I really dislike this version of Captain America. He doesn’t seem to have a stable character. Over the course of this season you could hand almost any of his lines to anyone and it would be fine.
Sorry, had to get that off my chest.
I like the first part of this season in theory. Peter shouldn’t stay single and miserable. Not only should Peter grow up but he really does have leadership material in him' Cable’s estimation of Spidey as the best superhero still doesn’t do Peter justice. Peter Parker is the Uncle Ben of the Marvel universe, and Marvel’s utterly insane need to keep him single and miserable shows just how creatively (not to mention morally) bankrupt the company has become.
That being said: dear God this arc is a mess.
While it is cool the Six Forgotten Warriors arc puts Spidey in a situation where he has to step up… not like this. Please. The Spider-Sense is nerfed in the most idiotic of ways, with scenes where it goes off and Peter just sits there, remarking on it… and then he gets hit. I got jarred out of this arc so many times I just couldn’t enjoy it. Electro is one of the few villains in this show that I just can't care about. It's not that he's a Nazi, although that doesn't help. There's nothing to him that I sympathetic at all. He wants power, to the exclusion of his relationship with his dad? That felt wrong to me. If you can take a character as pathetic and awful as Morrie Bench and make him sympathetic... you can probably do it with a Nazi.
Oh, and speaking of plot convenience, MJ gets hurt in this arc, in the most ham-fisted way possible. For a regular show? This is bad. It's plain ole bad writing. But for this show, which had done Mary-Jane so well? It's easily the worst writing in the show. This is something I'd see out of a bad/modern comic book, not this show. Period. I've ghosted shows for less.
But there's nostalgia.
So.
On I went.
But there's a lot of good to this arc, contrary to what the above rant would indicate. This is easily one of the biggest swings at Spidey lore ever done. Peter has to step up. It's not a question. The connection to his family is a fantastic hook and got me invested immediately. And they play up that angle really nicely! Peter's idea of his parents, the only thing he has left of them, is challenged, and he has to resolve the identity crisis, immediately. It's such a good hook that I wasn't really jarred by the bad writing until MJ got hurt.
And that ending scene, with MJ telling Peter to still be Spidey, that it's not a question of one or the other, that he has a responsibility to both her and the world... I have nothing but love for this scene. Regardless of how clumsy the delivery was, getting to this scene was truly worth it. I really miss this aspect of Spider-Man: the idea of expanding responsibility, of love creating more opportunities for goodness, not just hardship. It's the next step of that arc.
And I have nothing but bile for Marvel's decision to steer away from it.
Part Two Next Week!
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