Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends Episode Seven: Videoman

Videoman

First Aired: October 24th, 1981

Synopsis: Flash Thompson is addicted to playing an arcade game called Videoman, which he's beaten multiple times. Unbeknownst to him, Electro is the creator of the arcade game, and he's delivered copies to a bank, army base, and penthouse. When Flash sneaks back into the arcade after it closes to play the game, an electronic creature also called Videoman comes out of the arcade. Firestar saves him, but Flash sees her changing from Angelica Jones and now knows her identity. Videoman zaps Flash with a ray, and this somehow transports Flash into a video game at Electro's hideout. Electro declares that when he reaches 100 points, he'll turn it off which will kill Flash. Meanwhile, Angelica tells Bobby and Peter about Videoman after he gets away. Peter works out that Videoman must have been created by Electro since he's made of electricity, and upon putting in Electro's information to their computer, it reveals the locations that Electro delivered the games to. The three split up and go to investigate.


Iceman and Firestar are both attacked by Videoman at their locations and placed in a separate arcade machine to Flash, before Videoman steals some metals from those locations. Spider-Man finds out what happened to his friends, and from the metals Videoman stole works out that Electro's trying to build a superconductor. Firestar and Iceman, meanwhile, work out how to move from their machine to another one, and they end up saving Flash Thompson before Electro catches them and places them in a game that will turn off after three minutes, killing them. He then starts absorbing electricity using the materials Videoman brought him, but the blackout it causes leads Spider-Man to his location. When Electro and Videoman try zapping Spider-Man simultaneously and he dodges, both villains are hit, and they end up defeated. Spider-Man saves Firestar, Iceman, and Flash, all of whom are able to simply leap out of the arcade machine somehow. The entire ordeal has given Flash temporary amnesia, removing his memory of Firestar's identity. Shortly afterwards, when he's being arrogant, Angelica mentions the video game he was trapped in, causing him to have a nervous breakdown even if he's not sure why.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Rather than a green and yellow costume, Electro wears a blue and yellow costume throughout the episode. It kind of makes him look like Hank Pym in his Goliath costume.
• In a nice continuity bit that was probably more a result of recycling animation than an intentional plan, we see in a brief shot that at university, the science building is called Osborn Science Building, as it was in The Triumph of the Green Goblin.

Review: Videoman seems to be the sort of ultimate embodiment of this show, if not this era. He's had far more appearances in the comics than other original characters, and after the general idea of Spider-Man teaming up with Firestar and Iceman, he's probably the next most memorable thing about it. (I say all this having never seen this show before this watchthrough). Checking him out for the first time, I definitely feel that his main superpower, transporting characters into video games (complete with glorious 1980s graphics) makes him deserve the memorability. It's the sort of ridiculous comic book science that you'll either love or hate; and I fall unashamedly into the camp of loving it.

While I was hoping that this episode would be a bit goofier than it ended up being, there's still a fair bit to enjoy here. Aside from Videoman himself, Flash, Firestar, and Iceman all being trapped in video games is absolutely brilliant, especially the way that Flash keeps getting utterly destroyed in not-Pong. Electro himself is also pretty entertaining - "Now I have everything I need to steal all the electricity in the world!".

Unfortunately there are some flaws in the episode. The big one by far is Flash Thompson discovering Firestar's identity. This should be a tense revelation which has me wondering how the status quo of the show will be affected by this, but instead there's a sense that it'll inevitably get reversed by the end of the episode. Lo and behold, it is, and in a pretty lazy manner - Flash just develops amnesia out of nowhere. Aside from that, there's also a bit of shoddy pacing, and a few scenes that are clearly there just for padding - I couldn't care less about watching Firestar outfly a heat-seeking missile while at the army base, to be honest. Still, while this episode wasn't as great as it could have been, I did still find it enjoyable enough to be able to sit through the whole thing with few complaints.