Spider-Man (1967) Episode Thirty-Five: Blotto

Blotto

First Aired: December 21st, 1968

Synopsis: A black, ink-like monster named Blotto is created by a director as revenge for being called a has-been. The director has also invented a weapon called the spirit-scope. Blotto is released onto the street where he starts absorbing and dissolving items by touching them. Peter Parker, meanwhile, is driving a film star, when they run out of petrol in the street. Blotto approaches them, and Peter swings them out of there using his web shooters before switching to Spider-Man. After running out of places to run from Blotto, he goes into the sewers.

While Blotto terrorises the city, Spider-Man is able to stop a portion of it with some electrified webbing. He goes to the power plant where the director is, and defeats him and takes the spirit-scope. He then goes to Blotto, and is able to defeat Blotto by shooting it with the spirit-scope. Afterwards, Spider-Man quips that this event will be a blot on the director's record.

"Spidey Swinging to Pad the Episode" Montages: One, by my count

"Peter Driving to Pad the Episode" Montages: One, by my count.

"Blotto Eating Random Things to Pad the Episode" Montages: Three, by my count.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• When Peter and the movie star he's driving are approached by Blotto, his method for escape is, as mentioned above, to web them out of there (don't worry, the film star faints, so his identity's safe). As opposed to, y'know, opening the doors to the car and exiting calmly. Some prime horror movie logic on display there.
• There's a brief shot where Blotto tries grabbing Spider-Man with some some dark tendrils it creates, which is unintentionally prescient of Venom and the symbiote.

Review: Well, this episode turned out to be a mess, didn't it? Blotto is a genuinely good villain, and I could picture him fitting in quite well as a villain for, say, the Avengers to fight, as they try and stop it from dissolving the city while also trying to work out how to hurt him. Its lack of intellect means you can't reason with it, and while the design is literally just a black blob, it works well enough.

Unfortunately, this episode has no idea what the hell it's trying to do. We introduce the random movie star Peter's driving, who ceases to be relevant to the plot after that scene. Spider-Man's fighting Blotto in the sewers, but then we also see Blotto dissolving the city, and then Spider-Man's running to the power plant, and then he's back to stopping Blotto? This is a genuinely confusing episode, probably the worst yet.

Show the difficulty in Spider-Man stopping Blotto a bit more, and hint at a weakness earlier in the episode, and you could have a cool story here. Unfortunately, between all of the problems mentioned above, we've also got shots of the army trying to stop Blotto, so it eats up all the time (just like Blotto eating up the city, amirite?) and we don't get enough Spidey action. I'd go on further with what could be done to improve the episode, but there's just too much for me to tackle in one post. Better yet: skip this one.