Review: Spider-Man: Maximum Venom “Spider-Man Unmasked”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

With the world recovering rather quickly from the Symbiote invasion, the Horizon High board pursues its case against Max Modell for his Venom experiments and how they jeopardized the school. The lead prosecutor, as it were, is Curt Connors, while Peter and his friends defend Max at the trial. Their case mainly stems from how close Max is with his students, while Connors’ focuses on how some of those students have turned into supervillains, namely Doc Ock and Rhino. With Octavius dead, that leaves Alexi, the reformed Rhino, to help clear Max’s name, so Peter investigates as Spider-Man while Miles desperately tries to cover for him.

Peter’s search leads him to secret lab run by Swarm, a villain made up of mutant bee robots who has taken up some of Jackal’s old work and is creating more Rhino soldiers than just Alexi. They get one to the lab and use Max’s research to cure them, so now Peter takes the stand as Spider-Man to sing Max’s praises. Connors response to this is to reveal that he knows that Spider-Man has been Peter all along, which Peter has no choice but to admit to. This is also a bit of a shock to Gwen and Anya, who didn’t piece this together somehow and are betrayed at the lack of trust, but it ends up being a damning detail in Max’s case since he knew who Peter was and still used him in his experiments. This gives the board all they need to remove Max and put Connors in his place.

And to make matters worse, the unknown Rhino guy bursts out onto the street. The Spider Team heads out to find him, though things are tense between Peter and the girls. They head back to Swarm’s lab, which has been cleaned out aside from one of his bees, which Peter goes to inspect at his house. There, he chats with Mary Jane about being open with his friends, which cheers him up. Peter goes to save his friends, but turns out Swarm is making a secret monster fighting league that he broadcasts as a pay-per-view-match to crime families, including Connors’ secret contact. Luckily, Peter and his friends win and escape and reconcile about communicating better. Later, Peter is told by the board that Spider-Man can’t show up on school grounds ever again.

OUR TAKE

MAN, there was a lot happening in this episode, which actually felt like one that warranted being twice as long for once. Or rather, instead of being cleanly cut into two parts that happened to be stitched together, this feels more like two separate episodes that have been cut in half and placed so that it seems like one big plot. In this case, the Trial of Max Modell and unmasking of Spider-Man feels like one separate plot, while the search for the Rhino goons and Swarm’s fighting league feel like another. And honestly, that might have benefitted both of those stories than splicing them like this. We have one episode focusing on Max’s forced removal from Horizon on top of Peter’s identity being outed, then the next episode starts with looking for Alexi while Peter tries to make things up to Gwen and Anya while fighting Swarm. Seems pretty clear cut, though I happen to have the benefit of hindsight there.

Also worth noting that this episode is coming two months since the last one, which had the premature end to the Venom plot that I figured would have more focus in a season called “Maximum Venom”. But even then, I don’t know how you expect people to keep track of what’s happening in a season if you’re only putting out one episode (even a double length one) every month or two. Because of this irregular release schedule, what I’ve decided to do when each new episode comes out is rewatch only the one that came before it, since I really shouldn’t have to rewatch the whole dang season every month just to follow along with a story made for kids. All that to say that jumping immediately from fighting off a deadly alien invasion which Max had a major hand in stopping to his trial to be removed from his school is a bit of a tonal whiplash to say the least, and who knows what these last two parts will be like. Like before, we have no idea when the fifth episode will come out, though the pattern seems to point to it being in September, yet it could be in October for all we know. Just about everything in how this season is being produced confounds and baffles me, but then I guess I should count my blessings that I’m only this baffled once a month at most.

Oh yeah, the actual episode itself. Well, it’s good to see Max being defended for being the good mentor he is, but also held accountable for his risky behavior with students. Peter also gets his identity revealed, though we don’t seem to be seeing many consequences of that yet other than being the nail in the coffin for Max’s teaching career. And there seems to be a rather tacked on theme of communication at the end when the monsters seem to be mind controlled and have to be beaten by the Spider People properly communicating. Basically, it’s kind of like the second episode in how there seems to just be a bunch of stuff thrown into a blender and trying to make it look like a cohesive whole. See you next month to see if that’s the case in the remaining two episodes!