‘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

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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

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