‘Ultimate Spider-Man’ (2012), part of Disney XD’s Marvel Universe animation block, continued Sunday, April 15, 2012 with its fourth episode, “Venom.” However, after watching the episode, I feel as though I’m the one who has been poisoned.

The episode begins with Spider-Man (Drake Bell) speeding down subway tracks trying to escape a tentacle-wielding robot. He doesn’t know the origin of the mysterious attacker but he can tell it wants to capture him. After a high-speed chase, “Spidey” manages to outmaneuver the robot and it gets hit by a train, but not before getting a bit of his DNA unbeknownst to him.

The robot reports back to Doctor Otto Octavius (Tom Kenny), also known as Doctor Octopus, who is working for Norman Osborn to isolate the irradiated spider elements in Spider-Man’s blood to make the perfect weapon. However, the substance he isolates from Spider-Man’s blood is sentient and escapes, looking for its original host.

Meanwhile, Peter narrowly escapes being late for homeroom with the help of Harry Osborn (Matt Lanter), his best friend. Harry asks Peter if he wants to go watch a movie with Mary Jane (Tara Strong) later that afternoon, but Peter’s teammates, Nova, White Tiger, Power Man, and Iron Fist, who also attend his high school as students, show up to talk about their next mission.

Since Harry doesn’t know Peter is Spider-Man, he thinks Peter is blowing him off and gets angry. After ditching his team, Peter consults Mary Jane, who suggests taking his friends to Harry’s place for the movie to help them get along; however, Harry is mad and changes the movie night to a full-blown party, inviting the entire school.

After Peter and company arrive at the party, the symbiote finds them and starts attacking people. Peter and his team suit up and find that the symbiote can possess any one of them and use their powers, but it really just wants to reunite with Peter. After a long difficult fight, they manage to electrocute it and it disappears.

Thus far, this is the worst episode of the bunch. First, Spider-Man overdoses on jokes during the first fight sequence with the robot and during the second fight the symbiote jumps from host to host. As usual, the audience is left to assume this is because he’s just a hyperactive teenager, but the fact that he doesn’t seem to care that this violent sentient goo is forcing his friends to fight each other makes him seem like an unthoughtful jerk.

Second, the origin of Venom is changed completely and does not seem to follow the comic book continuity from ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’ or ‘the Amazing Spider-Man’. In ‘the Amazing Spider-Man’, the symbiote is an extraterrestrial being. In ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’, it is a genetically designed suit made by Eddie Brock and Peter Parker’s parents as a cure for cancer that just went wrong.

In the show, the symbiote is a purified version of Spider-Man’s DNA and it just feels like a completely unnecessary change that has nothing to do with Eddie Brock. To add insult to injury, when the symbiote takes over Peter, it calls itself “Venom.” It’s just wrong on so many levels for Venom to not be Eddie Brock. Brock has been a formidable villain in the comic books and cartoons in which he has starred, so to be completely left out of the symbiote’s origin is an unlikable change.

Third, the continued focus on Spider-Man’s teammates rather than Harry and Mary Jane, his best friends, is grating. The show feels less like ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’ and more like ‘Spider-Man and his Irritating Friends.’ None of his teammates have developed past the first stage of their introductions. The only one with an outstanding feature is Sam, aka Nova, who is the obnoxious loud-mouthed hothead of the group as well as the most annoying character on the show thus far.

The team’s continued interruption in Peter’s life drains all enjoyment out of the show, which is odd considering one of the writers for the show is Paul Dini—an excellent ensemble character writer who most recognize for helping build the DCAU (DC Animated Universe).

Overall, this is an extremely weak episode with a distasteful take on the Venom mythos. Hopefully, it is just a bad apple in the cart, but there is no telling what lies on the horizon from our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Keep your fingers crossed.

Grade: 2/5

The article ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’ Episode 4 Review appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Disney XD’s newest animated series, ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’ (2012), continued April 8, 2012 at 11am with its third episode, “Doomed.”

The episode picks up where it left off in episode two, with teenaged Peter Parker (Drake Bell), aka Spider-Man, at his high school dealing with a new problem. Recently, Nick Fury (Chi McBride), director of the military organization with an interest in superheroes known as S.H.I.E.L.D, recruited Spider-Man to work with a team of new superheroes.

These heroes include White Tiger (Caitlyn Taylor Love), Nova (Logan Miller), Iron Fist (Greg Cipes), and Power Man (Ogie Banks), who are all teenagers just like Peter. Furthermore, Fury assigned Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) to be the new principal of Peter’s high school in order to keep an eye on them.

Peter’s new problem is that the hotheaded Nova, Sam Alexander when out of costume, has become friends with Mary Jane Watson, Peter’s best friend. Peter is displeased to see his teammate butting in on his personal life and the two start a nasty rivalry as a result. Nick Fury sends them and their other teammates to the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier for a training exercise, which causes Peter and Sam to compete and fail the challenge due to not listening.

Fury then “grounds them” for not acting together and Nova decides the best way to get back on Fury’s good side is to catch a villain on his Most Wanted list to prove that they can handle a mission. White Tiger suggests an easy villain, but Nova insists that they should get the number one man on the list, Victor Von Doom (Maurice LaMarche), aka Dr. Doom, the nefarious ruler of Latveria. Naturally, White Tiger opposes but the team tricks her into getting on a S.H.I.E.L.D. plane and they head into Latveria.

When they arrive, the team struggles to defeat Doom and his impossibly powerful security system but eventually, they succeed in capturing him. They bring him back to S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters only for Fury to become even angrier because he knows Doom would never allow himself to be captured.

Instead, the Dr. Doom they think they caught is actually compiled of a bunch of androids who immediately start tearing the headquarters apart. After a few more arguments, Spider-Man and Nova work together to come up with a plan to stop Doom’s androids from destroying the headquarters and manage to stop him.

Fury demands to know whose plan it was and just when Spider-Man steps forward to take the blame, the entire team stands up for him and Fury agrees to let them off the hook because they finally learned how to act as one.

The episode is decent, with plenty of funny moments and good action sequences, but it falls short with the characterization of Spider-Man and Nova. For example, it is understandable that Peter doesn’t like having his personal life and superhero life intersect, but he seems to overreact to Nova being friends with Mary Jane.

Matter of fact, the audience is never shown the nature of their interactions so we cannot tell if Peter is jealous or simply irritated with Nova’s presence in general. The excuse is that he is a hot-blooded teenager, but it still doesn’t justify why he reacted so strongly to them getting along.

Furthermore, the team’s lack of opposition to Nova’s borderline suicidal plan suggests that it might be a good thing that most superheroes in the Marvel universe aren’t teenagers.

They were lucky to not have caused an international incident as Latveria is a country and they went and kidnapped its ruler, which very easily could have been seen as an act of war if it had been the real Victor Von Doom. It is one thing to be impulsive teenagers and a completely different thing to be as reckless as they were in this episode.

Overall, the episode stands on shaky ground but is yet another decent installment to the new series. The young heroes definitely have a lot to learn and plenty of time to get better as the first season progresses.

GRADE: 3/5

Image

The article ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’ Episode 3 Review appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Disney XD premiered its new Marvel superhero series ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’ at 11am EST on April Fools’ Day. The cartoon takes its name and origin from the 2000-2009 comic book series written by Brian Michael Bendis, which was a reimagining of the Spider-Man stories with a larger inclusion of the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D in its main storyline. The premiere included the first two episodes of the new series, “Great Power” and “Great Responsibility.”

In “Great Power,” Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D, a military law enforcement agency with an interest in superheroes, approaches Spider-Man after a messy fight with the villain Trapster with an offer to train him to be a better hero.

Fury reveals he knows Spider-Man’s true identity, that of high school student Peter Parker, and that he can offer him better equipment in addition to improving his fighting skills. Being a free spirit, Peter declines the offer and heads to school only for the Frightful Four, a group of supervillains, to crash into the cafeteria demanding to know where Spider-Man is. Peter’s best friend, Harry Osborne, is hurt in the ensuing battle and it makes Peter realize he may need Nick Fury’s help after all.

In “Great Responsibility,” Nick Fury puts Spider-Man through a series of tests to see if he has what it takes to be a trainable ally to S.H.I.E.L.D. Naturally, Peter gets in over his head but manages to come out of the exercise on top. After a brief debacle with a highly sophisticated motorcycle, Peter finds out that he is not the only young superhero recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D.

The new team that he is expected to work with consists of Nova, Iron Fist, Power Man, and White Tiger, who do not approve of Spider-Man’s devil-may-care attitude. Once again, he declines the offer to work with them but then the Frightful Four return. The team intervenes and after some friction, they defeat the villains and Peter reluctantly agrees to work with them in the future.

The series is well animated and takes full advantage of Spider-Man’s smart mouth and excellent sense of humor. The action sequences are evenly paced and creative, much like the comic book it draws its inspiration from. This is no surprise as the show’s production is overseen by Stan Lee, the creator of Spider-Man and several other Marvel heroes, Jeph Loeb, a well-known comic book writer, and Brian Michael Bendis, another well known writer for Spider-Man and other Marvel comics.

The voice acting is excellent. Marvel wins extra brownie points for inviting J.K. Simmons to return as J. Jonah Jameson, whom he played in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films, and Clark Gregg, who plays Agent Coulson in the Marvel films.

There are also other voices whom seasoned cartoon watchers will recognize like Clancy Brown, Tara Strong, Kevin Michael Richardson, Greg Cipes, Tom Kenny, and there is even a minor character voiced by Stan Lee. The titular Spider-Man is voiced by Drake Bell and he does a good job of bringing energy and sarcasm to the legendary Web-Slinger.

While the show has many likable qualities, there are some drawbacks. Its tone and writing are definitely geared towards younger viewers, preferably the 8-13 year old crowd rather than the older teenagers. The jokes Spider-Man cracks are often hit-or-miss and he can come across as a bit spastic at times due to the high volume of visual gags and one-liners in his monologue.

The biggest detractor is when he stops and directly addresses the camera. The problem is not that Spidey is breaking the fourth wall in general, but rather that he is blatantly speaking to the viewer. It is very distracting for him to stop in the middle of a scene and explain something to his audience and while this often works in comic books, like with Marvel’s infamous Merc-with-the-Mouth Deadpool, for a television show, it can be grating.

The easiest comparison to be made about Spidey’s narration and lack of fourth wall is to Bill Lawrence’s ‘Scrubs’ (2001) because Spidey’s short attention span leads him to “Imagine Spots”—moments where his imagination creates short humorous sequences that are mostly jokes or emotional reactions to things. While funny, they really do slow down the general narrative of the episodes.

Overall, it is too early to tell if the show will be a big hit or not, especially since fans like me still regret the cancellation of its spiritual predecessor ‘Spectacular Spider-Man,’ (2008) but there is definitely life in this web-slinger and we look forward to seeing where the show takes him.

The article ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’ Premieres on Disney XD appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.