Mutants' Revenge
Synopsis: Hobgoblin attacks the fighting Spider-Man and Wolverine but both of them shrug off the attack. Spider-Man webs his pumpkin bomb to his hand, which drives him off. Herbert Landon sees Wolverine and Spider-Man fighting on camera and launches rockets at them which Spider-Man saves them from, calming down Wolverine. Wolverine agrees to investigate the Brand Corporation with Spider-Man but is still suspicious. Meanwhile, Beast talks to Landon's assistant, who thinks that it's a good thing if mutants don't exist so they don't suffer. She points out that Beast himself tried to cure himself of being a mutant, which he defends as being a mistake. While they chat, Wolverine and Spider-Man make their way through Brand Corporation, fighting security, and Hobgoblin steals all of Landon's research from a computer when he too breaks into the building.
Wolverine manages to make his way to Beast but is hurt by the bars of the cage he's in, leading to Beast having to hold him to stop him from dropping into the vat of serum which can supposedly cure mutants. The cage which Beast is in is then damaged, and Spider-Man has to hold that up. Hobgoblin bursts in and tries blackmailing Landon with his research, but in the scuffle that ensues the disc with the data is lost, and Landon falls into the vat of serum. He mutates into a large green creature and breaks out of the Brand Corporation, ripping apart wires to absorb electricity as he goes. The X-Men see it on the news, and they meet up with Wolverine, Beast, and Spider-Man. The latter two are able to work out that a specific microwave frequency will reverse Landon's transformation, and they work together to hit Landon with it using the Blackbird. In the process the Blackbird starts to fall, but Landon's assistant reveals that she's a mutant and saves it with her telekinetic powers, which also saved Spider-Man from the collapsing ceiling last episode. While Landon's taken to hospital, she decides to accept that she's a mutant. For his part, Spider-Man sees a newspaper mentioning Doctor Mariah Crawford, who he thinks can help him with his mutating problem.
Review: After a solid enough first part, this episode doesn't really manage to amount to much. It's pretty much all-fighting, all the time, with the few breaks we get nothing that special. I like a good fight scene as much as the next person (I am a superhero fan, after all) but these ones are just boring. Spider-Man and Wolverine's is over too quickly and too boring while it's there, and then for most of the episode it's either them fighting generic guards or Spider-Man holding Beast's cage.
The climax doesn't really amount to much, either. Landon transforming into a giant monster could be a cool sequence, but it feels very uninspired. We see all of the X-Men doing something with their powers in what's ostensibly them helping, but it feels more like them showing off their powers so that anyone who's come here to see them won't be disappointed. Spider-Man working out immediately what technobabble will cure Landon is groan-worthy, as is the convenient reveal that the Blackbird has all of the relevant components.
Probably the best thing I can say about this episode is that it manages to use the mutant metaphor fairly well - Beast hated himself in the past, but learned to accept it and regrets his past feelings now. Landon's assistant goes through the same character development herself, and while there admittedly doesn't really seem to be much reason for it, I can't say that it's not welcome. Overall, I wouldn't call this the worst crossover I've seen, but it's far from the best that I've experienced.
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