Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is Marvel Animation's latest project, and just like all it's projects continues to prove why animation hasn't grown into the art genre it can truly be.
Okay let's rephrase that, the show is not what is proving this, the reactions to it online tho....
Firstly of course there is the generic, THIS SHOW IS WOKE! Because Norman is black or Lonnie is, or because.... uh you get it.
Secondly, Marvel itself did not really seem to hype this up as much, and as a result the show is not really being pushed in things such as the YouTube algorithm or things as such, I should know, I tried testing it, Generally videos with related topics get pushed in the Algorithm hard, but this time it is not the case.
It could partly be because of the previous animated project being poorly received and because people are fucking superficial, Animated = bad.
or
Because some people online have managed to convince people that the problems with Media are not about writing or story or plot but the fact that the people that are being written about happen to be a particular race or gender or whatever.
But I do have some level of confidence that this will grow on people and I hope it does, because, not only do I want animation as a medium to succeed more, but also, the story itself of your friendly Neighborhood spider-man is pretty interesting.
Spider man at his core is very closely tied to his neighborhood especially in his newer iterations, and as such changing the neighborhood should change him, right? Or does it follow the boys route and makes him more of what he already is?
You see spider man has been going through the batman origin story problem in recent times, we have all seen it so many times that even when they try something new with it, we already know what is going to happen.
This is obviously a problem of not insignificant proportions, as not knowing what is going to happen is part of the reason why one would watch a show telling the story of what is going to happen.
A lot of stories like the spider man 2018 game use it to their advantage as in they use the reveal of Otto Octavius to imply what is going to happen subtly to those who know, and make the story more interesting because we know what is going to happen.
The story then becomes about how is it going to happen? Because we know the ending and it is not good.
Otherwise of course it might seem a little generic.
This story however, has a lot of interesting things no matter how you look at it.
Firstly, this is not a world without the avengers, and neither is it the same world as ours, for some reason, this world diverged from ours in the year 2016, for one it is not Tony Stark giving peter an internship it is Norman Osborn.
We know it is 2016 because of some background news shows showing the civil war battle going on, and it is because of this that Doctor Strange is not recognized by spider man, as we are well aware the Strange became a master of the mystic arts only in 2016.
Now that wasn't my first interpretation, my first interpretation(because of the green in the portal) was that this is a wormhole between universes, and this is actually our universe's Doctor going to this other universe on accident and bringing the Venom like creature with him on accident and also getting the spider alongside him, my interpretation is probably wrong as this Strange has a more comic accurate costume.
But all that aside, this did begin as a prequel/origin Story of Tom Holland's spidey but diverged at a critical point, and I'm glad it did, as I don't think it could have told as authentic of a spider man story as it is, otherwise.
Because this is one of the most authentic spider man stories I have seen so far, which is surprising given how much it diverges from the comics, Norman knows Peter is Spider-Man, Lonnie Lincoln aka Tombstone is the same age as Spider Man and dating his crush and is actually a guy that is really nice and peter really likes too, Spidey actually understands the reasons behind crime and how to deal with them appropriately etc.
I can keep going, but the changes to Spidey's 'Friendly Neighborhood' has somehow left Spider Man intact at his core, if anything the changes are necessary to keep the audience guessing and to keep the creative drive of the people writing the show.
Of course online reactionaries are doing the online reactionary thing and calling the show "woke".
Which is... why?
Oh right character gender swap, I get it.
Obviously that is not the only criticism, one of the criticism that I do agree with is as much as the core of Spider-Man is still there, Peter Parker's more negative tendencies are missing, as they tend to be from newer iterations, Peter has the capacity to be really mean and hurt people, he wants to hurt people, he chooses not to, that is what makes him him.
But again, this might be too soon to tell, I mean it is not like there are THREE MORE EPISODES the are out at this very moment that I am putting off just to write this blog authentically, Seriously what is this release schedule???
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