Spider-Man (1967) Episode Fifteen: The Spider and the Fly / The Slippery Dr. Von Schlick

The Spider and the Fly

First Aired: December 16th, 1967

Synopsis: A figure in black is seen sneaking into the Walden Hotel in the middle of the night. Upon hearing someone inside scream, Spider-Man investigates and finds out that the Human Fly came in and tried to steal the victim's jewels. He manages to find the Human Fly nearby, and chases him but eventually the villain escapes. Returning to the hotel, Spider-Man finds out that the Human Fly returned and stole the jewels, something he considers to be impossible.


The same thing happens again with the Maharajah of Jihn Jamir - his jewels are stolen by the Human Fly even though Spider-Man was chasing him at the time. When Spider-Man tries to stop an entrepreneur named Mr. Flintridge from being robbed, he discovers that there are two Human Flies, working together. As Peter Parker, he places a Spider-Tracer on a jewelled dagger he suspects will be their next robbery, and follows its signal to Coney Island, where the Human Flies have a base. Spider-Man manages to defeat them fairly easily, webbing them to a ferris wheel. In the aftermath, J. Jonah Jameson is upset that Spider-Man wasn't the culprit, but cheers up slightly when Betty Brant points out that things could be worse - it could be Spider-Man who has a twin.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• At the start of the episode, Spider-Man mentions that it's 3 o'clock in the morning. Given that he's not looking for any specific villain, what the hell is he doing up that late?
• The Human Fly is also the name of a later Spider-Man villain who has actual superpowers (he was created in experiments similar to the Scorpion). It's also the name of a comic book Marvel published in the late 1970s based on real-life stuntman Rick Rojatt.
• In case you missed it, the Maharajah of Jihn Jamir, last seen in episode twelve, has a brief appearance in this episode. Now there's a bit of continuity I didn't expect to show up. What are the odds that he was used so that his animation could be recycled?
• When chasing the Human Fly at one point, Spider-Man chases him to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge, which he jumps off from and into the water. At the time this episode was made, of course, it was just another scene, but these days it's hard to watch someone falling from the Brooklyn Bridge when Spider-Man's atop it and not immediately think of the famous bridge scene from Ultimate Spider-Man #25.

Review: This episode starts out pretty strongly, and sets up a good mystery (well...an acceptable mystery), but while it doesn't hit the lows that some other episodes have hit, it doesn't really excel at anything in particular, either. From the first victim being robbed, I was waiting to see whether it was going to be that she was actually working with the Human Fly and that there was some sort of scam going on, but apparently that idea didn't occur to the writers, and so we get the mystery of how the Human Fly is robbing people while Spider-Man is chasing him instead. Which, to be fair to the writers, is not a bad mystery.

There's a bit of disappointment in the Human Fly, as in spite of the name, he's really more of a cat burglar than anything, and so there's a bit of a question as to why he's so good at evading Spider-Man. We see that his method for getting across rooftops is to shoot a grappling line across, and then to slooooowwwwlllyyy tightrope walk across it, which isn't exactly the most exciting or dramatic form of locomotion. Spider-Man's trick with the Spider-Tracer to find the hideout of the Human Flies is good on the surface, but given that he guessed every place the Human Flies would rob, it raises the question of why he didn't try it earlier.

Still, the show does give us a mystery which is resolved in a believable manner, so I'll give it that, even if it is a little unimaginative. The plot does feel a bit padded at times, but it's by no means the most egregious example in the show, and most of the elements are executed well enough. Ultimately the weakest link is definitely the Human Flies, whose best gimmick is that people don't know there's two of them. If this episode had made them a bit more of a legitimate threat - giving them some fun gadgets, perhaps? - then it would have been significantly improved.

The Slippery Dr. Von Schlick

Synopsis: Spider-Man is swinging around the city when he sees a fire at the oil storage docks. Investigating, he finds a purple-clothed man named Dr. von Schlick behind it, using the fire as a distraction while he steals the oil. Spider-Man tries to stop him, but von Schlick is literally too slippery to catch. Reports soon start coming in that oil is disappearing from storage containers all over the city. Unbeknownst to anyone, von Schlick, in his secret base in the sewers, has a method of converting the oil to an element called Themium-007, which he claims will let him control the universe.

When Spider-Man fails to stop von Schlick again, this time from stealing oil from a ship full of it, he creates a new webbing formula which he claims will stick to anything, as well as a mask which will allow him to breathe underwater. Shortly afterwards, Betty Brant calls up Peter, and tells him that the oil in the military pipeline is disappearing. When Peter heads there as Spider-Man, he finds von Schlick. Von Schlick runs away when the military spot him and start shooting at him, and Spider-Man follows him to his base in the sewers. Using his new webbing, Spider-Man is able to web up von Schlick, and then opens up a water valve, which makes the reactor for von Schlick's conversion machine exploding, thus saving the day. Pleased when she hears this, Betty ends the episode by making a terrible pun.

Webbing Does Not Work That Way

• I'm just going to let the screenshots explain this one:
  
  

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Although Dr. von Schlick is an original character to the cartoon, he's prescient to an extent of the later minor villain Slyde, who also wears a costume which Spider-Man's webbing won't stick to.
• It's probably just me, but in some ways this episode really reminded me of Dune. We've got a character wearing a full-body suit vaguely reminiscent of stillsuits, who wants all of the oil (in Dune, spice is an oil metaphor) so that he can control the universe. I, um, guess that this makes Uncle Ben the equivalent of Duke Leto?

Synopsis: Sorting through my thoughts on the story and trying to work out what I think about it, I've realised that this story is almost an inversion of the first one of this episode. While that had a respectable plot and some villains who had potential but were ultimately the weakest part of it, this has a respectable villain in a plot with potential which is ultimately the weakest part of the story. Dr. von Schlick feels like a very Silver Age villain, as he's basically "Oil is Slippery: The Villain", in almost a reversal of the Trapster ("Glue is Sticky: The Villain"). Tighten up this guy's costume, have him decide that he wants to rob banks instead of oil containers, and he would fit perfectly into Strange Tales, Journey into Mystery, or, hell, maybe even Amazing Spider-Man. So overall, he's a suitable part of the episode.

The plot, on the other hand, is a bit ridiculous. While I'm not expecting this story to go into the specifics of how stealing oil affects the economy or is a metaphor for the relationship between the Middle East and Western countries (though you can bet that if this was written today someone would use it as a vehicle for their politics), the villain stealing all of the oil so that he can make a new element which allows him to do...something is pretty disappointing. Oil is just the McGuffin for this story, and that means that this episode boils down to, "Villain steals X because the plot needs conflict." Throw in Spider-Man inventing new webbing without any sense of difficulty and you'll probably be yawning by the climax.