#silverus be writing shit

[silverusneo]

The Spectacular Spider-Man (2008) (SPOILERS BEWARE)

finally managed to finish this series and god damn is it so good.

the spectacular spider-man is what you get when you have a series written by people who know what makes the source material and its characters tick so damn well.

"Point is, you're changing - into the man you're going to be. And just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you should. With great power, there must also come great responsibility."

peter parker and his high school friends are your average teenagers bumbling through their social lives, making mistakes and relationships throughout the way. the show manages to give a lot of the side characters a good amount of spotlight (and setup for plots that unfortunately didn't happen) with flash thompson's development into a more caring person in spite of his egotistical nature and tendency to bully, mark allan's gambling addiction causing him to get roped into shady ultimatums and grief from his sister liz, and harry osborn's spiral into madness after being neglected by his father, causing him to turn to substance abuse in order to finally be respected by his peers and the consequences that ensue.

peter specifically demonstrates the all-important central theme of spider-man: responsibility. the responsibility of balancing what's important in your life, to stand up for what's right and when others need your help, to own up to your mistakes and give up the things we want most to do what's right. whether losing trust in his friends by snapping pics for the daily bugle as they fight for their lives against the lizard, or failing to live up to his promises to be there for liz allan due to having to fight crime as spider-man, every mistake peter makes has consequences and what proves him to be such a good person is how he owns up to each mistake he makes.

"Sorry, no. My fans expect a certain amount of quippage in every battle."

the action in this show is like, INSANELY good. i'm talking raimi spider-man levels of fun fight scenes here.

the simple yet stylized designs of spectacular mean the animators are more able to pull of complex, fluid and fast action scenes, with spider-man effectively using his quick thinking and both he and his enemies learning from every encounter they have with him.

one of my favorites is in the episode "gangland", where spider-man and tombstone face off in the sewers, hidden from public eye during a valentine's day opera, trading blows in complete silence with nothing but the opera singers in the background. it's brutal, well-animated, and it's fuckin' awesome.

"Truth is, I plan on crashing a lot of parties this year. So if you see my bro, Pete, tell him WE will see him real soon."

eddie brock/venom remains my favorite character from this show for the inventive take on him and the direct counter he plays to peter parker.

under the influence of the symbiote, both he and peter were angry. violent. bitter. eager to let their innermost, darkest feelings out, they pushed aside and lashed out at those who cared about them deeply. but where peter rejected the symbiote after he saw the effect it had on his personality, eddie instead reveled in the power and freedom it gave him to beat the everloving shit out of the one person who had wronged him greatly - peter parker.

like the ultimate comics version of eddie brock, he had been a close friend to peter for as far back as they can both remember, and i think that kind of relationship between the two further makes brock such a good tragic character in this show. his tendency to shift the blame of his failures onto other people causes him to destroy his friendship with peter and give in to the symbiote, and show peter a tragic mirror as to what could have happened had he let the hatred of the symbiote fester within him. when peter reaches out to brock and pleads him to abandon the symbiote, it's not just because he knows what it's like and the consequences he's seen firsthand, but because he cares for brock as a friend.

"Think fast! Think fasteeeer~! Tonight, you're in a PARTICULARLY unfriendly neighborhood, Spider-Man!"

how the green goblin was handled was also nothing short of masterful in both his personality and the reveal of him being norman osborn.

rather than adopt a split-personality approach to the green goblin/norman osborn as both the 90s cartoon and the sam raimi trilogy did, spectacular instead opts to portray gobby closer to his 616 counterpart; a separate persona norman willingly plays up, completely aware and in control.

norman is already done incredibly well in this cartoon, playing two-faced with his adoration of peter as if he were his own son, while secretly developing supervillains for tombstone and his crew, and neglecting his son harry osborn. he's a cold, calculating, snarky asshole who commandeers respect and steals the show any time he's in the room, going so far as to live by a rule to never apologize to anyone, never stopping for a second to think of any of his employees as anything but beneath him.. but there's no way he could be the goblin, right?

..right?

"I protected Harry! If I was sent to prison, who'd have made a man out of him?! Just look at what he's done today.. I've never been prouder of the boy!"

"norman osborn is the green goblin" yeah, we know. everyone knows. but that won't stop the spectacular spider-man from making you play the guessing game anyway.

all different kinds of instances and clues help to throw you off the track of thinking norman could actually be the goblin. the goblin is insane! he's a cackling, goofy son of a bitch compared to norman's calm-yet-cold demeanor, not to mention harry was the one drinking the globulin green! the series veers more into making you, and peter, think harry was behind the mask the whole time..

..which is why it becomes shocking once more to learn norman osborn was the goblin all along.

i think not only do i find it impressive of spectacular to throw the viewer off from what should otherwise be an obvious reveal, but the "one personality" approach to goblin i believe makes norman much scarier as a character. he becomes a much more intimidating character once you realize he can switch between the two personas at the drop of a hat, and in full control.

not to mention his twisted care for harry coming front and center, breaking his leg and gaslighting him into believing he was the goblin so as to throw suspicion off his own self, and supposedly be there for harry to "make a man out of him", which of course means raising harry to be the exact same slimy, ruthless man he is.

talk about a character you love to hate!

i'll always lament how the spectacular spider-man was canceled far too early - really when it was just getting started - out of sheer bad luck. future plans intended for the likes of the jackal, the hobgoblin, sin-eater, and cletus kasady/carnage to join the fray, direct-to-dvd movies detailing peter's college life, and lots more!

at the end of the day though, the fact we still got one of the best pieces of spider-man media out of these two seasons, though short-lived, is something to feel real good about. the spectacular spider-man is a damn good cartoon both on its own and as a spider-man story, and never say never - there might be a chance, however slim, we can see it return.

"Tell me there's something better. Go ahead, try."