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I
have always liked this episode. The story boasts two different villains working
independently of each other and there are interesting smaller stories which take
place within the main frame. Needless to say the action never lulls. I
like the idea of a villain attempting to emulate Spidey’s powers for his own
gain. I also liked the fact poor Spidey was thrown into jail along with various
super villains and that Matt Murdock was his lawyer. It was good to see
the Scorpion and I did like Zoltan as the new villain (the part where he cocoons
himself and mutates into the Arachnoid might well account for my fear of
spiders!)
This one has some great elements although by now there had been an awful lot of Spider-man & his Amazing Friends stories where characters were impersonating other people (Chameleon, Flash as Spider-man, Loki as Thor, and even a fake Hulk robot made by Mysterio). What brought it down for me was having the Scorpion in jail with his tail still attached making it easy for him to bust out of prison. Like the Green Goblin story this has quite a few similarities to a solo Spider-man episode, "Web of Nephilia". But this story has many more original elements to make it stand alone which I think are quite an improvement. Also the use of Matt Murdock was great; to keep Matt involved the story and give Daredevil just a cameo, explaining to the average non-Marvel comic fan just who Matt really is.
Good fun to me! A great concept leads to a great new villain and some great cameos. It plays more like a comic book than other episodes and doesn't have the charming humor of the other seasons, but I think this is probably the best executed episode in the third. To this day I am stunned that an arachnoid-like villain hasn't appeared in the Spidey comics. I do have to say that at this point in the series I was so use to guest appearances, that to use Daredevil in just a cameo (and later Iron Man) was a HUGE disappointment. Better than nothing though.
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