Review: Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man “Amazing Fantasy; The Parker Luck”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Peter Parker begins his double life as a high schooler and superhero Spider-Man, as well as being given an internship with Oscorp.

OUR TAKE

We may have put the What If show to bed for the time being, but that doesn’t mean we’re done with Marvel cartoons just yet, as we begin the first of four weeks covering the first ever streaming exclusive Spider-Man show! And true to recent streaming conventions, it’s coming out in bunches of two or three episodes a week, which will barely give the show enough time to build hype, so by the time it has reached its already confirmed third season, barely anyone will be aware of it when it’s unceremoniously cancelled. BUT until then, let’s see how it does for itself as the most recent adaptation of the Spectactular Scarlet Spider himself. Wait, Scarlet Spider is a different guy. Anyway, pretty standard first couple episode stuff, establishing this Peter beginning high school…until he sees Doctor Strange fighting some sort of symbiote monster from a portal and then is bit by a spider that comes through that portal. Bro cannot stop stealing from Miles, or at least the Into the Spider-verse version who also got bit by a spider from another universe. But hey, we’re setting up that this is an established universe where some superheroes already exist, so we can justify some cameos down the road, like the already confirmed Daredevil.

If you’ve been keeping up with this show’s production news, you may remember that it was originally announced as a show set in the main MCU timeline, chronicling that version of Peter’s early days as Spider-Man prior to being recruited by Tony Stark to fight Steve Rogers in a German airport. Since then, there have clearly been some changes, among them being that this is now set in a universe where Norman Osborn recruited him first, which I guess means it’s just a regular Spidey show with some MCU aesthetic references. Also, Norman is played by Coleman Domingo, who is a major get for this show, so hopefully he gets to play a live action Norman down the line. The show also has a stylized CG artstyle that is most definitely going to take some getting used to, but I could see working after enough time. The main test these first two episodes really need to pass, however, is if they touch on the main conflict of being Spider-Man, which is balancing your life with your responsibilities and the sacrifices that must sometimes be made for the better, and I’d say they get a passing grade…but only just. We’ll see how they take the opportunities to improve in the next three episodes, which we shall cover next week when they drop.