Spider-Man (1967) Episode Thirty-Nine: To Cage a Spider

To Cage a Spider

First Aired: January 18th, 1969

Synopsis: A bank robbery takes place in which a thief blows up a vault door and escapes with the loot. As his car goes past Spider-Man, Spider-Man attempts to stop him - but his accomplice throws a device at Spider-Man which explodes and knocks him out. Lying unconscious in the street, civilians gather around Spider-Man and want to unmask him, but the police form a perimeter while their friendly captain says that Spider-Man has the right to wear a mask, and can't be forcefully unmasked. Spider-Man is taken away to a prison infirmary to be looked after.

Unfortunately, when Spider-Man gains consciousness, he finds that a group of thugs have captured the friendly police captain, planning to use him as a hostage to escape. Spider-Man's shoulder is badly injured and so he's not sure whether or not he can stop them without the captain getting injured. He instead pretends to be on their side, and destroys the prison's main fuse to turn off the lights. However, once that's happened, he takes out each prisoner from the group one-by-one, until it's just the leader. The lights come on, but Spider-Man's too quick, and is able to defeat him. The captain thanks Spider-Man and says that he'll talk on Spider-Man's behalf at his trial, but Spider-Man laughs off the idea of staying in prison and swings off.


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

Miscellaneous Notes:

• This episode is roughly based on Amazing Spider-Man #65. At the time it first aired, the aforementioned comic had come out about three months ago.
• That friendly police captain who believes in Spider-Man? Why, it's none other than that most established, most erstwhile of Spider-Man's allies in the police, Captain George Stacy. Wait...that's an actual Spider-Man supporting cast member. Spider-Man (1967) Season Two...are you feeling okay?
• On that note, shortly after Spider-Man's been taken into the infirmary, Stacy mentions that he's going to make a call to his wife. While Gwen Stacy's mother has certainly appeared in some media - Ultimate Spider-Man and the Amazing Spider-Man film series are the first ones I jump to - she's barely mentioned at all in the 616 comics.
• That device thrown at Spider-Man which knocks him out? Let me just quote the episode directly:
• THUG 1: "What do we do?"
• THUG 2: "Quick! When he swings down, pull the vibrator at him!"
For bonus points, it's a sort of cylindrical device, with rapid thrusting action.

Review: Man, what an absolutely strong episode to end the season on. After a good chunk of nonsense with aliens, lost continents, and time travel, we end on an episode with Spider-Man doing what he does best: fighting street-level thugs. He's got an injury to justify why he can't immediately take out the thugs, and it's got an appearance of an actual Spider-Man supporting cast member, George Stacy. What's not to love?

While it's easy to say that this episode works mostly due to the fact that it's simply adapting a comic fairly faithfully (one notable change is the reason Spider-Man's knocked out - in the comic, it's because the Vulture beat him up in the previous issue), I'm still going to give the writers respect for both managing to adapt it faithfully, and for the comic being so recent at the time. Either they were communicating with the Marvel office, or they worked insanely quickly to get this out.

Flaws? In an unintentional bookend to the first episode of the season, The Origin of Spider-Man, this episode does feel a little like the comic played at three-quarters speed, no doubt due to the need to fill the timeslot. But when we're getting a breath of fresh air like this, I can't say I honestly care. Please, writers and animators, more like this next season.