Ultimate Spider-Man Episode Seven: Exclusive

Exclusive

First Aired: May 6th, 2012

Synopsis: Mary Jane reveals that she's going to be interviewing Spider-Man as part of a competition for the Daily Bugle. When she meets with Spider-Man, he explains that he's doing it so that he can give an unbiased source his point of view. Shortly into the interview, however, the Hulk arrives in Manhattan and starts rampaging around. Mary Jane films as Spider-Man tries fighting him, and Hulk mentions that he hates Spider-Man almost as much as he hates "energy man". Spider-Man realises that Hulk is fighting something or someone invisible, and uses the night vision of Mary Jane's camera to identify the Hulk's foe: an electrical being that Hulk dubs Zzzax. The police, unaware of Zzzax, try to stop the Hulk, and Spider-Man fails to talk them down. He next contacts SHIELD, who say that they're busy but will send people when they can. Spider-Man next tries and fails to lure Hulk and Zzzax out of the city, but when that fails, knocks over a water tower which soaks Zzzax, causing him to flee into the subway tunnels.

Spider-Man and Mary Jane, still filming, head into the subway, but Spider-Man soon tricks Mary Jane into leaving and webs up the entrance so she can't follow, for her own safety. Shortly afterwards Hulk and Spider-Man emerge with Zzzax supposedly defeated, but SHIELD choose that moment to arrive and try to capture the Hulk. Moments later the Helicarrier starts coming down and Mary Jane realises that Zzzax has infected it, before he reappears. Spider-Man explains to the arriving Nick Fury that they can get rid of Zzzax by overloading him, which is what they did in the subway, and they start throwing electrical items at it. They're almost successful, but run out of items - before Mary Jane chooses to sacrifice her camera to help. Zzzax is defeated, and Spider-Man reveals that he saved Mary Jane's memory card. In the aftermath she reveals that she decided not to enter the Daily Bugle's competition as she didn't think J. Jonah Jameson would want to hear an article about how heroic Spider-Man is, but she did post her article on her website. A new camera then gets delivered to her house from the Daily Bugle, as Jonah was impressed by her article.

Sam Alexander is Actually the Worst:

• In the maybe five seconds he appears in this episode, Sam still manages to be a complete dick. Mary Jane's revealed that she's going to be interviewing Spider-Man, and while Peter's fellow superheroes - in their civilian identities - ask how she got that, Sam obnoxiously asks "Yeah, Parker? How did she get it?" To be fair, this is because SHIELD have said that none of the superheroes are allowed to give interviews, because - actually, wait, no, that's not a thing at all; Sam's just an antagonistic dick.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• As mentioned, Sam Alexander appears in this episode! Presumably he's such an arrogant jerk that his willpower was enough to raise him from the grave the rest of the team presumably buried him in when they killed him in-between episodes, and they're not saying anything yet because they don't want him to realise it was they who killed him.
• Zzzax is named when Hulk mangles saying something along the lines of "Hulk hates being zapped!" It's a pretty neat reference.

Review: With the exception of the last few minutes, this episode has a gimmick which is a really cool idea, but doesn't really live up to its potential: the entire thing is shown through Mary Jane's camera as she films it. Like I said, it's a cool idea, but it doesn't really live up to its potential - whenever Spider-Man's trying to work out what to do next, he's thinking out loud, or when contacting SHIELD, talking to Nick Fury loudly enough that Mary Jane can pick it up. There's no mystery to the thing; it's less a (wo)man-on-the-street perspective of a superhero fight and more a usual superhero fight, just framed a bit differently to usual.

It's a real pity, too, because this thing can work (see the excellent Untold Tales of Spider-Man #16, or, for a similar idea by the same author, Marvels). But none of the attributes of the concept are really exploited - Spider-Man's never seen as a distant, unknowable figure; for that matter, neither is the Hulk. We don't really feel that Mary Jane's completely out of place in the middle of the superhero fight, or that the fight looks any different to the civilians compared to how superheroes see it.

Even putting aside the wasted potential, the episode is just kinda meh. The majority of it is just fighting - pretty mediocre fighting, at that - and there's a bit of inconsistency in it. Why is Zzzax invisible at the start of the episode, and why can only Hulk see him? What's with the Helicarrier suddenly falling due to Zzzax's presence, only for that to be immediately forgotten? Why does Spider-Man tell Hulk to punch Zzzax, right before deciding that they should overload Zzzax? The one good point I can say is that it is a good moment when Mary Jane sacrifices her camera, and that it's equally sweet when Spider-Man saves her memory card for her, but, yeah, it's not enough to save the mediocrity that's on display here.