Subscribe!Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981)
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First episode title: Triumph of the Green Goblin How familiar with the show am I?: I've watched plenty of Spider-Man things, including the 1994 cartoon, but not this particular show. What's that? We've covered a 1981 Spider-Man cartoon before? You're right, but this time, he's with his amazing friends! Both shows debuted on the same day, to make use of the potential of Marvel's most popular character as much as they possibly could. The friends in question are Iceman from the X-Men, and Firestar, an original character created due to rights issues preventing the show's creators from using their first choice, the Human Torch from the Fantastic Four.
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The opening sequence shows the main trio all sitting in what looks like a studio apartment room together, although I'm not really sure what their living situation is in this cartoon, as I'll explain when we reach the relevant point. A giant fiery monster attacks New York City, so Peter Parker pulls a secret switch that transforms the room into a superhero base with computers and stuff. They switch to superhero mode and Iceman of course easily defeats the fire monster, while Firestar deals with the Green Goblin. Just like in the other Spider-Man show, Doctor Doom also makes an appearance in the opening despite not traditionally having much to do with Spider-Man.
Onto the episode itself. A shot of the Statue of Liberty tells us it's a stormy night in New York City. I noticed quite an amusing mistake here - on one of the lightning strikes I could see some letters through the image, and by pausing I was able to see it says "CUT OUT THESE FRAMES". Definitely not meant to be visible!
A car drives quickly through the rainy street, swerving around other traffic and causing chaos, watched by Spider-Man from a rooftop. You know Spider-Man - you know what he can do. He uses his web-slinging powers to swing over to this suspicious car and land on the roof. The two men inside are talking about making a clean getaway, so Spider-Man pokes his head over the windscreen to surprise them, announcing himself as your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man as he tends to do.
The criminals take a sharp turn that manages to throw Spidey off the roof, into the road, and then they come back around to try and run him over. As Spider-Man berates himself as a "dummy", Iceman shows up, and I hope this isn't a catchphrase of any kind:
Iceman: Here I come, to help my chum, 'cause he was dumb!
His superhero form is coated in ice and he makes trails of ice with his powers, often travelling by sliding around on a trail while he's creating it at the same time. That's what he does here, and then he makes a vertical loop of ice in the path of the car to make it do a loop-de-loop past Spider-Man and then crash into a pole. Spider-Man says to him "Thanks, Freezeface" - it seems like these two can't go a minute without insulting each other or at least throwing out a vaguely mocking nickname. But if you know Marvel's history, superhero teams that don't actually get along with each other were kind of an innovation of theirs, so it's not much of a surprise to see them leaning into it.
Spidey tears off the car's roof and ties the crooks to the pole with his web, and Iceman takes a bag of evidently stolen jewels from the car, sliding them along some more ice to a pair of police that are just now arriving on foot, evidently looking for the criminals. During all this, the two superheroes are commenting on the fact that this has made them late for their dates. There is a joke around Iceman being given the "cold shoulder" rather than getting rewarded for catching the criminals, and then Spidey and Iceman both flinch at a bolt of lightning. Looking up, they see a plane in the sky, and Spider-Man comments on how surprising it is to see someone flying in this weather.
So we switch focus to the plane. There are two men in it - the pilot, and Norman Osborn. If you haven't seen anything Spider-Man related before: Norman Osborn is typically a rich business owner with an alter ego he can't control called the Green Goblin. The Goblin typically has quite a high-pitched Starscream-y voice, and I noticed straight away that this cartoon gives Norman himself a slightly toned-down version of the same, presumably to make it less jarring when he switches (or to give the voice actor less distinct voices to have to do). He's apologising to the pilot for making him fly in this weather, but he had to get away from the "sanitarium" now that he's been cured and no longer turns into his other self. Like the other 1981 Spider-Man cartoon, this show seems to just work on the assumption that all Spidey's regular villains are already established and any appearance of them is a return.
But then lightning strikes the plane! Both men bail out and parachute down successfully, but the plane crashes down in flames, and it seems that this trauma is all Osborn needed to relapse - he starts triumphantly laughing and saying that he could never be "cured", as his skin starts to turn green... Oh yes, if you're used to a version of him where the goblin face is a mask, in this one it's his real face.
We fade out and then fade back in on another monstrous green face, making growling noises, and pull back to see that it's just a small fluffy dog with two bows on her, wearing a mask. She's growling at a mirror and then gets spooked by the sight of herself, retreating to the lap of Angelica Jones, a.k.a. Firestar, although right now she's wearing a different red superhero outfit from the neck down. This is evidently for a costume party, and she's annoyed that the boys aren't here yet, but Aunt May reassures her that Peter and Bobby will have to be back soon. Yes, Aunt May - it seems that the main trio all live with her in this incarnation? I'm not sure what the living arrangement is, but the fact that Peter and May seemed to be the only two living in the house in the other show would seem to suggest that they don't share continuity.
Other than that, the set-up is as usual, with Aunt May disliking Spider-Man and oblivious to the fact that he's her own nephew. So, tying into this, she questions why Angelica would be going to the "comic book costume party" as "that awful Spider-Woman". Interestingly, it seems like all the Marvel superheroes are known to the public as comic book characters in this continuity, even though they also really exist. The actual Marvel comics do have versions of the comic books existing in-universe, but that still doesn't mean that the average person would think of any of the superheroes as simply "a comic book character"! Angelica says it's a private joke she has with Peter, since of course the main trio all know each other's real identities.
Also in the room is a character called Mona, evidently the other part of the double date the boys mentioned, who is going to the party as Medusa - a little bit more obscure than Spider-Woman, as she's one of the Inhumans. So she correspondingly wears a large red wig and a green outfit. She scares the dog (Ms. Lion) again by tickling her with the wig - the dog jumps into a pile of costumes and somehow comes out wearing a dog-sized karate outfit?!
The guys arrive. Bobby Drake, who we've already seen in his actual superhero form as Iceman, is wearing a Captain America outfit. And Peter... is dressed as Spider-Man! It's a deliberately worse version than his actual outfit, with the mask only covering the front of his head. Peter is going on this date with Angelica and Bobby is with Mona. I'm going to have to throw in a token mention here of the fact that, in the comics, Bobby would eventually come out as gay, so it is a little bit funny to have his introduction here be to deal with a villain quickly because he's so eager to go on a date with a girl, but nowhere near as funny as watching the second X-Men film with that knowledge.
The party is happening in what looks like a school gym, taking me right back to a couple of weeks ago, and it's filled with people dressed as Marvel characters of all kinds, well-known ones like Thor, Storm, and multiple Hulks mixing with more obscure characters. No DC characters - since this is technically a "comic book" party, there'd be no in-universe reason why the characters couldn't dress as heroes that don't actually exist in their world, but obviously you can see why there would be issues.
Something I always find interesting when watching pre-MCU Marvel shows and movies is spotting references to characters who, at the time, would have only been well-known to comic fans but would have meant nothing to a non-comic-reading general audience, but which would now be much more recognisable due to the success of the MCU. For example, the brief reference to Dr Strange in the second Spider-Man film. To me, the example that stands out at this party is the briefly-seen pair who are dancing together dressed as the Scarlet Witch and Vision. Back then? Two random Avengers who didn't even have their own comic book yet. Now? Major characters in multiple movies and stars of their own hugely popular TV series.
Angelica remarks on how many people are dressed as Spider-Man, and Peter, talking so that only she can hear, remarks that he didn't realise he was that popular. It's a good point - in-universe he's stereotypically hated by the general public, but apparently he has more fans than he'd thought. Then Angelica points out he shouldn't necessarily take it as a compliment given the number of people who are also there dressed as villains. Just as she says that, the Green Goblin swoops down on them, standing on his glider! ...But there is barely time to panic before a second Goblin also appears, and Peter realises they're just using wires to fly themselves around the room. Angelica gets to mock Peter a bit for his reaction to seeing the Green Goblin.
Spidey remarks that, even though those weren't the real Green Goblin, there is something turning on his Spider-Sense. The "turning on" wording is a little bit of a forced way of leading on to the next encounter - a woman in a jungle outfit that doesn't seem to correspond to any actual Marvel character overhears him, but thankfully just seems to think he's roleplaying as Spider-Man, and makes a joke about him being what's turning her on. Yes, they got away with that!
Peter dashes off to see where the trouble is, but jungle girl goes following, so a jealous Angelica surreptitiously blasts a cloud of steam from her hands at her, making her feel uncomfortably hot and messing up her hair and make-up. That's right - the first times we see the boys using their powers, it's to fight crime, but the first time we see the one girl using her powers, it's to fight another girl over a boy. Way to be representative there... Jungle girl still carries on looking for Peter, though, so he changes into his real Spider-Man costume and hides on the ceiling, as the woman happens to notice her reflection in a mirror and becomes distressed about her appearance instead. Still not liking this episode's portrayal of women so far!
Spidey arrives at the school's lab, clinging to the window outside of it - he's sure that this is where something is up. He opens the window and goes in, and immediately gets hit with a paralysing laser blast of some kind, as the real Green Goblin swoops down on his glider, holding a gun! The Goblin tells Spider-Man he's been caught by "the real Green Goblin" - it's unclear how public the party is, since it's taking place at a school, but apparently the Goblin knows it's happening, and that there are fake Green Goblins there.
With Spider-Man paralysed, a glow still there around his body to show us the beam is still in effect, the Green Goblin can safely evil monologue at him. The Goblin is in the lab because he's after the formula that turned him into the Green Goblin in the first place. There's a flashback to when Norman Osborn was doing the experiment where the accidental explosion happened - his experiment looks hilarious though, because he's just pouring the same liquid back and forth between two test tubes, not mixing it with anything else or doing anything to it! And then it just explodes of its own accord! And that's why he's superhuman and has green skin now.
Then he puts a helmet on his head which he calls the "future finder" - it projects images of Green Goblin-like people, which he says is what the people of New York will look like once he's used his formula on them all. He doesn't give any motivation for doing this except that he wants them all to be "ugly, grotesque, horrific, like me!", suggesting that, even though the Goblin is a separate evil personality from Norman, he doesn't actually like the way he looks in that form.
Back at the dance, Bobby and Angelica are now dancing together, Mona left on her own for now. So since the two actual superheroes in the room have a chance to talk to each other, they're wondering whether Mona knows that her uncle Norman was the real Green Goblin. Yes, Mona is apparently Norman Osborn's niece, but she's an original character created for this cartoon, not a real relative he has in the comics. Funnily enough, the other Spider-Man cartoon we covered gave J. Jonah Jameson a nephew he doesn't have in the comics - what's with all these newly-devised niblings?
Then Angelica spots the jungle girl amongst the crowd, dancing with someone in a Daredevil outfit, without Peter - Angelica clearly assumed Peter had actually gone off to, well, get off with her, so his absence makes Angelica realise that something might really have been wrong, and she goes to investigate.
Green Goblin is flying around on the glider and tearing through everything in the lab to try and find the formula - we hear his thoughts, and he realises that his niece is a student here and might know where his formula is being kept. Then Angelica calls out for Peter from outside the room. If they're going with the comic book version of how the original Green Goblin storyline went down, the Goblin and Spider-Man both know each other's true identities - in any case, the Goblin doesn't react with any surprise to hear someone calling for "Peter", and clearly knows it's Spidey that's being referred to.
However, he doesn't seem to know that it's one of Spider-Man's fellow superheroes that's calling for him, and he says that Peter's friend is going to be the one to help the Goblin get rid of him. He demonstrates the effects of a spray canister of liquid nitrogen on an empty safe he's already broken open in his search for the formula, turning the metal safe so brittle that one whack makes it crumble to pieces. Outside the room, Angelica, still in the Spider-Woman costume in one of the corridors of the school, decides it's time to be herself, so she transforms into her Firestar form, a flame-coloured light changing her outfit, and flies up towards the lab. The fact that her heat powers include flying without much explanation is the way in which she's most obviously a Human Torch substitute.
In the lab, Green Goblin has rigged up an extremely unnecessary trap, with the canister of liquid nitrogen pointing at the paralysed Spider-Man, its trigger attached to a string that links it to the knob of the door to the room, so that opening the door would spray Spider-Man, who has been placed on a chair. It's really unclear why he goes to all this trouble rather than just spray Spider-Man himself - what, is he too squeamish to see his victim die? That doesn't sound very Green Goblin to me. He flies out through the window on his glider rather than stick around to watch, which would jibe with that theory but is also the classic stupid villain move that basically guarantees the hero will survive the deathtrap.
Firestar calls for Peter again and Spider-Man just about manages to make a small noise in response, which Firestar hears, so she flies over to the room and opens the door... Great moment for an ad break!
Firestar opening the door knocks Spider-Man out of the seat, immediately exposing a major flaw in the Goblin's plan, and leaving the still-paralysed Peter sprawled on the ground. The nitrogen is now spraying towards Firestar, but she is able to use her powers to put up a "heat shield", literally a round shield made of fire. Spidey's paralysis now starts to wear off, and just in time, because the nitrogen is beginning to get through the heat shield. Half of Firestar's body actually gets coated in it! If she was an ordinary human she would be dead, but I suppose her powers give her some further protection. Spider-Man doesn't seem to be able to get up just yet, but he's now able to fire a web at the nozzle and stop it spraying.
Slightly later and the paralysis seems to have completely worn off. Spider-Man lets Firestar know that the Green Goblin is back and that he's going to go after Mona - which is weird, because the line about Mona was quite clearly portrayed as the Goblin's thoughts, with an echoing voice and no mouth movement. How does Peter know? Firestar flames out of the window without bothering to wait for Spider-Man.
Outside, Bobby and Mona are walking along together, still in their costumes except without Cap's mask or Medusa's hair. Bobby is telling Mona how he'd much prefer to live somewhere like Iceland than anywhere hot and tropical - wow, with lines like that, I bet no-one suspects he's Iceman. The Goblin swoops down out of nowhere and asks if he can have the "next dance" with Mona, and Bobby obliviously tells Mona it's okay if she wants to. Even when the Goblin grabs her and flies off with her screaming under his arm, Bobby still thinks that the Goblin is one of the fakes - it takes him several more seconds to notice that they're outside and there isn't anything to attach any wires to, by which time Firestar and Spider-Man have arrived. Even then it takes some prompting for Bobby to realise his date has been captured by a supervillain and that he needs to transform and help, and Spider-Man is not subtle in mocking him for it. That's the trouble with me trying to do commentary like this on any cartoon that has Spider-Man in it - he's doing half my job for me!
Bobby turns into Iceman, which he achieves simply by coating his body in ice using his powers. Then he races off using his ice trail ability from before... and immediately comes back, realising he doesn't know where they are going. Wow, they really want to make Iceman the idiot of the group here, don't there? They decide on a plan of action - Spider-Man will investigate Osborn's old factory, Iceman Osborn's headquarters, and Firestar Mona's house. Spider-Man chooses this moment to tell the other two that the Green Goblin's plan is to make everyone look like him, and Iceman jokes that for Spider-Man it would be an improvement. How did these two get to be friends? As if the writers decided we need a reminder that they actually are, the next line is all three of them saying together "Spider-Friends, go for it!" This seems to be a catchphrase, as they say it again later on.
So they all go racing off using their respective powers. Iceman has to cross the river to get to his destination, and there isn't time to divert to the bridge, so he just makes one out of ice instead. It's interesting because I would have imagined doing that by freezing some of the water on the river itself, but he just makes an ice trail in front of him that roughly parallels the shape of the actual bridge.
Spider-Man arrives at his destination first, and it turns out to be the right one - amongst the ruined and boarded-up old factory, the Goblin has Mona tied up and is about to force her to drink the formula she led him to, in order to test it. Spider-Man, not having seen any of this, gets in through a soot-filled chimney, making a snarky comment about how Santa's outfit never seems to get this dirty. Just as Mona is starting to realise that the Green Goblin reminds her of someone - that might be another reason why they didn't go too different with his Norman Osborn voice, so that there was something to recognise about him - an alarm goes off, Osborn's computer systems having detected Spidey. The Goblin doesn't even seem surprised that Spider-Man has survived his deathtrap, commenting on how predictable it is that the hero has come to rescue Mona.
Spidey has picked up the Goblin's future finder helmet, which seems to be what triggered the alarm. The Goblin operates a control panel and Spider-Man's Spider-Sense barely has time to react before he is suddenly surrounded by a concrete cube, images of the Goblin on every side mocking him. Again, this is ridiculously elaborate - the slab that dropped in place to become the ceiling of the cube could have just come down on its own and crushed Spider-Man! The trap doesn't get any less ridiculous from there. The floor opens up to reveal a pair of crushing metal jaws, but Spider-Man just clings to one of the walls using his most basic power instead. So then the Goblin makes that particular wall scorching hot to make it impossible for him to hold on. He jumps across to the opposite wall, and oil starts to gloop down it, again making him unable to stay stuck to it.
The next wall sprays sleeping gas at him, but it doesn't seem to have any immediate effect and he just dodges downwards, and finally deals with the crushing jaws by jamming them with his web. Then it's easy for him to break off the jaws with his super strength and escape through the resulting hole. Seriously, it's like the Green Goblin, Spider-Man's greatest enemy, just has no idea what he is capable of! Those aren't obscure powers of his! Those are iconic features of the character!
Mona screams out for help, and that alerts Spider-Man but also seems to remind the Goblin what he was just interrupted from doing. Spidey follows the screams, breaking down several doors and at one point needing to reach one on a higher level apparently just as an excuse to make a web tightrope. Finally he bursts into the room where the Goblin has Mona.
Green Goblin: You again!
Spider-Man: I can always count on you for snappy dialogue.
See what I mean? It's a self-mocking cartoon!
Spidey webs the formula out of the Goblin's grasp and smashes up the container before untying Mona, and he thinks this means he has foiled the Goblin's plan to Goblin-ify the city, so the Goblin, gliding away, reveals he still has enough formula for several cities, in a conversation that results in Spider-Man doing the "Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga" Jack Benny reference. Spider-Man shoots a web to try and nab him but this only results in the glider dragging Spider-Man along with it as it goes crashing out of the window.
The Goblin tries to shake Spider-Man off and Spidey slings a web at a tower to escape, and so when the Goblin looks back and sees that Spider-Man is gone he thinks he's been successful, until Spidey suddenly swings out in front of him! He lands on the glider and they struggle with each other as they fly along, and the Goblin manages to actually dump Spider-Man, this time over Central Park so there are no towers for Spider-Man to make use of! Ever seen the meme about how useless Spider-Man would be in the countryside? This is them effectively doing that in the actual show! Central Park's really big, by the way, not like your average local park, so he's definitely not near any tall buildings.
But this isn't just the regular Spider-Man cartoon, he has Amazing Friends to help him, and Iceman chooses that moment to show up and create an ice slide for Spider-Man to safely slide to the ground on. Well, sort of safely - he does skid into a bush, and the two of them trade snarky comments a little more.
Then a police officer comes over to them, telling them that building things in Central Park is against the law and starts writing them up. He has a hint of the stereotypical Irish accent of a New York cop. While the heroes stall, Firestar flies over and sees the situation they're in, and uses her powers to melt the slide, after which the boys are able to baffle the cop by asking him "what slide?" and he turns around to see it's gone. His tune changes completely, asking if he can have the heroes' autographs for his kids, but they've already left.
The trio of heroes quickly realise that the Goblin is probably going to try and infect everyone with the formula by putting it in the drinking water, and the reservoir is here in Central Park. They all dash off to find him - Firestar flies off, Iceman just runs, and Spider-Man shoots a web, which we've already established doesn't make sense as a way to travel around Central Park because there aren't any buildings. It doesn't actually show him swinging around like this - in the next shot he's in, he's standing on the ground - so let's just assume he shot it instinctively and quickly realised he couldn't actually get around that way!
The Goblin, still on his glider, pours a container full of the formula into the water and starts gloating that he has won, as Firestar flies up to his level. So Spider-Man shoots his web at an actual target this time, the glider again, and starts fighting the Goblin up there, the Goblin shooting his paralysis ray at Spider-Man again but thankfully missing. The Goblin steers the glider towards some electric wires to try and deal with Spider-Man, but Spidey swings onto a random flagpole and it's just the Goblin who's on the glider as it hits the wires, apparently blowing him up in an electrical blast! Don't worry, he's not as dead as that shot makes him look.
Iceman freezes the reservoir water, and Firestar burns her way down into it, discovering that luckily the formula hasn't mixed in yet - it's just a frozen globule suspended in the ice. Iceman makes another ice trail up to a police helicopter to get their help - one of the pilots says "There really is an Iceman!", as if the heroes' existence was thought by some to be some kind of urban legend? People certainly don't usually think that about Spider-Man, so why would they about his friends?
Firestar successfully extracts the block of formula by melting the water around it, and the police helicopter lifts it away. Weirdly, they then dispose of it by having Firestar melt it and have it run off into a street sewer grate! Isn't that just putting it back into the water cycle and going to cause problems in the future? Surely there are better ways to get rid of it!
Meanwhile, Spider-Man goes into the burning remains of the electrical poles to find a de-Goblined Norman Osborn, who he carries out. As the other two arrive, a conversation with Norman Osborn reveals that he has no memory of what has happened. In fact, it seems he has worse amnesia than at the start of the episode, since he doesn't even seem to recognise the idea that he could become a different person. He agrees to go back to the sanitarium and stay until he's cured, but since he thought he was cured the first time it seems doubtful that could last. Also, the Goblin is prominent in the opening sequence, so you know he'll be back!
At the end, all of the heroes, in their normal forms, are back at the house with Mona and Aunt May. Mona is explaining to May about how Spider-Man saved her, and she's so complimentary about him that Bobby feels the need to butt in and insult Spidey, making Peter find reasons to compliment him, so Angelica and May respond with a few more insults. It's interesting how a conversation involving three people who know Peter is Spider-Man and two who don't can still make sense to everyone there. Then, with May and Mona out of the room, Angelica asks the dog Ms. Lion how she feels about Spider-Man, so Peter waves a dog biscuit in front of the dog and she jumps over and gives him a friendly lick. Whether the dog actually had any idea what they were talking about, I do not know.
So, that's Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. I liked it a little bit more than the other Spider-Man show, on balance. Having a team around adds some nice new dynamics to the general Spider-Man set-up.