Marvel's Spider-Man Episode Twenty-Six: How I Thwipped My Summer Vacation

How I Thwipped My Summer Vacation

First Aired: June 18th, 2018

Synopsis: Peter and Miles are at the beach, where Peter's made list of how to have the perfect summer holiday. When Peter goes to get hot dogs for him and Miles he finds that Black Cat has stolen some money from its van; he stops her as Spider-Man but on returning finds that Miles got hungry while waiting and entered a hot dog-eating competition. The next item on his list is to go to a baseball game, which he does with Aunt May. The team that's being played against, who normally always lose, start winning, and Peter finds out that it's due to a villain called the Tinkerer, sick of them always losing. When he's finished stopping him as Spider-Man Aunt May tells him that he might be causing bad luck. The next item on Peter's list is going to a concert with Gwen and Anya, but the singer, Ross Caliban, is captured by some of Hammerhead's thugs for his son's birthday.

Peter stops Hammerhead's thugs as Spider-Man but is attacked by Hammerhead's son. Caliban gets him to calm down by taking a selfie with him, but as he returns to the concert Peter realises that he lost his ticket. The next item is to go camping, which Peter does with Miles, Gwen, and Anya, but while Peter packs up their gear their food is stolen by an owl monster. Peter easily stops the monster, Nocturnal, as Spider-Man, and discovers that Nocturnal was mutated in a lab accident like him. He lets Nocturnal go with the food as his parents kicked him out, but is disappointed that Nocturnal didn't trust him and his friends more. As Peter looks over his list later he gets a call from Max Modell, who's replacing Peter as his lab assistant since the job is only available to first-year students. Peter goes to different job interviews but his work as Spider-Man gets in the way, until he runs into Randy Robertson. Randy sets him up for an interview at the Daily Bugle, where his father works, and upon hearing from J. Jonah Jameson that nobody's gotten any good pictures of Spider-Man, Peter feels confident he can get them.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Just like the Origin Shorts, this episode was uploaded as individual shorts to YouTube. I ultimately decided to count it as an episode of the series and review it as one since the series has started by now, as opposed to the first series of shorts.
• Back in A Day in the Life I expressed some confusion over how Black Cat's powers work. This episode clarifies things somewhat - between Spider-Man groaning, "Why did I make eye contact?!" and him tricking Black Cat into looking into her own reflection while her eyes flash, it looks like her bad luck powers do exist, and you have to look into her eyes while they flash to be affected by them. It all makes sense, although it still doesn't explain how he defeated her in the former episode.
• When Peter meets J. Jonah Jameson, Jonah mistakenly says, "Listen, Peter Palmer!", a reference to an infamous goof in the first issue of Amazing Spider-Man.
• Also in the Daily Bugle is Eddie Brock, who provides Jonah with some shoddy footage of Spider-Man. Whether the show does anything with him or whether he's just a cameo, we'll have to watch to find out.

Review: While this episode, as it is, does have the issue I speculated the Origin Shorts would - the plot keeps stopping and starting, since it's a bunch of short stories with a loose theme rather than one overarching plot - it nevertheless manages to be quite fun. Peter coming up with a list of what he wants to do is silly and overthought, something the episode itself points out, but it's also quite in-character for this version of him. It gives a good structure for the episode and allows for a bit of variety in the locations and stories.

Probably the best story is the camping trip one - Nocturnal is immediately sympathetic and tragic, and I hope that he shows up again in the future. He's a good reflection of Spider-Man, and the episode also has Peter realise that in spite of his summer plans not going perfectly, he's got it pretty good which is a trope I always like for reasons I can't quite explain. The baseball game story would be my next favourite - I'm glad that we get the Tinkerer introduced to the series, and that revelation that he's sabotaging a baseball game because he's sick of his team always losing feels realistic yet funny. Peter being blamed by Aunt May for being bad luck is also a good punchline.

While they're overall fairly harmless and cute little short stories, I think that these all manage to achieve their goal. If I'd seen them as videos on YouTube I don't think I'd be overly lost, and they manage to both promote the series and advance it a little, setting up Peter to be doing his traditional photography job for the Daily Bugle. I doubt that this episode will make it into my best-of list when I'm done with this series, but that doesn't mean that it isn't good.