The Incredible Shrinking Spider-Man
Synopsis: A scientist, Professor Norton, demonstrates a shrinking ray he's invented to assorted press reporters, including members of the Daily Bugle. In the middle of the demonstration, a villain named the Gadgeteer, who was seen earlier as an evil-looking cleaner, shows up and manages to steal the shrinking ray. When Peter Parker changes to Spider-Man and confronts him, he ends up getting shrunken down to tiny size. The Gadgeteer then gets away, while Spider-Man has to deal with a cat in the laboratory that wants to paw at him. He gets away and tries to call Aunt May, but his voice is so quiet that she can't hear him.
Spider-Man ends up heading to the Daily Bugle and types out a message for Betty on a typewriter, asking her to let Aunt May know he won't be home that night. In J. Jonah Jameson's office, an advertiser is complaining that Jonah won't let him advertise his product in the paper - tiny Spider-Man robots with realistic movements. Shortly afterwards, Spider-Man sees a newspaper article about a new computer microchip being demonstrated at a convention, and works out that Gadgeteer will be there. He goes there and finds a shrunken Gadgeteer trying to break into the computer to steal the chip. The fight takes them out of the computer, and Spider-Man is able to disable a tiny flying plane Gadgeteer has by programming the Spider-Man robots, on display at the convention, to web him in unison. Gadgeteer tries returning to his normal size but Spider-Man intercepts the ray, grows instead, and manages to captured Gadgeteer.
Review: Some scenes of this episode appear in the opening to this show, and just from seeing them, I can't exactly say that I was holding my breath with anticipation. I mentioned in my review of The Birth of Micro Man that there are certain tropes that show up with this plot, and boy does this episode use them. We've got Spider-Man dealing with animals (twice! Both a spider and a cat!), having to use normal-sized equipment while shrunken, having to work out how to get around (in this case, he hitches a ride on a balloon)...none of it is bad, per se, but there's also a strong feeling that we've seen it all before.
As far as the antagonist goes, the Gadgeteer is no Doctor Doom. His costume's awful, he whips out random gadget after random gadget, and he doesn't seem to have any real reason for stealing the shrinking ray. Shrinking himself to get into the convention to steal the chip should be a clever way to get past the guards, but there's a strong sense that it was done so that Spider-Man would be on more equal standing with him. I think that it says something about how weak he is as a villain that most of the conflict in the episode isn't directly due to him, but more due to Spider-Man dealing with issues he could solve easily if he was at normal size, like a fire in Jonah's office or trying to work out how to get Aunt May to hear him.
It's hard to find anything egregiously bad in this episode, but at the same time it's hard to find anything about it that justifies watching it. There's nothing here that we haven't seen before, and in the very unlikely chance that the Gadgeteer returns, I doubt that this episode will be essential viewing to understand his character. As far as Spider-Man shrinking stories go, Spidey's Totally Tiny Adventure is by far my favourite.
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