Spider-Man Unlimited Episode One: Worlds Apart, Part One

Worlds Apart, Part One

First Aired: October 2nd, 1999

Synopsis: John Jameson is giving a press conference explaining the discovery of Counter-Earth, located on the opposite side of the sun, and how he'll be travelling there since it's thought its denizens are hostile to Earth. Peter Parker spots some suspicious people near the rocket John will be using, and after changing to Spider-Man, confronts them and discovers that it's Venom and Carnage. He tries fighting them on the outside of the rocket as it takes off, but they manage to knock him off it. Before he falls they say he won't stop them from reaching Counter-Earth and the Synoptic. Since Spider-Man is seen falling from the rocket, it's assumed that he was up to no good, and he soon becomes a pariah. In spite of this he continues to do good, but when he seemingly dies in a burning building, Peter decides to stop being Spider-Man. Shortly afterwards, a transmission from John Jameson arrives, and says that he thinks creatures on Counter-Earth might be going to destroy Earth.

Six months later, Peter is working with a space exploration company, and has created a new Spider-Man costume powered by nanotechnology. He goes to the rocket that's there and although he briefly skirmishes with a random Nick Fury, manages to get aboard. He announces to the world that he's going to Counter-Earth and says that Peter Parker's coming along to record the whole thing, then heads off. Upon arriving at Counter-Earth, he's pulled down by a tractor beam. He's soon chased by four people on rocket horses, who reveal themselves to be the Knights of Wundagore, human-animal hybrids, consisting of Lord Tyger, Lady Ursula, Lady Vermin, and Sir Ram. They think that Spider-Man is a creature called a bestial, and chase him around the city, during which Spider-Man learns that humans live in overpopulated slums while hybrids have a better quality of life. In the end Spider-Man's captured by the Knights and awakens in a laboratory. A hologram of the High Evolutionary appears and declares that his mask must be taken off by any means possible, leading to Sir Ram approaching Spider-Man with a buzzsaw.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• The Marvel wiki identifies this universe as being Earth-751263, a different reality to that of The Animated Series (Earth-92131). I'm fairly sure that Dan Slott established them as being the same universe in Spider-Verse, but there are enough inconsistencies that I'm siding with the wiki on this one.
  
• Captions are shown on scene transitions as in yellow squares, which is a really neat touch to make it look a bit more like a comic book.
• When Spider-Man first goes after Carnage and Venom, the start of the Spider-Man: The Animated Series opening plays before abruptly switching to something different. Was this their way of going, "Move over - you're so old-school!"?
• Venom and Carnage don't appear to have human hosts here; they're shown as being a lot more like blob monsters. Spider-Man comments on it, saying that they couldn't do that before.
• We're still in the era where kids apparently aren't allowed to know that death is a thing; a firefighter who Spider-Man saves comments that "I don't mind saying I thought my hour was at hand."
• Mary Jane is Peter Parker's partner in this world (another strike against this being Earth-92131, though you can easily handwave it by saying he and Madam Web eventually found her), and implicitly knows that Peter's Spider-Man.
• When the news reports that Spider-Man's dead, we get a quick montage of him fighting two of his classic foes; Doctor Octopus and Giant Purple Robot.
• Spider-Man says that he got the nanites for his suit from Reed Richards. Quick, Reed, get out of this universe while you've got the chance!
• Spider-Man's costume has a webbing cape, much like Spider-Man 2099's. Come to think of it, was this series originally a 2099 pitch? The city on Counter-Earth definitely has a bit of a cyberpunk feel to it.

Review: Well, that episode was certainly...something. I appreciate that there's a solid attempt at getting to the premise naturally and to build up to it, but unfortunately it just doesn't pull it off. I can kind of buy civilians thinking that Spider-Man did something to the rocket when he's mysteriously seen returning from it and Jonah riles them up, but when John transmits a week later and seems to be fairly fine? Even after Spider-Man's seemingly dead there are reports going "Oh yeah, he was actually a pretty good guy, wasn't he?" 

 

The reason for all of this, of course, is because Peter needs to not be Spider-Man for six months, but...why? First of all, I don't buy that he could resist responsibility for that long, secondly, why not just have him get stuck on the rocket when it initially leaves to get him to Counter-Earth? Or have him return to Earth and go, "Hey, luckily they have a second rocket here which I can use to go save John"? Doing it the way they have is incredibly awkward, and while I'm at it, what's with him stealing the rocket to go there? None of this feels like a Peter Parker move, and there doesn't seem to be any good story reason to justify it.

Credit where it's due, the stuff with the rocket at the start does end up being a nice little homage to Amazing Spider-Man #1 (at least, I think that's what they were going for), and the art style is quite nice, but beyond that I'm more bored than anything. There's nothing here that's egregiously bad, but there's also not really anything here that's keeping my attention, beyond the presence of Spider-Man. We're off to possibly the roughest start yet, so here's hoping that next episode is stronger, because I really do want this to be a good, or even acceptable, show.