Supervillain Auction! It’s a buy-out of power over New York as Hammerhead, Roderick Kingsley, Silver Sable and Dr. Octopus all vie for the top bid with Spidey and the NYPD caught in the middle. Who will gain control?
Credits
Written By Nicole Dubuc
Directed By Kevin Alteri
Music by Lolita Ritmanis, Kristopher Carter, Michael McCuistion
Animation By Dongwoo animation
THE PLOT: Donald Menken holds a criminal underground auction of a computer chip which somehow holds the key to the city. Roderick Kingsley, Sable Manfredi, Hammerhead and Otto Octavious all are the major players in the bidding, while unbeknownst to them all Frederick Foswell is bugging them for information to relay back to the police and the Bugle.
LONG STORY SHORT: Kingsley wins the bid, but it gets to the point where Hammerhead and Sable(now calling herself Silver Sable) pretty much war over the chip with the Rhino seeking to destroy it for Doc Ock. In the end it is destroyed, but eventually revealed to have been a fake and the real one lies in Norman Osborn’s possession.
MY THOUGHTS: I wasn’t really feeling this episode. It’s not so much that it immediately follows what is currently my favorite episode of the series (so far), but that when you get right down to it the classic “Gangwar” story isn’t automatically very interesting, or to me it isn’t. That’s not to say I went in with a bad attitude, or that I’ve never liked any gangwar stories told in Spider-Man mythology because it is a fairly reccuring storyline. It was mainly due to the McGuffin
that was the computer chip being chased after. It went from Hammerhead’s possession to Silver Sable’s to Spidey’s and back and forth over and over again. It really didn’t make for an incredibly interesting viewing experience. And because that was really the bulk of the episode, I found my attention beginning to wane.
I think that mainly is due to the use of a McGuffin in the first place. If it were a nuclear bomb or something, then that immediately changes the nature of the story entirely. But A) we didn’t really know exactly how the chip worked. B)It was introduced in this episode and bid for which throws the audience in a state of in medias res. C) It was cool that Norman had possession of it at the very end, but does that really matter? It made him richer, so what? He’s already a millionaire. While the episode wasn’t focused solely on the chip, its what the characters were whining about and if it isn’t exactly clear why it’s so great or if its worth isn’t felt, than the use of the McGuffin is essentially a non-entity. I just didn’t care for it.
Moreover to the cast of characters, this episode highlights on recurring and one newly introduced: Hammerhead and Silver Sable. And they both spend their screentime in the episode fussing and whining. I liked that we finally got the see Hammerhead mix it up and go toe-to-toe with Spider-Man. His tough talk was wearing pretty thin because he never backed it up. But his banter with Sable was very tiresome. We got some character background in that he used to work for Silvermane and went with Sable, then got dumped after Silvermaine fired him, but that never felt like it was important to the story. Okay, this is nitpicking but if they can waste time reminiscing then it shows how little of importance what they are fighting about truly is. We could’ve gotten those lines of backstory at the auction. It seemed to take up space during the huge fight. Specifically with Silver Sable, I found her to be completely annoying. For one thing it should be said that this is another character changed from the original comics to where she’s now Silver Manfredi’s child. At first that annoyed me, but then I figured that this is still the beginning of Spider-Man’s career. There’s plenty of room for characters to develop and change from who they are now. That’s probably why Hammerhead isn’t a crime boss himself. But that realization still didn’t help her dialogue. It seemed to consist of nothing but whining and “My father” this and that. I thought we got past this with Alicia Silvermane in the 90s cartoon fifteen years ago. I guess we haven’t. It was funny to start marking down after a while how many times she got slammed by the side of a car or knocked in the face. Not that I’m for violence against women or anything, but it did seem like it became a running joke after a while. I will also say that her character design was much more attractive than the Black Cat’s design, which may hint at the characters’ respective ages. Cat has bigger, wider eyes while Sable has smaller, more striking eyes. Maybe it’s just because she’s evil.
We also get Roderick Kingsley introduced here as a crime boss. Again, another change from the comics. He’s pretty much a non-entity in that he serves as nothing but a crime boss, but then again its probably just setting him up to be Hobgoblin down the line. Hopefully next season.
Unlike the villain’s part of the plot, I liked the rest of it fine enough. I like Peter going into the field with Foswell to catch a story. It was something promised back in the last season but seemed to have gone by the wayside. It was alos interesting to see more screentime with Foswell/Patch. That’s a character who is specifically from the Lee/Romita days and was a very vibrant supporting character until…well, read Essential Amazing Spider-Man vol.3 Let’s just say I hope his seen resentment towards Jameson that we see for a quick second goes somewhere.
Also on the plus side is the dosage of Liz that we get, which I’m always for. I liked that she was shown to be a really good girlfriend in her understanding of Pete being late for their date. It’s a switchup of the typical “Mean Girls” route that she could have taken given that she’s a cheerleader who’s in the in-crowd. It was also funny for Peter to reference Gwen despite the fact that this was the first episode in which Gwen didn’t make an appearance. She didn’t even show up in the opening credits! (*Edit: Okay, she was in class at the beginning, but she had no lines) But this leads to a problem I’ve had during the second season that’s been slowly growing since the start. I feel that we’ve been losing Peter Parker in the bulk of the episodes. That’s what the show needs to keep consistent. It was solid in the first season, but now that there are more characters established the show hasn’t kept up with Peter/Spider-man’s thoughts as much. This was made very apparent in the last episode where Peter HAD to have been the focal point of the episode, but wasn’t because of Flash Thompson’s shoehorned subplot. Even when the main plot is about a gangwar in which Peter knows less than the audience, I feel that the episode should still end with his thoughts about what’s going on in the background that he doesn’t know.
This is especially true to the now blatently obvious fact that George Stacy knows perfectly well who Spider-Man is. He dropped hints like breadcrumbs in this episode, and I feel Peter should be wondering, especially since this is still early in his career what Stacy does or doesn’t know. What if he told Gwen? Shouldn’t that register to Peter a little bit?
All and all this wasn’t a bad episode, but it didn’t really register as solid as others have in the past. The animation was very nice, and the fight scenes were engaging. But it was still par for the course for this series. Hopefully the Gangwar arc will improve upon this season.
3.5/5 webs.
*Best Line Contender- Spider-Man: “Hoho! I got the thing on the thing! Whaddu I win?”
Rhino: “You!”
Spider-Man: “I win me?! That makes no sense.”
all images taken from marvel.toonzone.net
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Yeah, I never picked up on the Kingsley angle when I saw the episode but that would make sense if Daniel was impersonating Roderick at some parts in the episode. However, the big question remains is how that was the case how did Roderick end up with the chip at the end if Daniel was at the pier instead when he collected it? Did Daniel give him the chip when he escaped or did Kingsley have it already? Or perhaps maybe Roderick stole the chip from under everyone’s noses and stole the chip offscreen-This would probably make more sense as Roderick is just as devious as Norman is and has managed to outwit him in the comics on more than one occassion.
I do hope that that if they make a third season, that he becomes the Hobgoblin and does his role justice and can hopefully make up for the Jason Macendale debacle that we all had to suffer through in the 90s. Although the cartoon Hobgoblin from the 90s wasn’t bad, it sucked that that they had him revealed as Macendale who sucks as a character all around-I always hated him in the comicbooks and he really was the driving force of what ruined the Hobgoblin franchise.
“Accomplices” was great! It was definitely the funniest episode of the entire series. I could not help but be reminded of a Pink Panther cartoon where everybody fights over a little bone in prehistoric times!
The action was top-notch as always and the animation was solid. I do understand the changes they have made to Silver Sable and Kingsley. Mr. Weisman and Co. have once again proved that they will do everything to improve the source material when they find it lacking. Here they have changed Silver Sable and incorporated her into the plotlines so very cleverly, just like what they did with the Shocker in the first season. Silver Sable has always been a rather unimportant character in Spider-man mythology. I can’t remember even one single memorable story with her in it. Let’s face it, she has been a mercenary for hire with stupid eastern European accent. If Weisman wanted to bring her into series unchanged then she would be very similar to Black Cat. But here she really works. Besides, an interesting subplot has been created regarding she (the boss’s daughter and Hammerhead. And her design is pretty cool also!
Mr. Weisman has also been wise (no pun intended) enough to try to make this show as ethnically diverse as possible so that it would appeal to everybody perhaps around the world (like changing Ned Leeds to Ned Lee the Asian looking guy, or Liz Allen) But in doing so, he hasn’t altered the ethnicity of major characters and villains. More importantly he has only changed the appearances not the characteristics. I mean Ned is still interested in Betty and Liz is into Peter just like in the comics. Here he has taken another bold move in changing Kingsley into a black guy. I have wondered why Spidey (or even Batman) has never had a great black villain in their pretty impressive rogues galley. Here the problem is solved. Of course if he had done it with Norman Osborn I would have killed him with my bare hands. But Kingsley? As far as he stays in character, I am fine with it.
In my opinion, the second season (and probably the whole season) has taken only one misstep and that was changing Kraven into a bestial character. Apart from that, I believe the show has even improved the source material when it needed to be improved especially regarding the venom character who has always been lame in the comics.
PS I think i could draw out an innuendo from any of the pics provided in this review. Even the first…
I agree with your points but I find this one of the better episodes. Loved the animation, but the biggest thing about this episode to me which makes it stand out from ALL the other episodes is that it brought so many characters into the playing field. Even though Greg mentioned that this is not a show about villain of the week, each episode still has some of the general formulaic storytelling (i.e. creating villain, villain terrorizes and creates havoc, and spiderman defeats him). This episode didn’t feel like the villain of the week. It felt organic by bringing in all these characters who are expressing their motivations, showing their characterizations. I agree that the chip could have been expanded upon, utilized more in the arc or completely rid of, but I understand how it was merely a plot device to bring all these characters together. And their interactions is what made it for me…it was entertaining.
Don’t forget… the Kingsley at the docks freaked out and trembled “we paid for this fair and square…” Who is ‘we,’ Daniel?
The big hints with Kingsly’s true nature is that he specifically loses his jacket in the fight on the pier, but has it again when he’s back at his apartment. He also refers to the “old bait and switch”, which is doubly-layered. More to the point, though, there really was no point in the pier fight where he could have switched the chips…unless, of course, the Kingsly we saw at the pier never had the real chip at all.
This whole arc with the gang war wasn’t that interesting to me. This show has a pretty high floor as far as quality is concerned, so these episodes aren’t bad, exactly. Something just feels dry about them.
Oh really? I didn’t catch that. Good eye.
I liked that the producers are already using the dynamic that Roderick Kingsley has his twin brother pose as him in certain situations. They are tons of hints dropped everywhere (he’s shown very confident with Rhino but he was crying and whining when facing Sable; he says, “We paid for it”; and even the end credits refer to him as simply “Kingsley”).