Ultimate Spider-Man Episode One: Great Power

Great Power

First Aired: April 1st, 2012

Synopsis: Spider-Man is in the city and planning to pick up a cake for Aunt May, but runs into the Trapster. He manages to defeat the Trapster but Nick Fury and SHIELD show up to take the villain in. Nick Fury points out how much collateral damage Spider-Man caused, and asks Spider-Man to come work with SHIELD so that he can learn to be a better superhero. He also mentions that he knows that Spider-Man is Peter Parker. Spider-Man thanks Fury for the offer, but rejects it and heads to school for the day. Unbeknownst to him, Doctor Octopus and Norman Osborn spy on him, as Norman wants to recreate his powers so that he can weaponise it and profit. At school, Peter runs into Mary Jane, Harry Osborn, and Flash Thompson, then has lunch with the former two. The cafeteria is unexpectedly attacked by Wizard, Klaw, and Thundra, who with the still-captured Trapster form the Frightful Four. They've heard from Trapster that Spider-Man attends school here and want him to reveal his secret identity.

Peter manages to start a food fight, which causes enough of a distraction that he's able to change to Spider-Man, finding a bug Trapster put on him in the process. He thinks to himself that Fury might have a point about him needing to learn how to be a better superhero, then fights the villains. During the fight, Harry is injured protecting Mary Jane, and in the end the villains leave when Spider-Man hides, as they don't want to fight the police. Unbeknownst to Spider-Man, they were sent there by Norman Osborn. After school Peter feels guilty since Harry was injured, and when he gets home he realises that he forgot to grab a cake for Aunt May, which would have been to celebrate Uncle Ben's birthday. He feels more guilty, and realises that he should stop making excuses and accept Fury's offer. Heading to the SHIELD helicarrier, he gets through some security and is welcomed by Nick Fury.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Spider-Man's spider-sense in this series is portrayed as the air around his head vibrating. I think that it might be my favourite visual yet.
• During the fight with Trapster, there's a cake shop seen called Romita's Cake Shop, naturally a reference to Jazzy John Romita.
• Stan Lee makes a brief appearance as a cleaner at the school who frees Peter from a locker Flash locks him inside. It's a good role for him - I could absolutely picture Stan suggesting it himself - and if memory serves, he's got a recurring role in the series. He also mentions Irving Forbush, which is a joke for the old-school Marvel fans.
• When Peter's thinking to himself about accepting Fury's offer, he thinks, "Are you okay with just being amazing, or do you want to be ultimate?" It's a cute reference to the comic series with those adjectives, although it does kind of imply that the comic series Ultimate Spider-Man is superior to Amazing Spider-Man.
• When Fury welcomes Spider-Man to the helicarrier, he says "Hope you survive the experience." The same phrase used to show up a bit whenever a new member would join the X-Men.
• J. Jonah Jameson appears on an electronic billboard, and whaddya know, he's voiced by J.K. Simmons. Let's be real, nobody's ever going to top his performance.
  

Review: While I'd ultimately say that this episode does end up being more good than bad, it's a tight line that it walks, with a lot of not great small moments that add up to a good chunk of the episode feeling like it needs some polish. Some of these are forgivable - it makes little sense that Nick Fury would know that Uncle Ben told Peter about the whole great responsibility thing - but they're not too bad in the grand scheme of things. Others don't make a lot of sense. We see that Spider-Man got the Trapster's bug on him when some of Trapster's paste stuck him to a wall - does this mean that Trapster hides these tiny electronic gadgets in his paste, on the off chance that things like this will happen?

Speaking of the Trapster, how did he contact Wizard to tell the Frightful Four about where Spider-Man goes to school? Why does Nick Fury criticise Spider-Man for the collateral damage he causes, then create more by destroying a street lamp, causing it to ricochet unrealistically, to take out a fleeing Trapster, when he could just shoot Trapster? (It's a laser gun; this is less sadistic than it sounds). The fight with the Frightful Four is probably a low point of the episode - the animation is great, and Spider-Man has some excellent moments in it, but the Frightful Four keep picking themselves up offscreen until Spider-Man ends up hiding for...some reason, and then they leave so they don't fight the police.

In spite of that, there's some good stuff here. As mentioned above, the animation is pretty great, and the show does a good job of introducing Peter's supporting cast, as well as justifying his decision to accept Fury's offer. While I do like the other superheroes to be introduced later well enough, I'm almost disappointed that this isn't a more traditional Spider-Man setup, because there's plenty here that works great on its own. If the writing were a bit tighter this would be a pretty good opening episode; as it is it's good, but far from ultimate.