Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends Episode Sixteen: A Firestar is Born

A Firestar is Born

First Aired: September 25th, 1982

Synopsis: Firestar and secret government agent Iceman head out someplace since the date is significant. They pass Spider-Man on the way there, fighting crime, and they tell him that they're going to an X-Men reunion. He wishes them well, but Spider-Man's unexpectedly attacked by Juggernaut, who's looking for the X-Men so that he can kill his brother, Charles Xavier. Spider-Man tries fighting Juggernaut, but ends up knocked out. Meanwhile, at the X-Mansion, Firestar's asked about her origin by Storm, who she hasn't met before. Firestar explains that she was bullied by a girl called Bonnie, who always blamed her for things going wrong. She was raised by her single father and didn't grow up with much money. She gradually realised that she had powers, and began experimenting with projecting heat and flying. One day her father almost died at his job at a construction site, and she used her powers to save him, realising in the process that she could use her powers for good.

When Bonnie and her boyfriend framed Angelica for stealing a trophy from the school, she sewed herself a Firestar costume and proved her innocence. Shortly after that, the X-Men invited her to join them. Firestar starts talking about her time with the X-Men, when Juggernaut arrives at the mansion and attacks. He makes his way past the X-Men and nearly kills Professor X, but Spider-Man arrives out of nowhere and saves the professor. He and Iceman work together to remove Juggernaut's helmet, and Professor X is able to stop his stepbrother. In the aftermath, all of the heroes share a presumably non-alcoholic drink together and declare that they'll be friends forever.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• The X-Men, as portrayed in this episode, are Storm, Angel, Firestar, Iceman, Wolverine, and Cyclops.
• Unexpectedly, but not at all unwelcome, Wolverine is portrayed here as having an exaggerated Australian accent. Kinda ironic given who ended up playing him in the X-Men films, huh?
• Storm's costume here is shown as more or less being her Dave Cockrum one from Giant-Size X-Men #1, but with the body of it coloured white instead of black.
• Astute readers may have noticed that this episode aired in-between The Origin of Iceman and Along Came Spidey. I'm not quite sure what the deal is there, but this is listed as being the last episode of the season according to both IMDB and my source for the videos, so I've done it in that order. (And besides, if I wrote up things in the order they aired, we never would have gotten Revolt in the Fifth Dimension, would we?)
• When Spider-Man's fighting Juggernaut near the start of the episode, at one point he tries to stop the villain by pouring wet cement over him. It covers the villain for a few seconds, only for him to glow blue and the cement to flow off him. I know that Juggernaut has some sort of minor force field power, but I don't think that it works that way.

Review: After two surprisingly good flashback episodes which managed to have a plot integrating the flashbacks fairly well, it's surprising that this one ends up dropping the ball. I quite like Firestar as a character, both in this show and in the comics, and while I wasn't expecting her origin to be the hidden gem of '82, I wasn't expecting it to be quite so bland and drawn-out. So, so much of it consists of, "And anyway, one day, this scenario happened, and that's how I learned about this aspect of my powers!" I suppose that it establishes context, but it's all just a bit too drawn out for me. At least when Iceman was pulling the same shit he had the grace to end his flashback halfway through the episode, rather than four-fifths of the way through.

Even the Juggernaut stuff doesn't really hold up that well. The fight at the start with Spider-Man is pretty much just punch, punch, punch, and when he reaches the X-Men there's not a large sense of tactics or the characters doing much more than showcasing their powers. (Hilariously, Angel just sort of flies around above everyone, not even trying to fight Juggernaut). It's not until Spider-Man shows up that they actually manage to get the upper hand on Juggernaut, thanks to Iceman freezing him in place, but that presents its own problem. Namely, this is Firestar's origin - why doesn't she get to stop Juggernaut? (Though, granted, Iceman didn't stop Videoman in his episode.)

Overall, this is a story that I want to like, but ultimately there's not really a lot of substance here. Trim Firestar's flashbacks a bit (or, alternatively, have the stuff  in them relevant to the present-day stuff), and tighten up the fight with Juggernaut and this would be excellent. As it is, there's not a lot to get excited about here.