Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends Episode Twenty-Three: The X-Men Adventure

The X-Men Adventure

First Aired: October 29th, 1983

Synopsis: The Spider-Friends are in the X-Mansion with the X-Men, using the Danger Room when a mysterious man takes control of it and turns the training course deadly. The mysterious man reveals himself as Cyberiad and says that one of the people present knows why he's doing what he is, which is to say, taking control of the X-Mansion and trying to kill everyone with the traps within. Professor X reveals a repressed memory of Firestar's - she dated Cyberiad when she lived on the West Coast, back when he was a scientist named Nathan Pryce. When palette-swapped AIM troopers attacked and injured him in an attempt to get his research, he blamed her for some reason. In the present, the heroes split up so that they have a better chance of getting to Cyberiad. Professor X also reveals that due to Cyberiad taking control of Cerebro, the X-Mansion will explode within two hours if they don't take it back.

The various teams make their way through traps, with some of them being defeated and captured by Cyberiad, who can then create holograms of them to trick the others with. Although Professor X and Firestar are saved from a falling elevator by Spider-Man, Professor X reveals that they still have to get through the Maze of Madness. Before he can explain what he means, Cyberiad manages to capture him, leaving the team to get through the maze, an M.C. Escher-esque area, themselves. They end up getting tricked into being captured by a hologram of Nightcrawler, leaving Firestar on her own. She gets through the maze and reaches Cyberiad, who turns out to be a hologram himself - the real one is controlling everything from his flying ship outside. Firestar flies outside, and while the heroes free themselves from the quantum bubble they're trapped in, she manages to defeat Cyberiad. In the aftermath, Firestar laments that she's no longer in love with Cyberiad.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• If I had to guess, I'd say that this episode is based on X-Men #110, in which the X-Men are also attacked in their Danger Room, turned against them, by a villain who is an enhanced human. It's stretching it a bit though.
• Colossus and Nightcrawler's accents in this episode are both lackluster at best, but on the plus side, Colossus wears a sweet domino mask which I reckon he totally pulls off
• "According to Cerebro's memory banks, Cyclops, your greatest fear is losing your sight," comments Cyberiad as he does...something...to make Cyclops blind. This is now 100% canon and I'm eager to see it implemented in the 616.
• At one point, Kitty Pryde is trapped in a room which she can't phase out of because the walls are made out vibranium. Has vibranium ever been shown to do this in the comics? The vibranium is also shown to amplify vibrations, which I'm fairly sure is one of those Depending Upon the Writer abilities it occasionally has in the comics. (Also: what the hell does Professor X need an entire room made of vibranium for?)
• While we're talking about crazy metal abilities, according to this episode Cyclops can burn through adamanium if he focuses his beam enough. (Yes, burn, not force).

Review: Bloody hell, what an absolute mess. The general idea here, of throwing the X-Men and Spider-Man together in a big house full of traps, is fine, as is the idea of giving the villain a personal connection to one of the characters. The problem is that other than that basic idea, it screws up just about every step of the process. The ability of Cyberiad to create holograms of the X-Men is just kind of weird given that he needs to capture them for it first, and the reveal at the end that the version of him inside the mansion has also been a hologram all along makes no sense.

Of course, that's only the tip of the iceberg with Cyberiad. Why on earth does he blame Firestar for unassociated villains attacking his lab? The attempt at a personal connection is admirable, but it doesn't really amount to much, since you never really feel that their relationship goes beyond the hero/villain dynamic they've got on right now. There's an attempt at giving Cyberiad some depth by having his human half occasionally trying to fight his computer half, but it's been done before much better by Deathlok.

Even if you want to ignore those major problems, there's still the problem that too much of the episode is just Spidey and the X-Men doing random shit in the mansion to escape the inane traps. None of it feels particularly clever or inspired, it just feels like we're killing time. (I do like the Maze of Madness though. That's absolutely insane and I want to see it return). If you want to see the X-Men, you won't be very impressed by them; if you want to see Spider-Man, he doesn't get much screen time; if you want to see the drama between Firestar and Cyberiad, it's very weak. Not much reason to stick around for this one, folks.