Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends Episode Six: 7 Little Superheroes

7 Little Superheroes

First Aired: October 17th, 1981

Synopsis: In a castle, Chameleon puts together a scheme to draw seven superheroes there and defeat them one at a time as revenge for them having defeated him in the past. Invitations are sent out to Spider-Man, Firestar,and Iceman, who accept but discover that they'll have to take Aunt May's dog, Ms. Lion, with them since Aunt May can't look after her during that time. Upon arriving at the castle, they meet the other heroes - Captain America, Doctor Strange, Shanna the She-Devil, and Namor - but Chameleon soon announces his plan to kill the superheroes over a loudspeaker. Namor is soon defeated by a trap Chameleon set up, and Spider-Man too is temporarily taken out of the picture. Chameleon disguises himself as Spider-Man and tricks Captain America into falling into some quicksand, but Ms. Lion recognises that he's not the real Spider-Man. Chameleon gets away, however, and the real Spider-Man returns.


Shanna is defeated next, and when Doctor Strange detects that she's in danger, the remaining heroes go to her. They soon realise the person they're talking to is Chameleon, but he gets away again, defeats Firestar with traps, and disguises himself as her. He's able to pull off the disguise long enough for Doctor Strange to be defeated by a demon, and then defeats the real Shanna again after she escapes. With only Iceman and Spider-Man left, they try to break through the force field Chameleon set up around the island, but Iceman's defeated by traps when he leaves Spider-Man. Spider-Man is seemingly about to be defeated when he's dropped into a giant web with a robot spider, but he defeats it easily and finds the other heroes, all captured. He frees them as Chameleon announces that the island will be blowing up in a minute, and Doctor Strange takes everyone to the roof of the castle. Spider-Man webs up to Chameleon's departing helicopter and helps everyone get to it before the castle explodes. Spider-Man notes that Chameleon was defeated thanks to Ms. Lion, who was able to detect who he was, even though that's a lie and Chameleon was defeated because he didn't kill the superheroes when he had the chance.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• The title of the episode is a reference to Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None, also known as Ten Little Indians.
• Chameleon has a weird, kind of Transylvanian accent throughout the episode. It's possibly an attempt at a Russian one. You know what, though? I like that they tried. I'd rather that than an inexplicable American accent.
• When Spider-Man receives Chameleon's invitation, he reads out the words "You are cordially invited..." before we cut to Firestar receiving hers. We get a quick look at the invitation, and, word-for-word, it says YOURE CORDIALLY UNITED TO A PARTY AT NNN IN HIVE INNNNNMM DEAR FROM. With that in mind I can see why he trailed off.
• Is this the lamest Doctor Strange ever? He can't turn off the force field Chameleon put around the island, gets eaten by a demon (which I think might have been a robot), and when he's locked in a cage with Cap and Shanna at the end of the episode, can't do anything to escape it until Namor destroys a nearby computer. He's also not wearing the yellow gloves with Kirby Dots at the end, which is disappointing.
• When Chameleon's escaping the island at the end, we see that at some point, he wrote his name on the bottom of his helicopter. It's ridiculous, but it's also the kind of ridiculousness you expect from supervillains. I think I like it.

Review: This is definitely one of those episodes where you're not supposed to think about logic too much. I do like the premise of Chameleon picking off the heroes one-by-one, as well as him switching a few times to a disguise of a hero who he's defeated and trying to trick the other heroes. Him being in control of all of the traps around the castle also works surprisingly well, and I'd like to see him in a similar position in the future.

The problem, of course, is in the execution of the plot. Ignoring the question of why Spider-Man and his incredible friends accepted the information, we don't get a good showing from most of the heroes. They're taken out by traps incredibly quickly, and it's not just the guest stars - Spider-Man falls for something like two or three traps which his spider-sense should have logically warned him about. Why do the superheroes keep splitting up if they know that Chameleon might impersonate them? Once Chameleon has them trapped, why doesn't he kill them immediately? Or better yet, why didn't he trigger his bomb right away once everyone arrived on the island? I guess that you could argue that he wanted to prove that he could defeat everyone first and then kill them, but I shouldn't need to come up with the answers to these questions.

I think that there's a good idea in here but it just doesn't work with this set of heroes, or given some of the later developments from Chameleon. A cool plot would have been if we'd known that Chameleon was involved but if we didn't know who he was disguised as, and had to guess based on the behaviour of the heroes. It's possible that it would have been hard to make a good mystery in the time available, but it's an idea that I think has a bit more potential than this attempt. There's good in here, just not enough overall.