Ultimate Spider-Man Episode Thirty-Three: Spidah-Man!

Spidah-Man!

First Aired: March 24th, 2013

Synopsis: Spider-Man is being harassed by New York civilians since J. Jonah Jameson is offering a reward for anyone who can unmask him. The rest of his team are going to a water park for the weekend, but since Spider-Man's the team leader SHIELD have instead given him books to study. Frustrated by it all, when Spider-Man hears that the city of Boston want him to become their official superhero, he heads over there. He's quickly embraced by the mayor, who admits that they want Spider-Man there since it'll make them money. Spider-Man's given a secret cave hideout and plenty of gadgets and vehicles to support him - all made by teenager Ollie Osnick, a genius and Spider-Man's biggest fan, who also wants to be his sidekick. Spider-Man says that he can't let Ollie be his sidekick given how young he is, and Ollie is deeply offended by it all. Over the next few days Spider-Man easily stops petty crimes, since Boston supposedly has no supervillains, but that fact is soon proven wrong when he's attacked by a trio of villains - Slam Adams, Plymouth Rocker, and Salem's Witch.

Spider-Man fights the trio for a while before being confronted by someone in armour calling himself the Steel Spider, who wants Spider-Man to leave his territory. The Steel Spider soon reveals himself to be Ollie Osnick, who gave gadgets and weapons to the petty criminals that Spider-Man stopped, since they're the only other people in Boston who hate Spider-Man. He points out that although Spider-Man rejected him, his gadgets were still good enough for Spider-Man. Spider-Man realises that Ollie has a point and apologises, getting Ollie on his side, but the villains he manufactured continue to attack, since they want the Daily Bugle's reward for unmasking Spider-Man. Fortunately, their outfits have switches to turn them off, and Spider-Man and Ollie work together to disable them. In the aftermath, Spider-Man says that as the Steel Spider, Ollie should be Boston's superhero, since New York is still his home. When he returns home he discovers that J. Jonah Jameson has dropped the reward for his unmasking, and he thanks his team for being his friends.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• In the comics, Ollie Osnick started out as a fan of Doctor Octopus before switching his admiration to Spider-Man. I'm not gonna lie, while his Steel Spider costume in the comics isn't bad, the armour he uses in this episode is badass.

Review: The biggest problem with this episode is that a lot of its humour, and to a lesser extent its plot, relies on Boston stereotypes, with plenty of jokes about the accent and local foods. The reason I consider this to be a problem is that I'm not from America - I've heard the Boston accent before (even if I probably couldn't identify it as such), but a lot of the other references fly completely over my head. I don't blame the episode for this, per se - it'd be stupid of them to sit down and explain why all these things are funny, given that the majority of the audience will already understand, but relying so heavily on that humour doesn't really do it any favours.

Still, given the fairly inane premise, there's some passable moments in here. Spider-Man realising that he kind of did take Ollie for granted and screw him over is a good moment, as is Ollie immediately standing down rather than being filled with homicidal rage. I did like the gag that among all the gadgets and vehicles Ollie made for Spider-Man, one of them is a pogo stick, which we actually do see him using to stop crime. But minus some of those bits, there's a lot in here not to like - Spider-Man's team getting a weekend at a water park while he has to study is stupid, but not as much as the way he just heads straight to Boston, as though he really is considering dropping everything in his life just for some respect.

Equally weak is the whole situation with Ollie - in the comics there was a much more significant age gap between the two, so any advice Spider-Man could give him comes off as being a lot wiser. Here there's maybe five years between them, tops - which doesn't mean that Spider-Man's wrong when he tells Ollie he can't fight crime, but it comes across as a bit more hypocritical, especially given that Spider-Man himself is ostensibly still learning the ropes courtesy of SHIELD. The episode's got some highlights here and there, but the majority of the time it's more bland than anything.