Spider-Man (1967) Episode Thirty-Seven: Spider-Man Meets Skyboy

Spider-Man Meets Skyboy

First Aired: January 4th, 1969

Synopsis: At the League for Scientific Studies, Doctor Irving Caldwell is being presented the Curie award for his research into astro-wave projection when there's a mysterious flash of light and he disappears, devastating his son, Jan. The news spreads and it's soon being assumed that Caldwell was kidnapped for his astro-helmet. Jan knows where the helmet is, and so he puts it on and uses it to fly, hoping to find his father. Peter Parker, meanwhile, is swinging around as Spider-Man and spots Jan. The two get into a fight, and a photo is taken of it by a reporter. The next day, J. Jonah Jameson is angry at Peter for not getting a photo, and orders him to get a photo of Spider-Man fighting the newly-dubbed Skyboy.

Meanwhile, the villain who kidnapped Irving Caldwell is revealed to be a man named Doctor Zap, who wants the astro-helmet. He's got a newspaper with the photo of Skyboy, and has worked out that Skyboy is Jan. He phones up Jan and tells him to come to his hidden mountain base. While Jan is doing so, he's followed by Spider-Man, who needs a photo of them. When the mountain base is reached, the two of them get into another fight before being brought into the mountain by Doctor Zap. Spider-Man is trapped in a glass tube and Doctor Zap removes the helmet from Skyboy. He has no further use for any of them, but Spider-Man takes photos of him with his camera. The flash blinds Doctor Zap and somehow sends him flying into a machine, which blows up and threatens to destroy the base. Spider-Man, Jan, and Caldwell all manage to make it out of the base safely.

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

Miscellaneous Notes:

• It's only for one brief shot, but in the opening scene, we see Jan's hair colour change from brown to red, continuing this series' trend of loving to give characters red hair.
• The photographer who takes the photo of Spider-Man and Skyboy is, of course, that memorable rival of Peter Parker's from the Evening Star: Jerry Muldoon. Wait, who?
• In the comics, right from the very start, Spider-Man's camera has always been a small portable thing he keeps on his belt. Here, when he needs to get a photo of himself and Skyboy, he ends up lugging a giant monstrosity around his neck, complete with flash. It's a miracle it didn't get destroyed.

Review: While I doubt that there were plans to give Skyboy his own spin-off, there's certainly enough here that you could do so quite comfortably. He's got a decent enough origin and motivation for taking up his mantle, and if you wanted to give him some more offensive powers, you could always have his father whip up some gadgets for him without too many issues. So honestly, while this episode focuses on Jan a little more than I'd like, it's actually a decent enough episode.

There are definitely a few bumps along the way though. Spider-Man decides to fight Jan for absolutely no reason whatsoever, simply saying, "Hey, you! What's the big idea, butting in on my territory?", and Jan himself turns hostile once he sees Spider-Man followed him to Doctor Zap's mountain. Their initial fight also simply ends offscreen, since the focus changes to the never-before-seen, probably-never-appearing-again Jerry Muldoon before cutting to the next day. It's a little awkward.

Still, I can't deny it: this is a superhero show, and we got an episode with a superhero (two, even) and a supervillain, with appropriately supervillain-esque plans. No one's going to be writing home about the fantastic quality of this episode, but I can't deny that I'd rather something like this than nonsense with Spider-Man fighting aliens or travelling to another dimension.