Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends Episode Ten: The Vengeance of Loki!

The Vengeance of Loki

First Aired: November 14th, 1981

Synopsis: From Asgard, Loki uses magic to move an iceberg to hit a ship. The ship sends out a distress signal which is picked up by Iceman. He heads to the Arctic with Firestar and Spider-Man to save it. While Iceman is swimming to sink the ship, he notices a Viking ship frozen in the iceberg, with a diamond in its bow reflecting at him. While Spider-Man and Firestar are helping save the ship, Thor shows up, and explains about the gods of Asgard. The diamond in the frozen ship is one of the Twins of the Gods, with its counterpart being possessed by Loki, who wants to use them to gain more power. The heroes look for the frozen ship again but Loki manages to beat them to it and get the other Twin of the God. He teleports Iceman and Thor to realms of Asgard, where they're trapped, before reviving a Viking who was in the ship and giving him power to destroy the world. Finally, he traps Firestar and Spider-Man with the Twins of the Gods, and then commands the Viking to head to New York to destroy it.

Iceman is being attacked by the demon Surtr, but he is saved by an ice giant named Zerona, who thinks that he's an ice god. She takes him to the realm of Ymir, another ice giant, and when Iceman is able to defeat him, he's declared to be the consort of Zerona, who is now the queen of the ice giants. While this is going on, Loki reaches New York with his Viking pal and they start attacking it. Iceman finds an ice giant who wants to marry Zerona, and she agrees that she'd rather marry him and lets Iceman go. Iceman meets up with Thor, who has just escaped from his prison, and they return to Earth. Thor manages to get the Twins of the Gods from Loki, frees Spider-Man and Firestar, and banishes Loki. The Viking's power runs out without the Twins of the Gods, and apologises since he realises that Loki tricked him. Thor teleports away with him, while Iceman makes a comment about Zerona which confuses Firestar and Spider-Man.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• The reason given for Iceman picking up the signal from the sinking ship at the start of the episode is that he's a government agent, implying that he's been specifically chosen to deal with this problem. Boy, I sure can't wait for this to crop up again and provide potential plots for the show.
• When Loki travels to Earth to get the other Twin of the Gods, he does so in the most dignified way possible, by which I mean he sprints out of his room and along the Rainbow Bridge. It's exactly as goofy as it sounds.
• It's implied in this episode from the amount of time Iceman spends underwater that he can breathe underwater. I could maybe buy it if he was fully made of ice and merging with the water, or something, but I don't think this is something that's ever come up in the comics as an ability of his.

Review: If you're a kid and this is your first introduction to Norse mythology, this isn't too bad. It introduces some of the gods, Surtr and Ymir, and connects the mythology to Vikings in a fairly natural way. It's a lot less egregious with regards to all of that in comparison to, say, works involving Egyptian mythology which portray Anubis as an evil or malicious god (something of a pet peeve of mine). So I can certainly say it does that well, and introduces Thor and Loki to new audiences fairly well. As far as the episode itself goes though, it's a bit of a mess.

Once the plot gets going, there are a few too many issues for it to be that enjoyable. I get that this is an Iceman showcase, and can forgive Spider-Man and Firestar being offscreen. Less enjoyable is that Thor is trapped in a prison until the point when the plot doesn't need him there, at which point he conveniently breaks free. I'm also a bit sceptical of Iceman defeating Ymir, and in general all of the stuff involving Zerona, a character not present in Norse mythology. Meanwhile, Loki says that he's moving the iceberg to spite Thor, but...why? It's also implied that he didn't realise the other Twin of the Gods was in the iceberg until later, making it one hell of a convenient iceberg.

The intentions with this episode weren't bad, I think - showcase Iceman and find a way to introduce Thor while we're at it. The problem is that there's enough plot holes and bad writing here to make what effort it exerts not that enjoyable. If I wanted to see an Iceman showcase, I'd rather the episode have him deal with something a bit more appropriate for his power level as it was when this episode debuted - a few supervillains, or even just a giant generic robot. As it is, him defeating Surtr and running around with ice giants for a bit feels a bit unnecessary - it's not like I'd be expecting a Spider-Man showcase episode to have him defeat a giant spider and then to run around with spider people.