Ultimate Spider-Man Episode Thirty-Six: The Man-Wolf

The Man-Wolf

First Aired: April 14th, 2013

Synopsis: Spider-Man and his team are training against robots on the new helicarrier when alarms sound throughout it. As it turns out, J. Jonah Jameson's son, John, has sent out a distress signal, and the team are sent to rescue him. John is on the moon, currently working on building a communication for the Daily Bugle, but stopped upon finding archaeology there. The team head to the moon in a shuttle, and are soon exploring the caverns of the moon, where they find slash marks around. Spider-Man, Nova, and Iron Fist find John, who can't remember exactly what went on, except that people were worrying about a wolf. John takes the three heroes to some gems that they found, but upon approaching them a gem he's apparently wearing starts glowing and turns him into Man-Wolf. As he fights them Spider-Man asks White Tiger and Luke for backup, who say that they'll be there once they've finished putting some civilians they found in their shuttle.

Man-Wolf takes out Nova and Iron Fist, and runs off into the caves. Spider-Man confronts him and finds Man-Wolf hesitating to attack him, before the latter runs off. Returning to Nova and Iron Fist, they find that the gems project holographic recordings of aliens transforming into Man-Wolf. White Tiger and Luke show up, but as they all fight a returning Man-Wolf a blast of Nova's causes the cavern to start collapsing. They rush back to their shuttle, but Man-Wolf follows them and damages it, grounding it for the moment. While Nova and Luke fix it, Spider-Man, White Tiger, and Iron Fist confront Man-Wolf. Spider-Man works out that they need to damage the gem, and once they do so John starts transforming back to being human. Spider-Man falls unconscious as a result of his spacesuit getting damaged, and wakes up in the helicarrier. While they were able to save everyone, John has some wolfish features, and is being held in containment, something J. Jonah Jameson is furious at Spider-Man for.

Sam Alexander is Actually the Worst:

• When the team are fighting robots at the start of the episode - which use some form of holographic technology to appear to be various heroes and villains - they're attacked by a bogus Nick Fury. Shortly after defeating him Coulson appears and praises the team...and naturally, Nova attacks him, being too stupid to realise that this isn't a robot.
• Spider-Man puts a call through to White Tiger and Luke, telling them that they need backup. Arrogant as always, Nova exclaims that "YOU need backup! I can take this thing!" (Spoiler alert: he can't).

Miscellaneous Notes:

• From the way the previous episode ended, I was a little confused as to whether Spider-Man's team were moving out or not - him inviting them back for a party could have been an implicit invitation to stay if they wanted to. At the start of this episode it's established that, yep, they're back to living on the helicarrier. The plot of them staying with him really didn't go anywhere or have any purpose.
• When Spider-Man meets John, the latter explains that he doesn't get on well with his father, and part of the reason he's in space is to keep some distance between them. This is a pretty big contrast to most (all?) other versions of John, who usually have some differences with Jonah but otherwise are fairly close.
  
• Incidentally, when the above is mentioned Spider-Man quips that John is on the moon "to get some space between you?", which causes John to laugh and say that "That was pretty funny!" It really wasn't, but good on John for not wanting to hurt Spider-Man's feelings.
• Shortly after that, when Spider-Man and John remark on how the other isn't what they expected, Iron Fist comments that "Preconceived notions often lead to unexpected realities." In response, John is bewildered for a moment before saying, "I so did not get that." Why, though? Iron Fist's sentence wasn't complex at all (especially for someone who's supposedly an astronaut!)

Review: I guess if you want the bread-and-butter of Ultimate Spider-Man's mediocre fight scenes, then this one might be for you? A lot of this episode consists of fighting, which is thankfully broken up a bit so it doesn't really get too tedious. Spider-Man realising that destroying the gem which transformed John is the solution to their problem isn't amazing, but I appreciate it over a simple punch conveniently ending the fight when a multitude of others haven't been able to. John still having remnants of his transformation is also a nice consequence of the episode.

Still, there's plenty here which irks me. Why are SHIELD the ones responding to a distress signal from John, someone who they have no connection to? The implication is that they're doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, for Jonah's sake, but it's a very lazy explanation. I'm also not sure why the team are being sent (what happened to the Avengers?), and why they have to leave right this second - I guess if any of them had any plans, too bad. John building a communications tower on the moon (apparently only needing two other people to assist with it - unless he killed all the others while he was Man-Wolf) also raises a lot of questions about the Daily Bugle's scope and budget - they're feeling less like a newspaper at this point and more like a giant media empire, akin to Newscorp or Amazon.

There's no explanation given for how John was able to transform back after his initial Man-Wolf transformation, and I'm not really sure what the point of the gems showing aliens also transforming into Man-Wolf was, as it adds nothing to the episode. I guess if you ignore all these contrivances and questions you could get something out of this episode, but there's just a few too many issues for me to shut off my brain and enjoy this one. It's far from being the worst episode of Ultimate Spider-Man, but at the same time it's hard to call it good.