Spider-Man: The Animated Series Episode Fourteen: Neogenic Nightmare, Chapter 1 - The Insidious Six

The Insidious Six

First Aired: September 9th, 1995

Synopsis: While swinging around the city and thinking about his love interests, Spider-Man finds his powers temporarily turning off. Meanwhile, Kingpin is having a meeting with some crime lords, who are annoyed that he hasn't dealt with Spider-Man. Kingpin reveals that he has a plan to deal with Spider-Man, and breaks Chameleon, Mysterio, Rhino, Shocker, Scorpion, and Doctor Octopus out of prison. Although some of them, notably Octopus, are reluctant to do so, they agree to work together as the Insidious Six. They don't commit any crimes to start out with, and so Peter sleeps for a whole day before they start, using Chameleon to frame Spider-Man as their leader. When he tries fighting them, he finds his powers turning off in battle, and has to escape via subway since he can't fight them.

Worried about what's going on with his powers, Spider-Man goes to see Doctor Connors, who finds that his DNA is changing. Spider-Man thinks about how he got his powers from being bitten by a spider that was neogenically altered, a field of research Connors is involved in now. Connors says that he needs to do more tests but it looks like Spider-Man's powers might be gone for good. While Peter heads home, the Insidious Six are sent out to look for Spider-Man. Scorpion has the idea of going to Peter Parker's house, since he's always taking photos of Spider-Man, and Doctor Octopus goes with him, resulting in him kidnapping Aunt May. He leaves a ransom note for Peter asking for Spider-Man to meet them, and Peter changes into his costume even though he still doesn't have his powers. He heads to the location in the note and is confronted by all six villains.

Subplots:

• Doctor Connors mentions that the Toomes Foundation might be giving a grant to the university for neogenic research soon, and that whoever can come up with the most original experiment can be his assistant if they get the grant. Peter's classmate Michael Morbius is intrigued by this.
• When Peter is late to a date with Felicia Hardy, Michael ends up saving her from a mugger, and she ends up going with him instead.

Places That Spider-Man Will Chase Shocker To:

• None, because his powers disappear. Welp.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Spider-Man losing his powers, Aunt May getting captured, and six of his most insidious villains banding together? You just know that it's a reference to Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1!
• To my surprise, there's a new opening with this episode (which does make sense, since this is the first episode of the second season). From the looks of things, we'll be getting Hydro-Man, the Punisher, and (unsurprisingly) Morbius later in the season.
• The other crime lords Kingpin meets with include Silvermane, Owl, and Hammerhead. No  idea whether they'll end up being used as actual villains, but either way it's pretty neat.
• The prison that the super villains are in has what has to be one of the dumbest guards ever. He looks in on Chameleon's cell and upon seeing the warden in there, immediately opens the door and asks why he's locked up. What could go wrong?
• When everyone's being broken out of their cells, we get the hilarious and bizarre revelation that Shocker sleeps in his costume. I'm guessing it's because we never saw him unmasked last season and so they don't have a design for him, but it can't be that hard to do, can it?
• When the Insidious Six fight Spider-Man, they're all wearing headsets to coordinate their attacks - as in, big bulky things with headphones and microphones. I don't know why, but having such realistic technology in amongst everything else ends up as unintentionally hilarious to me.
• When Spider-Man gets away on the subway, he gets into a carriage in his civilian clothes and thinks, "It's a good thing I kept my clothes in a web sack this time!" Except that throughout the entire fight with the Insidious Six he clearly didn't have a web sack with him. Nice try, writers.

Review: I don't know what I was expecting from this episode, but it definitely wasn't anything as entertaining as this. The problem of facing the Insidious Six without powers might be taken right out of the comics, as mentioned above, but that doesn't mean that it's not entertaining. Giving us some breathing room between the big fight in the middle of the episode and the end is a great idea, and it's not like we're starved for action before then, since we get the great sequence of the Insidious Six breaking out of prison.

What I really love about this episode though, is the continuity job it does. When Spider-Man thinks about the spider that bit him, we find out that it was affected by an experiment run by Professor Stillwell, who we met in The Sting of the Scorpion, and who was mentioned as working with Connors. All of this neogenics stuff is connected, making it feel less like a bunch of scientists independently working on ways to give people powers, as so often happens in the comics, and more like an actual research project. Morbius is also being set up brilliantly here in a nice subplot that doesn't distract from the main plot, and the mentioning of the Toomes Foundation without putting any emphasis on it is a nice bit of setup.

Overall, I think that I'd happily call this the best episode of the series so far. We've got Peter Parker worries, good Spider-Man fights, villain plots that don't feel idiotic, and some great setup for future episodes. I'm keen to see what the next episode brings, as well as how long the Neogenic Nightmare will last.