The Spot
First Aired: October 26th, 1996
Synopsis: Tony Stark shuts down scientist Johnathan Ohnn's interdimension research, and the latter ends up getting a job with Kingpin, working alongside scientist Doctor Silvia Lopez. After a development period, they end up testing it, and create a giant portal which Ohnn gets sucked into. Portals appear all around Manhattan, including one at the theme park where Peter's on a date with Mary Jane. Peter changes to Spider-Man to save a roller coaster from being sucked in, but then gets teleported to Manhattan by one of the portals, making it look like he abandoned Mary Jane. Ohnn, meanwhile, returns to his lab and finds that he can control portals. He closes them all across the city, but unknowingly misses one. He decides to stop working for Kingpin and do research on his own, but needs capital first. Spider-Man runs into him robbing a bank as The Spot, but is unable to stop him and ends up getting thrown to the Statue of Liberty.
Spider-Man knows from talking to Doctor Connors that Spot's portals absorb radio waves, so he uses the lack of them to track down Spot just as he's robbing a jewellery store, where Jason Philips is buying a ring for Felicia Hardy and asking her to marry him. Spot gets away, but Felicia's still hung up on Spider-Man. When Spot returns to his lab, he finds that Lopez has told Kingpin about his powers since he controls her completely, and Kingpin forces Spot to work for him. Spot is made to fight Spider-Man, but this time Spider-Man's victorious. Sensing that Spot's not that villainous, Spider-Man talks to him and finds out about Lopez being held hostage. The two of them go to Kingpin's headquarters to confront him, but they soon find out that the portal Spot forgot to close is growing larger and will absorb all of Manhattan soon. Kingpin lends them a plane to get closer to it, and after Spot's powers are amplified by his equipment, he's able to close it - but has to go through it to do so. Lopez goes with him, declaring that she loves him. In the aftermath, Mary Jane goes to see Peter and forgives him for seemingly ditching her at the theme park.
Subplots:
- Harry Osborn briefly confronts Peter, and makes it clear that he's not happy about Peter stealing Mary Jane from him.
- Hobgoblin makes a call to a spy he has in Kingpin's organisation, who will get him Ohnn's dimensional technology
Miscellaneous Notes:
- "It's perfectly safe," says Johathan Ohnn as he opens a gigantic portal in front of himself. "I'd stake my reputation on it AAAARRGGGHHH!"
Review: Spot's one of those villains with a lot of untapped potential that few writers outside of Mark Waid or Fred van Lente capitalise on, and this episode goes to show why. He's able to defeat Spider-Man not only easily in this episode, but in creative ways each time. If he'd been created in the Ditko era he'd probably considered a classic and fun villain, yet instead he's constantly forgotten about and misused. Putting aside how cool his powers are, this episode also manages to make him memorable by giving him a solid personality - he doesn't like fighting, he only plans to use his powers when he's forced to or to get out from under Kingpin's thumb, and he's not a fan of Kingpin or Tony Stark making money with his research. What a guy.
Outside of all that, there's good Peter Parker drama with Mary Jane and Harry Osborn, and I'm keen to see where it goes. Mary Jane forgives Peter for running off by saying it's his job - is this a hint that she knows he's Spider-Man? I don't see Harry Osborn becoming the Green Goblin any time soon, but I could definitely see him taking on a more antagonistic role, maybe working alongside Norman? And of course, there's Felicia still having a crush on Spider-Man, which I thought would have been dropped by now, so there might be something in the works there.
The biggest flaw of the episode would have to be the portal at the end - it comes across as almost a deus ex machina so that Spider-Man can't continue fighting Kingpin, and as a way to write Spot out of the series since...actually, come to think of it, why did he have to be written out? Why couldn't he have just gotten some money through legitimate means, and then started his own research centre as he wanted? There's some stuff about how he made a sacrifice, and that means that maybe Peter should make a sacrifice and give up being Spider-Man, but it's not a great connection. All that being said, it's not what I'd call a dealbreaker, and so overall this ended up being a pretty fun one overall.
No comments:
Post a Comment