Spider-Man (1981)
First episode title: Bubble, Bubble, Oil and Trouble
How familiar with the show am I?: I've watched plenty of Spider-Man things, including the 1994 cartoon, but not this particular show.
Well if this isn't the cheesiest version of Spider-Man I've ever seen. (Then again, I've never watched the 60s cartoon version.) Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it - "cheesy" is far from an insult, coming from me! Anyway, I probably don't need to tell you that Spider-Man is a superhero character with the powers of a spider, including wall-crawling, the relative strength of a spider, and the (self-made) ability to shoot webbing, which he uses to swing around New York City and fight crime. And that he's also Peter Parker, a university student and newspaper photographer who's suspiciously good at getting pictures of Spider-Man. But some of you might have been missing at least one of those pieces of information, who knows.
For a Spider-Man show, the opening sequence has a weird amount of focus on Doctor Doom, traditionally the Fantastic Four's nemesis, although the Green Goblin also pops up a couple of times. Neither of them is in this episode, anyway.
We open the episode on Spider-Man swinging around the city at night using his web, talking to himself about how great swinging around the city at night using his web is.
Spider-Man: Boy, this is the life! No stoplights, no traffic jams, no trouble!
Then there's the sound of something smashing off-screen. Spider-Man says that it sounded like someone breaking into the museum, which I assume he's just meant to have inferred based on the direction it came from, but I love the idea that "someone breaking into the museum" is a distinctive sound that Peter knows how to recognise.
He sets up a camera at the window of the museum, pointing into the building. The episode makes sure several times to show him doing this, to remind you how Peter gets his pictures for the Daily Bugle. I seem to remember the 90s version putting a bit of focus on this early on, and then gradually phasing out showing it once it became less relevant.
Cut to a room inside the museum, full of a quite random assortment of artefacts out in the open, and also some jewels in a glass case surrounded by lasers. Wow, why does nothing else in the museum get that treatment?
A clock on the wall then suddenly slides out of the way to reveal a hole, which a metal tentacle slides out through. So the villain (you know who it is but let's wait for the reveal) either knows how to take advantage of an existing secret mechanism in the museum, or has somehow rigged this system up himself without just taking the item he wanted to steal there and then! Also, with this method of entering, it's not clear where the smashing sound just now came from.
The tentacle humorously "looks around" as if to make sure no-one is there, and then slithers across the room. It reaches a door, which it easily rips off its hinges. That part's not weird, but the door's presence is - the glass case with the jewels was in the same room as the clock in the establishing shot!
The tentacle reaches the case, goes between the lasers, drills a small hole in the case, and grabs a single gemstone. Then it retracts all the way back across the room and through the hole, the clock sliding back into place. And we cut outside, to the roof of the museum, to reveal the tentacle returning to... Doctor Octopus!
Doctor Octopus brags that only he would be able to steal this ruby, and Spider-Man tells him that only he is going to stop him. So Doc Ock just picks Spidey up with one tentacle and throws him off the building, and if defeating Spider-Man was that easy then it would be hilarious, but he makes a kind of trampoline with his web and pops right back up again.
Spider-Man: Heeeeeeere's Spidey!
Spider-Man ties up Doc Ock with a web, but he easily breaks free of it without even using his tentacles! Spider-Man needs to make some stronger webs! Then the villain lifts one panel from a water tower, letting the water out and washing Spider-Man away like the Incy Wincy Spider. He lands in a bin lorry, and Doctor Octopus gets away, declaring that he'll continue his "master plan to take over the world". Sure, Doc.
Spidey pops back up to the window to collect his camera, and wonders why Doc Ock only stole that one ruby and left behind all the other jewels in the case. Well, I suppose it's because there was only a hole big enough for one tentacle to get through!
Then Spider-Man gets back to his house, enters his room through the window, sees a typewriter on his desk, and realises he's forgotten to do his homework. He takes off his mask and starts typing something, but...
Spider-Man: No use - Doc Ock wore me out. Can't even keep my eyes open...
Peter falls asleep at his desk in the suit, and sleeps through the night. In the morning, his Aunt May knocks on the door, telling him it's time to get up, and he hurriedly puts on a dressing gown to hide his outfit, as she comes in the room (rude!) to make sure he's not going to be late for school. After a completely unsuspicious question from Peter about whether there was anything on the news (on the radio, how quaint) about Doctor Octopus, May compliments Peter's "adorable red socks", luckily not realising what they actually are!
Peter decides the only way for him to get to the library in time to finish his homework is to swing across the city as Spider-Man, so he leaves out the window, and we cut to a big building with a sign reading "Empire State University". There is a real university in New York called that, but the comics had been using the name for a decade before the real one was founded.
Outside the university grounds, Doctor Octopus, in full supervillain gear, is holding a newspaper in front of his face with two of his tentacles. You know, to make him look inconspicuous. Even as he's muttering about stealing the next object he needs for his master plan. What an interesting fellow.
He lifts up a manhole cover with one tentacle and then extends another down into the hole. Then we cut to the school's geology lab, where the tentacle pops up out of the sink. Like at the museum, it has a little "look around" before doing anything.
The tentacle crawls across the room and reaches a safe, which it turns the dial of - apparently, Doc Ock already knows the combination! Meanwhile, on the roof of the library, with only two hours left to finish his homework, Spider-Man's Spider-Sense goes off. This is his ability to detect danger whenever it's near, if that needs explaining. So, he swings off again.
Doc Ock's tentacle takes a rock from amongst a bunch of other rocks in the safe, just as Spider-Man swings in through the window. Still not having seen the tentacle, the two geologists present are initially suspicious - well, the one of them who speaks is anyway, as she threatens to call security on Spider-Man.
Spider-Man: Forget security! This looks like a case for Roto-Rooter!
Now that she's seen the tentacle, the geologist changes her tone towards Spider-Man completely, telling him it's trying to take their "priceless moon rock". He ties the tentacle in a knot, but is taken by surprise by two more tentacles coming in through the window and grabbing him! And when he shouts "Let go", they throw him into a pile of rocks! Like, samples, I assume. We're still in the lab.
Spider-Man launches webs at the two tentacles and pulls, obviously hoping to reel in Doc Ock, but it turns out these two tentacles are just attached to a small machine, controlled remotely. Wow, he should get more of those!
In the chaos, the other tentacle has gotten away - I suppose it untangled itself. The geologist is relieved that it didn't take the moon rock and only left with some quartz "by mistake", but Spider-Man reckons Doc Ock doesn't make mistakes and that the quartz was important somehow. I'm not a geologist, but I think it's relatively easy to get a chunk of quartz without having to steal it, especially if you have metal arms that can effectively get in anywhere!
Next, Peter is... back home, working on his homework? Um, Peter, what happened to the university and the library? What happened to "two hours" left to do your homework? How did you end up back here? Peter? Can you hear me?
Then, Aunt May answers a phone call from Peter's boss at the Daily Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson:
He's the same irritable old guy we know and love from many other versions of the franchise. He wants to speak to Peter about a robbery at the diamond exchange he needs him to cover, but she tells him he's studying. I don't think it's Aunt May's choice whether Peter covers the story or not, actually!
She hangs up, but Peter asks what the call was about, and once he hears, he decides Spider-Man needs to investigate, in case it's Doc Ock again. He changes into the Spider-Man suit, and we get a full detailed look at the process - one part I find interesting is that the red gloves and socks are separate from the outfit itself, and he has to pull on the socks over the blue layer, which already extends down to cover his feet.
He arrives outside the diamond exchange, and overhears a worker telling the police that a strange tentacle took the diamond and then went through the air vent. Spider-Man comments to himself that it isn't really like Doc Ock to go around stealing jewellery, and wants to know what he's really after. What are any of us really after...?
The camera heads down a sewer, and into what is evidently Doctor Octopus's secret lab:
He's doing something electrical with a rod and the ruby, and saying that his tentacles are now ten times stronger than they were before. This was evidently the purpose of all the jewels - just an elaborate way of strengthening himself! And now he says he's ready for his most daring plan!
Back above ground, Spider-Man says he's going to "home in on Doc Ock", and goes down into a manhole as the crowd react to his sudden appearance with shock. It's really unclear how he's managing to home in on him - what evidence does he have of where Doctor Octopus's base would be? Crawling along a pipe in the sewer, Spidey comments "No wonder no-one's ever found his hideout! He can have it!" Yes but how did you find it? Peter?
He reaches a door that sets off his Spider-Sense, so he sets up his camera to point into the place before he opens the door. He can't see where Doc Ock is initially, though, allowing the villain to take him by surprise and grab him with his tentacles yet again. Doc Ock calls Spider-Man "web-swinger" here, which isn't quite the "web-slinger" term he's usually known as.
The tentacles seem to have all sorts of new weapons now, like a saw and a laser, which Spidey keeps just about avoiding. Yes, he used the gems to create each of these weapons, so I'm not sure how Doctor Octopus can quantify it as "ten times stronger". Maybe he did both, added weapons and increased the physical strength.
Spider-Man tries to tangle his enemy in web as usual, but the web shooter is clogged with water. Wait, why? The water tower was ages ago, he's been swinging since then. And he wasn't in the water when he went through the sewer. But fine, it's clogged, okay. And then Doc Ock brags that his tentacles are waterproof, to rub it in.
Then he uses a "sonic quartz vibrator" on one of his tentacles to "paralyse" Spider-Man. OK, so that indicates a clear correlation between the weapons and the gems now (ruby for the laser, diamond for the saw). Being paralysed equates to Spidey saying that he can hardly move, while continuing to visibly struggle against the tentacles!
Doctor Octopus: How lucky you are! You'll be the first to see how my new tentacles work, like this diamond saw!
Ah, so he saws Spider-Man up and the show ends there, right? No, he's not allowed to be that straightforward in a cartoon. Instead he uses the saw to cut one end of two of the rungs of a ladder on the same wall Spider-Man is up against, and then bends them (with another tentacle) to put them around Spider-Man's body and trap him against the wall. And here he refers to Spider-Man as "web-spinner" - he's drifting away!
He gets in a purple vehicle with holes in it for his tentacles to come out through, then laser-blasts a water pipe near the ceiling, making the room start to flood. Isn't this his own base he's destroying?! He leaves through the water in his vehicle, which is evidently some kind of futuristic submarine.
Spider-Man: If I don't break loose, it's the end of Spider-Man! And even worse, I won't get my homework done!
Doctor Octopus's submarine emerges from a sewer pipe and into the East River, right by the Brooklyn Bridge. Thank you, animators, for the very recognisable landmark making it easy to work out where we are. He raises his periscope and selects an oil supertanker as his "first helpless target". But then he calls this the "final phase of my master plan". Sure, whatever.
He uses the laser tentacle to remove the ship's propeller, then the sonic vibrator to paralyse the crew. Once again, they're moving around a lot for people that are supposedly paralysed. Then the drill tentacle makes a hole in the boat, which oil starts coming out of - he uses another couple of tentacles to pump it out of that hole and into a bunch of tanks he has at the bottom of the river. This, according to his ongoing narration, amounts to him controlling the world's oil, and therefore controlling the world. This was his plan to take over the world? Damn, this is not a particularly intelligent version of Doc Ock, is it?
Back in the lab, the water has almost reached Spider-Man's chin, but he spots a bottle labelled "acid" floating along in the water. Not only is this pretty lucky, but his web-shooter also decides to start working again just at that moment, so he's able to grab the acid! Not only that, but it's somehow possible to accurately pour the acid underwater, and only burn through the metal and not Spider-Man! Before this whole situation's logic can fall down like a house of cards, Spidey gets out of the lab, and even manages to grab his camera back on the way!
At the Daily Bugle headquarters, the latest developing news story is that "all of New York's oil" is being stolen. Apparently Doc Ock has hit up some more boats since we last saw him.
Jameson's obnoxious nephew Mortimer, who only seems to exist in this continuity, offers to go instead, and Jameson, who acts a lot less cranky towards him, lets him use the newspaper's helicopter to get the pictures. Then he tells "Miss Brant" - she's only seen from the back here and doesn't speak, but this would be Betty Brant from the comics - to try and get hold of Peter again.
Spider-Man, now swinging around the city again, humorously alights on a billboard advertising bug spray, so that it looks like he's the one being sprayed. He obtains a Daily Bugle from a seller on the street using a web, and then throws a coin down into the man's jar. When Spider-Man finds out that tankers are being drained of all their oil, he apparently "should've guessed" that was what Doc Ock was doing - from those jewellery thefts? Really?
Then his beeper (or pager) goes off, and he's somehow able to have a full real-time voice conversation with Aunt May on it, as if it was a mobile phone. Mobile phones didn't exist yet - I suspect the writers just didn't know how pagers worked. She wants to know where he is, and he makes some excuses about doing research for his homework. When the call is done, Spider-Man exclaims, "Why didn't I think of this before?" Apparently the thing that should have been so obvious is that he can rewire his beeper to the frequency of the sonic quartz vibrator in order to home in on Doc Ock.
But... but homing in on him was so easy before, when he didn't have any clues! And now that he knows boats are being targeted, he's going to need a technological solution to realise that the bad guy is probably in the water?!
Anyway, now we're up in the helicopter with Mortimer and a nameless pilot, Mortimer talking to himself about how much he wants to beat Peter. He spots Spider-Man swinging over the water below and orders the pilot to follow him. You can see the logic that, if Spider-Man is hanging around, whatever weirdness is going on in the city this time is also likely to be nearby!
Doc Ock is pumping oil out of another tanker as Spider-Man happens to set up his camera on the side of that same boat. He goes underwater and sees the set-up we've seen before, with the tentacles specifically for pumping - he puts a web around one of them, and we see Doc Ock saying that the oil has stopped and something must have jammed it! What happened to those ten times stronger tentacles, Doc? He looks through his periscope to see what the problem is, and Spider-Man's face pops down, upside-down!
Doctor Octopus drives the sub up to the surface of the water, Spidey still riding on top. He tries to open up the front window, but Doc Ock says he won't be able to get through the "atomic glass" he created. Just imagine... glass with atoms... Then the tentacles start attacking, missing him with laser blasts at close range because otherwise the show would be over.
Mortimer gets some pictures of the fight, and then Spider-Man swings up onto the boat. He gets behind the boat's fence in time for one laser blast to be on target, removing that section of the fence and forcing Spidey to run. The saw tentacle chases him, cutting along the length of the ship, and then the still-not-quite-paralysing oscillator arm makes him fall into the water.
Mortimer: Great! Spider-Man just got nailed! And for once, I'm scooping Peter Parker!
You're, uh, scooping him? Anyway, at this point Doc Ock notices the helicopter and reckons he's being spied on. He shoots a laser blast at the helicopter, which doesn't visibly harm it, and then he grabs onto the copter with one tentacle, and it starts trying to pull away.
Spider-Man lands at the bottom of the water and finds a shark coming right at him! In the East River! At least, I think that's still where we are. Spidey lassos the shark with a web, it drags him up to the surface, and he rides behind it like he's jet-skiing!
Spidey sees what's happening between Mortimer and Doctor Octopus, and jokes about how they deserve each other, before taking the opportunity to reattach the propeller to the tanker, it having been cut off in exactly the same way as the first one. Presumably the distraction of the helicopter has also stopped Doc Ock using his oscillator, un-paralysing the crew, because the boat now heads straight for him! He lets go of the helicopter to deal with this new threat, and Mortimer gets away, unaware of who saved him.
Spidey then sees something we don't see off-screen, and tells himself he needs to "trick Doc Ock into going there". He just made you say "going where". Spider-Man swims off and the sub chases him, until...
Doctor Octopus: You've run out of tricks, web-slinger!
He said it right this time! He reaches for Spidey with all his tentacles, but Spider-Man ties them up with web, which just works this time. Again, what happened to "ten times stronger"? And then, a bunch of ships all surround the two of them, announcing themselves as part of the Navy. Which must be what Spider-Man saw before, of course, but it's just a little bit out of nowhere in any case!
Doctor Octopus looks around in shock as a crane attached to one of the ships lifts the sub up by the tangled tentacles. Don't worry, Doc, we're all shocked that you were defeated so easily too.
Back at the Daily Bugle, Jameson has his own little mini-golf set-up in his office, and he's about to putt when Mortimer walks in, distracting him and making him miss. Jameson looks around, annoyed, but his expression softens when he realises who it is. It would be sweet, but the way Jameson treats everyone else just makes me find both of them irritating.
Mortimer says he has pictures of Doctor Octopus defeating Spider-Man, which just came back from the lab, and he hands them to JJJ without looking at them. They're... all just blank red rectangles!
And no, they're not just extreme close-ups of Spider-Man - Mortimer reckons the laser blast must have ruined them. So, if you were still wondering why they took care to show the helicopter getting hit by a laser blast if it wasn't going to damage it, that was why.
Jameson is annoyed, but Mortimer insists that he really did see Doc Ock defeat Spider-Man, until Peter Parker walks in, begging to differ. He shows Jameson a bunch of pictures, some of which look relevant to the events of the episode, some of which seem a little more random (Spidey swinging around the Statue of Liberty?), and most of which do not look like they were taken from that one part of the boat where his camera was attached.
Jameson likes the photos but wishes Peter didn't spend so much time studying, and that reminds Peter that he only has ten minutes until his history homework is due. I'm not even keeping track of whether that makes sense any more. Peter has a sudden brainwave and snatches the photos back from Jameson, annoying him once again.
For the last scene of the episode, we're back at Peter's apartment, where he's proudly showing Aunt May that he got an A for his assignment by using his Spider-Man photos as a photo essay:
Some of those photos aren't of landmarks! And none of them tell you anything about history! How does this earn him an A?! Aunt May comments that the photos would look a lot better without Spider-Man being in all of them, and Peter just laughs as the episode fades out.
Administrative note: There won't be a Debutniverse entry next Saturday as I will be away from home. See you in two weeks!