天下制覇

 Spidey vs Venom

This season ended way before anybody expected. 

The second season of the outstanding Spectacular Spiderman started in Canada this year. However, only a handful of episodes were aired with the rest coming later. Then, shortly thereafter, Bulgaria (Bulgaria!?) started airing the series and quickly overtook Canada. Then our adventure gets weird. Two weeks ago, Australia started airing the series, one episode a week night, and the series polished off the remaining 4 episodes or so to wrap up this morning… this night… whatever. I really kind of wished that I had covered it, but I was spooked by the assumption that there’d be multiple months to wait after the Canadian teaser episodes finished… to say nothing of the surprise 4 extra episodes this last week. 

While I do have to admit that I don’t think this season was quite as good as the first, it was still easily maintained its crown as the best animated action show I’ve seen in years. Most of that falls on the head of some really poor direction choices that just became exasperated in the second half of the season. They seemed completely enamored of cutting away from the action and the central plot of the episode to quote some semi-random lines (mostly from A Midsummer Night’s Dream) or show a sequence of interviews that somehow commented on what was going on elsewhere. It was alright the first time, as it was leading into the cliffhanger of Brock reacquiring the symbiote, but most of the rest were so heavy handed and out of place that they just felt awful.

Spidey vs Silver Sable vs Hammerhead vs Rhino

One thing that I thought this season absolutely excelled at was fleshing out and developing the tertiary characters. George Stacy in particular was absolutely sublime. The buddy cop thing for masked vigilantes is nothing new, but Stacy has an interesting new twist in that he figured out Spiderman’s identity and frequently (and sarcastically) lectured both Peter and Spiderman while at the same time acting as his advocate against JJ and others.

Liz Allan also took a strangely central role this season, basically becoming the season’s Aunt May, only hotter and lets Peter be a little less of a momma’s boy. She put up with absolutely every bit of crap Peter Parker threw her way, every time he abandoned her, and did it because she cared about him and understood that his job was that important to him. It broke my heart heart when he dumped her in the last episode because of his lingering crush on Gwen, doubly so when Gwen didn’t break up with Harry after she promised Peter she would.

Spidey vs The New Enforcers

The Green Goblin arc was also stellar. Norman Osborn is the Green Goblin. That is a bell that cannot be unrung, and they strung us along in this season just as well as the first, with the added drama that we knew the Goblin was Harry. However, Norman turned out to be just the mastermind that we all knew he was, and even 5 minutes from the end of the very last episode, there was still the niggling little voice in the back of my mind asking what the game was here… how were things being set up. Some of the retcon/flashbacks did make me roll my eyes a little bit, but knowing that these guys had three seasons already penciled out, they had this entire scheme planned from the start and they did it nearly flawlessly.

Spidey vs Silvermane vs Tombstone vs Doc Ock

There were a few developments that I wasn’t really happy with. I thought the opening Master Planner/Sinister Six arc was very weak. This Sinister Six battle was more like the Sinister 2 times 3, all of which were defeated with 7th grade physics. Master Planner/Doc Ock also had easily the most comic booky and inane scheme this show has seen… to control all the world’s modems with his mind. Still, you’ve got to admit that he has wicked taste in dinnerware, and Peter MacNicol did a fantastic job bringing out the frothing mad insanity in his vocal work.

The show was also clearly chafing against the usual "children’s" show censorship quite a bit, which got more than ridiculous at times. Guns that shoot magical lasers… fine. Bazookas that shoot spiked balls… that’s a stretch. Silver Sable’s shotgun that shoots staples? Ugh.

Spidey vs The Green Goblin

I’m also not sure that I really like one of the big developments they had in the later going. Black Cat’s easily one of my favorite Spidey characters, for more reasons than her… cattiness. Her becoming one of his enemies is par for the course, but instead of being a spurned lover, in this version, she turns on him over her father being the person who killed Uncle Ben. That’s… quite a change in a number of dynamics and I’m interested to see where they were planning on going with it if they ever do get to make that third season.

As fans already know, the third season hasn’t been commissioned yet, but the second doesn’t even begin broadcasting in the US for another week or so. The second and third DVDs for the first season just came out today in the US as well. They had all sorts of future villain cameos through this season, including Carnage, Scorpion, and the Jackal. Even the thought of a Maximum Carnage storyline done by this crew makes me all tingly inside. Let’s hope that the show debuts in the US with a bang so we can get more of what was seriously a fantastic action show from start to finish and one of the things that makes me such a huge fan of the animated medium in the first place.