Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man S01E01 Review: School's In

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Season 1, Episode 1: Amazing Fantasy

Released earlier this year, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is an... interesting show. Part of the push towards having more animated material in the vein of What If, this show was originally promised to the fandom as a 'high school' semi-prequel of MCU's Tom Holland Spider-Man. Which would be a nice, if throwaway, little show that fills in a gap about an MCU character most people care about. 

At some point, it got changed and revised to still be an MCU show, but one that's... in another part of the multiverse, and depicts an 'almost-MCU' Spider-Man. But with almost none of the cast members that makes MCU Spider-Man who he is. A lot of the cast is shuffled around (with only young Aunt May remaining), with a version of Harry Osborn and Norman Osborn being brought in from the parts of the Spider-Man mythos the MCU is unable to tackle; and a grab-bag of more obscure characters like Nico Minoru and Pearl Pangan to fill out Peter's side cast... which, I actually am big enough of a geek to know who these characters are, also feels like there a forced diversity checklist being done by replacing Peter's regular cast with characters that he's never interacted with. 

And, to add into the pile, it really is quite strange just what they could do here, other than the novelty of having another Spider-Man cartoon on the air right now. And... we get to see the origin story of Peter Parker, Spider-Man, in this new continuity, because as he's about to go to orientation on Midtown High, a portal opens and Dr. Strange (MCU cameos, wow!) and a monstrous Symbiote (Venom, wow!) show up and fight and tear the school apart. While all of this is going on, Peter shows off his innate sense of responsibility pre-powers and saves Nico.

Oh, and the entire backstory is revised as well, with the spider that bites Peter Parker coming from the portal (hi, Into The Spider-Verse) and biting Peter during the big fight. Oh, and Uncle Ben has already died off-screen, robbing this Peter of what should've been a major moment of learning the price of not using great power for great responsibility. 

And then we cut to a few months later, where Peter Parker is Spider-Man, swinging around with a rather unflattering homemade suit. This episode sets up Peter's brand-new side-cast. He saves Harry Osborn from a bunch of muggers, and we get to see the rest of the cast in a very infodump-y segment of the school. Fellow geek Nico Minoru is now his best friend; ex-babysitter Pearl Pangan is the girl Peter likes; and Lonnie Lincoln is the jock that gets the girl. Except Lonnie turns out to be a swell guy -- breaking the 'jock bully' stereotype in a slightly better way than MCU's geeky-Flash-Thompson. 

There is... a lot to be said about them changing the traditionally albino African-American Lonnie Lincoln into not being an albino. There are many race and gender swapping done in this cartoon that I'm ambivalent towards, but in this case in particular, I felt like it robs Lonnie of one of his defining character traits. People more qualified than me have commented about this, so I'll move on. 

The episode ends with Peter being scouted for greatness in an almost shot-to-shot copy of the scene where Peter meets Tony Stark in Captain America: Civil War, only the rich tech guy mentor in this continuity is, instead... Norman Osborn. 

And that's the end of the first episode. To be honest, part of the bigger criticism about Spider-Man is that his origin story has been told over and over again, and seeing it swapped around so much is definitely an odd choice to make. The giant dump of more obscure characters who are promoted to main characters isn't done in the best manner (and this will continue across at least the show's first two or three episodes) and I'm not the biggest fan of the quasi-3D art style. Some of them work well, and a nice nod to older comics. And some of the action scenes are certainly smooth. But just like What If before it, I'm not the biggest fan of this art style. 

But this episode was... all right. Again, the concept of the show is a bit strange to most of the fandom, and it does admittedly feel like a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' dilemma. Having an overly faithful adaptation of Peter Parker's origin story is something that most superhero fans have seen a dozen times, but changing too much would also lead to a lot of complaints. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man's attempts are... respectable. I'm not the biggest fan of this episode, though, mostly because of its structure. It meanders around a fair bit, introduces a lot of characters at once, and takes quite a while to find its footing. Nice cliffhanger as we're introduced to Norman Osborn, though. 

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Notes: I know Ironheart is out right now, but I really don't have the time to watch it right now! YFNSM reviews, meanwhile, have been sitting on my drafts list for quite a while since it initially was released. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• 'New' characters that aren't part of the traditional Spider-Man supporting cast. 
• Nico Minoru is better known as Sister Grimm, a member of the Runaways, a group of teenaged superheroes with powers from different corners of the Marvel universe, battling against their parents after discovering their evil plans. Nico's powers stem from the Staff of One, allowing her to utilize magical powers. The Runaways TV show and its incarnation of Nico is technically part of the MCU, but hasn't been really referenced elsewhere.
• Pearl Pangan, better known as the Filipino superheroine Wave, is a swimmer who was exposed to chemical substances during a supervillain attack, granting her the power to control water, and she is primarily associated with the Agents of Atlas team.
• Lonnie Lincoln, better known as the Spider-Man villain Tombstone, is typically an old-school mob boss in New York City well-known for his albino complexion and the teeth he filed down to look like a vampire. He has menaced both Spider-Man and Daredevil over the years.
• The monster that Doctor Strange and Peter Parker are fighting is a Symbiote monster with Venom's colours, though the physical silhouette does not match Venom's. Notably, after the messy dividing of the sub-aspects of Spider-Man's villains among Marvel and Sony; this is the first time that a Symbiote character has a major role in an MCU project. (Tom Hardy's Venom had a cameo in No Way Home's post-credits scene). 
• The title of the episode, 'Amazing Fantasy', is the the title of the comic run where Spider-Man debuted all the way back in 1962, Amazing Fantasy #15. The comic itself makes a visual cameo in Peter's room. 
• The Daily Bugle's photograph of Spider-Man is a homage to the cover of that comic as well.
• As I mentioned in the body of the review itself, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is set in a universe in the MCU Multiverse. At the very least, MCU staples like a younger Aunt May, Midtown High and Iron Man's presence is present here; and Doctor Strange from another universe (who wields the Time Stone, an MCU signifier; though his outfit is coloured like his comic-book counterpart) appears through a portal.
• No one recognizes Dr. Strange, which is keeping in line with the MCU where Dr. Strange's activities have been secret from the public prior to Infinity War. 
• While not named in the movie it debuted in, 'Shield of the Seraphim' takes its visual animation cues from the shield spell that Dr. Strange and Wong both use in Infinity War.
• This isn't the first Spider-Man who's been bitten by a spider that appeared from another universe -- it was a major plot point for Miles Morales in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. 
• Spider-Man being associated with pizza (and the 'Pizza Time' sign in general) is a running gag in the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy and became a bit of a meme due to the tie-in PlayStation 2 games. 
• The opening shot of Queens homages the establishing shot from Captain America: Civil War. One of the earliest Spider-Man exploits in that universe (which is shown via a video Tony Stark is watching) is stopping a van that's about to run into a bus. Peter's later return to his and May's apartment is also recreated almost shot-for-shot from Civil War, albeit with Norman in place of Tony. 
• Klev, the 'do a flip' guy from Spider-Man: Homecoming (and the 'bus guy' in Shang-Chi), makes a cameo when Spider-Man goes to try and catch the van. 
• One of the muggers is called 'Stevie Sherman', named after Jack Kirby's assistant. 
• One of the guys on the stream mocks the muggers for being beaten up by 'a guy in hockey pads', a surprising reference to the DC Batman movie The Dark Knight, where Batman makes fun of a fake Batman for doing the same thing.