EPISODE 01: World's Apart - Part 1:
Comics yellow box (I love those things): "Solaris One launch site: Present Day, 2100 Hours..." on a helicopter with a bit of shoddy animation for 3 seconds, then the animation moves smoothly to reveal a shuttle ready for launch.
Colonel
John Jameson (the first we see of him in animation after his role in season 1 of the
John Semper series) is ready to make a public speech, he's in suit.
John Jameson: "Six months ago, -through use of an advanced warp drive engine- the unmanned probe;
Alita projected itself to the far side of the sun. There...
Alita discovered an exact duplicate of our
Earth, the
Counter-Earth. Then as you know,
Alita sent this troubling footage of its own demise. Due to
Alita's destruction, many have questioned the wisdom of a manned trip to
Counter-Earth. But this act of aggression demands an investigation" (I'm not going to talk about the politics of it all, let's just know that this announced trip was a waste of money and a risk of a life)
In the crowd we hear someone proud of his son, you don't need to guess this is
J. Jonah Jameson, and in this case both father and son are hot heads who rush to judgement.
Peter Parker is standing beside his boss taking pictures.
"My boy is a hero. That boy is presidential temper." (must still avoid talking politics)
John Jameson exits stage left, and spider-sense (yellow lights with some lines filling the screen, and frames turn blue sometimes, first sign this is not connected to the other Spider-Man cartoon of the decade),
Parker goes away in turn.
Jonah is looking around to see where the lad went, and it looks like he mixed in with the crowd pretty fast to go invisible on him.
Peter hides behind some wooden boxes to change into costume, and bits of the intro of the other cartoon plays (for some artistic reason, motivation to keep going with this show I suppose), and the spider-sense tingles again.
Spider-Man sees two guys who look like builders in this area run toward the shuttle, doesn't seem much wrong besides "What's up with those guys?", until Spider-Man can see the two from a far distance to notice they are the symbiote parent and progeny (
Venom and
Carnage) as they transform and change colors, turning to clay and melting. (That change is visible give away from that distance, so I'll give it a pass, but the two symbiotes not being behind the portal from season 3 is another proof this show is disconnected, not to mention that two enemies who never liked each other since day one are allies out of the blue. That's a total of three things to tell this show is not connected to the other one)
I guess Spider-Man can sense
Carnage, so I guess I should give this a pass for the progeny symbiote not inheriting the ability to hide itself from the Spider-Sense.
The two symbiotes latch onto the shuttle's left solid rocket booster and climb up pretty fast. Spider-Man moves to climb the ship to pull the two off, and there is not angle above the back spider on his shirt (could work as another giveaway against the theory that this is connected to the show before it).
And the intro plays, with brief glimpses of the origin of Spidey, and then a spoiler look on what we will see for most of the show.
Shuttle ignites, and goes up. (the noise doesn't scare the symbiotes off or hurt them while they're on the external surface of the shuttle, this is a poor thing to do, especially since you know their presence in the show will be nothing more than a waste of time and ink). Spider-Man moves up and successfully swings to latch onto the launching shuttle on time while it is still in range, and now
Jonah Jameson has binoculars after not having any in the previous shot to celebrate watching the launch, and be annoyed by the interference of the webhead.
Spider-Man swings and sticks, but he's not strong enough to not be pushed back by the force, yet he manages to stick again to save himself from being scorched by the rocket blast flames.
Carnage goes to greet Spider-Man, Spider-Man sends a web ball to him to punch it away, and
Venom grabs him from behinds. Melting away moves are new.
Carnage talks about a synoptic that will never be properly explained, and confused Spider-Man raises his legs to pull
Venom off the neck and toss them to
Carnage (the other cartoon version can't move like this to attack for some reason), and Spider-Man fights them like he's still on the ground, not being pushed off the rocket by the force, air resistance, and gravity like he was before
Carnage came to him.
The two merge, hide, and sneak behind him to hit him off the shuttle (what happened to Spider-Sense identifying
Carnage?), and then they climb up like jello to reach the hatch,
Venom decided to take full form to break the hatch for some reason after establishing they can pass through small creaks, and forgets that he probably cause oxygen to escape and let air run out of the ship fast. The orbiter splits and marches on.
Concerned Spider-Man is falling, he forms a parachute and is upset that he couldn't save the poor astronaut.
Venom sneaks into the cockpit and attacks
John Jameson (no pilot, you can't reach your goal. Symbiotes didn't think it through), and
Jonah Jameson on the ground is worried like he has a psychic link or something, there is not direct feed to the public in that area to notice in that crowd that gathered to witness the launch, and the shuttle entered the wormhole with no troubles.
Spider-Man is landing close to the crowd, people are confused,
Jonah blames him for sabotaging the shuttle (again, why?), and the military security on the base understandably run toward our hero and want to ask him questions after pointing their guns on him and telling him to surrender, he shoves them with his parachute and runs away to change back into
Peter Parker.
Spider-Man is upset that something goes wrong and everyone blames him (NOBODY HAD A WAY OF KNOWING. Except for watch room, they surely got the message of panic from the cockpit), and he compares the symbiotic duo to
Vlad the Impaler.
Six Minutes in and already this has enough troubles to drop the score down to a 6 out of 10. I wonder how long this trouble in quality will stick.
Another comic narration yellow box "New York City: One Week Later"
Spider-Man is swinging high, the shot moves to a pinata doll suspended from a light-pole and pedestrians hit it with eggs. Spider-Man sees a car on a tree and pick it up to have an amusing shot of the angry cat grabbing Spider-Man's hand and biting it, he lands next to a lady that shoves him with pepper spray and pedestrians surround him, he jumps to a wall and goes away.
Cut to
Jameson on TV offering 10 million dollars for any information on the identity of Spider-Man, or capturing him. The crowd walks away and
Peter Parker is sulking.
@UltimateWebhead This is a part you should enjoy analyzing and tearing apart:
As he's walking sad, an explosion happens out of the blue to a building, and it's on fire. There is a woman running on the roof she reached so fast soon as the explosion happened.
Oh well, immediate saving lives is more important than personal problems. He face trouble, but he saves her.
Firemen (please don't bring any controversy here, or drag this word into one) reach the scene pretty fast, they water the fire only to push Spider-Man away by water and ignoring the flames that probably hold more people in danger, prioritizing risking the lives of many people in favor of stopping one person accused of murder of one person (
Jonah had no reason to believe one happened, almost nobody had that). Fire crew are brilliant, YAH?
"You probably caused this fire" says one fireman, while the crew continue ignoring the burning building they should prioritize, and a wall collapses almost falling on the man, Spider-Man pushes him out of harm way to be covered by the debris himself.
The fireman thinks his life was saved from Spider-Man by the collapsing building, ignoring the "look out" the poor victim of rushed judgement yelled at him. The fireman shows Spider-Man's torn mask the camera crew on the scene after the fire is doused by the collapsed building.
Four hours later,
Peter is at
MJ's apartment door, a warm hug. He sleeps sitting on her couch and she's by his side, a TV news report wakes her up to the "End of the troubled career of Spider-Man", she sighs of relief and hopes so.
Peter wakes up, he hears words on the news about his controversial masked life. He tells
MJ he should probably live his own life,
MJ encourages him to do that, to do good without wearing a mask.
MJ goes to a room,
Peter walks to the balcony, "Maybe the fire did end Spider-Man last night", and he hears the name
John Jameson on the news, a message from the astronaut telling that there are dangerous creatures on
Counter-Earth, their
Earth might be next.
Narration yellow box: "Solaris Launch Center: Six Months Later"
Announcer: "Solaris 2 rescue mission is ready for lift-off. T-Minus 2 hours and counting"
Jonah Jameson pulled some strings and allowed
Peter to walk into the facility, Peter sneaks somewhere to discretely put on the nano tech suit he discretely borrowed from
Reed Richards (he stole it? Or secretly was handed the thing by
Reed himself)..
Spider-Man climbs to enter the shuttle,
Nick Fury (him being alive is a secret in the other show, not really here). Simple gestures and not much exposition the other show is known for, and
Fury allows Spider-Man to pilot the shuttle "If anyone can do it, you can" without any help (he can barely drive a car in comics, minus a few moments of exception, and we're expect him to be able to pilot a shuttle here? Something that in its own needs its own college degree? Get out of town).
Spider-Man convinces the world he will go by announcing on the radio that he will fly the thing to clear his name, and uncovers his mouth to say his
Peter Parker lines (No
Peter NO. You don't want to have to cut a deal with
Mephisto), not expecting people to tell the similarity between the voice of
Peter and Spider-Man.
He flies up with no suits, no awareness of the atmosphere, probably hardly knows the directions he need to fly to without spending too much oil after the gas tanker is split, and he reaches the wormhole to be welcomed by a tractor beam real fast after he exits...
He tries to slow the descent of the ship, the heat of entry exhausts him, and the ship is held by four flying robots to slow its descent without crashing into buildings, but mostly crash lands on a roof.
Spider-Man exists, he's summoned to go to the planets lord and conqueror, but he webs two of the four welcoming robots to kick them off roof, and punches a third one to swing away.
Spidey swinging away saying "Your friendly interplanetary Spider-Man" attracts attention of four riders like the four horsemen, one of them commands the robots to halt from chasing Spider-Man cause he might be a bestial, and they chase him.
A long chase happens, we get to see Spider-Man's suit in stealth action (and this mode heating up the suit), we get introduced to the four riders as beastials known as the
Knights of Wundagore;
Lord Tiger,
Ursa, Lady Vermin, and
Sir Ram. This city has flying cars, an upper fancy level for beastials and the low level slums for humans.
Spider-Man is eventually captured and is taken to a lab to be spliced, and we get to see the face of this planets ruler known as
the High Evolutionary.
..................................................
Not the best of starts, but it's not as bad as the first six minutes made me believe.
3.5/5
"
) pals (the other show Spidey is not strong enough to do this).
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