that to try and achieve it she's overreacting far more than is reasonable. She also uses several fairly clever figures from Pandora's Box to try and achieve her goals - I wasn't expecting Diana in the slightest, but it makes perfect sense to use to use the goddess of the hunt to stop someone who's a thorn in your side. (Although that being said, no use of Arachne to fight a guy named Spider-Man?)

The box itself isn't particularly accurate to the original myth, but who cares? It's an excuse to parade out a few different opponents (and thus, powers) against Spider-Man, and it works. Moving past them, another highlight of this episode is seeing Peter Parker do some investigative work, first of all working out that Miss Trubble is behind the crimes, and then trying to do some actual investigations in his civilian disguise. And it works! While investigating as Peter Parker, he spots a statue of Cerberus in Miss Trubble's shop which is identical to one that's recently been stolen.

The absolute highlight of this episode, however, is definitely the climax. Despite his best efforts, Spider-Man barely stands a chance against Vulcan at all, with the magical chains easily shutting him down - but that doesn't matter, because Spidey's smart enough to know that destroying Pandora's Box is the real key to victory. But then during the fight, Vulcan starts burning Miss Trubble's books, which she cares about enough to try and get him to stop the fight. Again, it's a great human moment from the villain, but it's only made better when Vulcan disobeys Miss Trubble, showing that he's not some mindless figure bound to do what he wants, he's got his own will. What a great turnabout! On top of that, the way Spider-Man then wins the fight makes absolute sense, but even then, the fire that's been started doesn't immediately go away with Vulcan - it's something that still needs to be dealt with. This story has officially set the new standard for climaxes in this series - this is easily on par with the climax of a modern day cartoon.