The masked wall-crawling spider-menace is back to terrorize our television screens! While J. Jonah Jameson’s review of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man would begin something like that, I’ve always had an affinity for the famous web-shooter. He’s become one of the most iconic figures of pop culture, and I’m something of a webhead myself. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has seen many actors take on this role from Tom Holland to Andrew Garfield to Tobey Maguire. This time, Hudson Thames takes on the voice role in this new animated series arriving on Disney+, reprising his role from What If?
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man episodes 1 and 2 have been a shining light for the MCU. Recent TV entries into the MCU have failed to impress me, from What If? season 3 to Agatha All Along. But the first two episodes have been a wonderful treat, proving that you can’t go wrong with Peter Parker. I’ve enjoyed every Spider-Man movie we’ve gotten since Tobey’s take in 2002, which is what made it so wonderful to see this show begin in a similar way: Peter racing through Queens to get to school on time.
The catch? It’s Peter’s first day at Midtown High School. This show serves as a bit of an origin story for him, despite not taking place in the main MCU continuity. Set in a nearby alternate universe, Peter gets bitten by a radioactive spider and by the time we catch up with him a few months later, he has become the amazing Spider-Man. It’s fun to see him in his early days. One of the more common criticisms of Tom Holland’s MCU movies is that he’s almost always taking on world-ending, multiverse threats with villains that have motivations extending far beyond Spider-Man as a character. People have yearned for a more grounded Spider-Man story; this is that story.
Remember that scene in Captain America: Civil War where Tony Stark has arrived in Peter’s bedroom, then shows him footage of Peter’s early days as Spider-Man with a homemade suit? Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man takes place in the time period in Spider-Man’s career where this is happening. This show depicts classic, small-scale moments of Spider-Man fighting crime on the streets of Queens. We have our subtle nods to the live-action MCU movies, including a cameo from the “Do a flip!” guy from Spider-Man: Homecoming, but this show tells its own story.
A fun fact about this show is that it was originally going to take place in the original MCU continuity. This iteration of Spider-Man would have been the younger version of Tom Holland’s character, serving as a prequel of sorts to his Spider-Man trilogy. But the creative team found this too restrictive, and now, we have a show that gets the freedom to do new things. Peter’s best friend at school is a cool girl named Nico Minoru (Grace Song), and he has a crush on his former babysitter, Pearl (Cathy Ann), who he goes to school with. But she’s dating football captain Lonnie (Eugene Byrd), who proves to be a much more interesting character than you initially expected. One sequence with Lonnie shows the casual racism he faces growing up as a black teenager, and we get a glimpse of his home life soon after.
The writing is on point, as we have all of Spidey’s quips as he takes on low-level bad guys on the street. There are fun uses of his powers as he thwarts criminals and under all of it, we have the classic take on the struggles that come with being Peter Parker. In the words of an infamous Green Goblin, he’s struggling to have everything he wants while the world tries to make him choose. Balancing school work, an internship, his social life, the girl he likes, and a double life as a masked vigilante has always been Peter’s greatest struggle, and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man has brilliantly captured the chaos of Peter’s life.
Thames turns in excellent voice work as this teenage superhero. One of the more surprising casting choices is Colman Domingo as Norman Osborn
This iteration of the character does not look exactly like he normally does in the comics, but putting this thespian, currently Oscar-nominated for his role in Sing Sing, seems like a no-brainer in retrospect. He has a strong voice that fits this character’s spirit perfectly, and Domingo proves his worth in a limited amount of screen time in these first two episodes. As the show continues, he will likely have a larger role as this character, and I cannot wait to see what else he has up his sleeve.
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Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man offers an interesting experiment. The issue with many episodes of What If? were that they offer wild concepts and then resolve them as quickly as possible to fit into a 30-minute episode. This show asks us, “What if Norman Osburn became Peter’s mentor instead of Tony Stark?” And we are about to have an entire series that can offer the answer to this fascinating question. This show is a web-slinging good time so far, often animated in the style of a comic book, and deserves to be seen by any longtime fan of this infamous webhead.
SCORE: 8/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 8 equates to “Great.” While there are a few minor issues, this score means that the art succeeds at its goal and leaves a memorable impact.
