Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends Episode Eight: The Prison Plot

The Prison Plot

Synopsis: The annual warden and police chief's convention is taking place at a prison. Peter Parker, Angelica Jones, and Bobby Drake are working odd jobs at it so that they can make enough money to buy Aunt May a birthday present. A disguised Magneto is there as an escape artist, but Peter recognises him, changes to Spider-Man, and confronts him. Magneto sticks Spider-Man in a prop for his act - a giant hourglass - and then traps everyone in the prison behind a magnetic barrier, saying that he'll only release everyone when his fellow mutants are released from the prison they're in. Angelica and Bobby change to their alter egos and save Spider-Man before getting into a brief skirmish with Magneto. Spider-Man notices that electricity in the prison goes down when Magneto uses his powers, and that means that Magneto's getting power from the Niagra Falls generator. Iceman and Spider-Man go off to take care of the generator, while Firestar will distract Magneto.


Iceman's able to escape the prison when Ms. Lion, of all beings, appears on prison, having been on a boat Aunt May was on which came close to the prison. He uses her entrance point to escape, but Spider-Man's not so lucky, and is captured by Magneto and placed in a water tower. Magneto takes the water tower to Niagra Falls and attempts to drown Spider-Man in it, but Iceman saves Spider-Man when Magneto assumes that the water will do its job and leaves. Back at the prison, Magneto convinces everyone to release the mutants, but Firestar tells Magneto about Spider-Man and Iceman sabotaging the Niagra Falls generator. He heads off to stop them, unaware that that's what they want. They use the generator to overload Magneto's powers, so that all metal items are attracted to him and he can't control it, which knocks him out when a bunch of items hit him. In the aftermath, the three heroes give Aunt May a round trip to Florida for a present.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• The other mutants seen who Magneto wants freed are Blob, Toad, and Mastermind. We also briefly see Mastermind making illusions of Mephisto, Annihilus, Ghost Rider, and Psyklop.
• When Peter recognises Magneto, we get a brief flashback to the episode When Magneto Speaks...People Listen. The Marvel Wikia uses this as evidence that this show and the 1981 Spider-Man series take place in the same continuity. On the one hand, we saw two very different Green Goblins in the episodes Revenge of the Green Goblin/The Triumph of the Green Goblin. On the other hand, who am I to argue with them? Even if everything doesn't line up perfectly, it's a fun idea.

Review: After a pretty shoddy showing from Magneto last time, this episode manages to do much better justice to the character (weird disguise as an escape artist aside). Demanding that mutants be freed from prison fits his character so damn well, and his scheme honestly works pretty well for how simple it is. Probably the biggest downside is that we don't get a chance to see what he thinks of Iceman and Firestar, who are also mutants, working against him. I guess that you could argue that he wouldn't necessarily know that they're mutants, but for simply addressing the issue I'd happily accept that he knows somehow.

Other than that there's some surprisingly good character work here. I didn't mention it in the synopsis, but there's a subplot with Spider-Man and Iceman trying to work out who Firestar's got a date with that night after she off-handedly mentions it. While the two of them are off alone, they have a brief discussion about how both of them care a lot about her, which suddenly elevates their feelings from "funny recurring joke" to, "this is actually a pretty cool angle to tackle." I doubt anything romantic will end up happening between either of them and Firestar, but still, it's nice to see the idea fleshed out a bit. (For those of you wondering, Firestar's date turns out to be with a hairdresser).

Probably the biggest flaw of the episode is that after a good job of setting everything up, everything jumps around a bit in the second half. In spite of Firestar saying she'll distract Magneto, she doesn't end up doing a lot - she tries to fill the room he's in with smoke, and is almost immediately taken out when he does magnet stuff which turns her powers back on her and make ice. Meanwhile, he's shutting down electricity across the country, before later threatening detonating nuclear missiles, while Spider-Man's getting a protective suit to try and jump through Magneto's barrier...a lot of it feels unnecessary and doesn't really contribute to the core plot.

Overall though, this is a really solid episode, with a good showing from Magneto to more than make up for his disappointing previous appearance.