Spider-Man: The Animated Series Episode Thirteen: Day of the Chameleon

Day of the Chameleon

First Aired: July 8th, 1995

Synopsis: At the airport, mysterious people try stopping a random man, who soon starts changing his shape and escapes. Shortly afterwards, Peter Parker rushes into the Daily Bugle and desperately asks J. Jonah Jameson to be the person to photograph the signing of a peace treaty that's coming up. Jonah reluctantly agrees, but then he and Peter are captured and taken to a flying fortress. Once aboard, Peter sneaks away and overhears Jonah meeting with Nick Fury, the war hero who's supposed to be dead, and is in charge of the people running the fortress, SHIELD. Fury notes that in the obituary Jonah ran in the Daily Bugle his photo was flipped so his eyepatch was on the wrong eye. He then explains that the man from the start of the episode was Chameleon, a spy who shapeshifts by capturing people's images with his belt. He's been hired to stop the leaders signing the peace treaty and will probably try to do so at the party Jonah's going to have to celebrate it, that night. Fury gives Jonah a pin that he can use to contact SHIELD, then returns Peter and Jonah to Manhattan.

Returning to the Daily Bugle, the two realise that the Chameleon's been there and that he has access to the security plans for the party. Jonah sends SHIELD agents after him, and on the way out Chameleon disguises himself as Peter Parker, kissing a visiting Mary Jane on the way out to avoid guards. That night, Chameleon manages to successfully infiltrate Jonah's party, even managing to trick SHIELD agents into going after Spider-Man as he does so. Fury contacts Jonah and tells him that they should escort the VIPs away for safety, but Spider-Man realises that Fury is the Chameleon- his eyepatch is on the wrong eye since he used the obituary photo. Chameleon starts to get away, but SHIELD shoots lasers at his helicopter and it crashes into the river. Later, at the United Nations, the peace treaty is getting signed and Peter's ready to take photos...only for Spider-Man to show up and reveal that "Peter" is Chameleon in disguise. He defeats him, but in the aftermath finds out that Mary Jane is annoyed at him for not showing up to her play, which she told the Chameleon about.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• In a classic bit of 90's censorship, when a helicopter Chameleon's in at the start of the episode crashes into a building, Spider-Man's quick to comment, "Good thing no one's moved into this building yet!"
• In an unexpected turn, Jonah's secretary this episode is shown to not be Betty Brant, but Glory Grant. While I doubt she'll have much of a role this series, I can't say I'm disappointed; Glory's a fun character.
• Nick Fury's mentioned to have been a war hero, and while it's not mentioned, the implication I'm getting is that he fought in World War II - it explains Peter and Jonah's surprise at seeing him. In the comics, Nick Fury still canonically fought in World War II, and survives through to the present day thanks to the Infinity Formula.

Review: While there's nothing particularly bad here, returning to a fairly low-stakes, one-off episode after two arcs that did a lot of really interesting stuff is a bit of a letdown. Nothing here makes me go, "Urgh, why is that here?", but there's a lot that could be fixed up - the exposition takes up about half the episode, the final confrontation at the UN seems only to exist for the twist that Peter is actually the Chameleon, and the plot could probably work without Spider-Man in it at all.

That being said, I do appreciate that the episode is playing to the Chameleon's strengths. Rather than getting into a fistfight with Spider-Man, he's constantly avoiding him and using gas to escape when he does get caught. The show does remember that there's no reason for him to be sticking with the same disguise for extended periods, and while Spider-Man catching him in his Nick Fury disguise because of the eyepatch is easy to see coming, that in itself kind of makes it fun.

Overall, this is probably one of the weaker episodes so far, but it says something about the strength of this series so far that it's still pretty good. It won't top Chameleon tricking Aunt May into repeatedly trying to murder Spider-Man, but let's face it, it'll be a long time before any depiction of Chameleon comes anywhere near close to that.