Spoiler heavy review of the first two episodes of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man from here on out. Let that be the warning.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man took the radioactive spider away from Peter Parker, and I still came out of the first two episodes on Disney+ wanting more of it. I think you might be surprised by some of my thoughts on this one, because a lot of what this show changes is the kind of thing that usually gets a comic reader’s back up, and most of it didn’t bother me at all.

The series takes place in 2016, and it’s got a lot of MCU leanings. A lot of it feels like it’s from the MCU. Hudson Thames is the voice of Peter Parker, Charlie Cox is reprising his role as Matt Murdock in the series, and when you see Doctor Strange in the first episode, the actor voicing him is definitely doing a version of a Benedict Cumberbatch type of Doctor Strange. There’s a cameo, and you get to meet a bunch of characters. Some of those characters are race bent and some of them are gender bent. Overall, I feel like nothing that’s happened is a disservice within the story, and if anything it may actually bring about some pretty interesting results.

An Origin Story With a Portal in the Sky

The first episode is very much an origin story. Peter’s been accepted into a really advanced high school for very smart people, geniuses, and that’s where he meets Nico. He’s just him at this point. He’s a normal guy, he doesn’t have any powers, and he’s running late.

When he finally gets to the school, because Aunt May took him there, there’s a giant portal in the sky. A creature that looks an awful lot like a symbiote shows up, and Doctor Strange is fighting it, doing all his Doctor Strange stuff. The thing looks like it’s going to hurt Nico, so Peter comes to her defense. He jumps in, throws a brick at the creature’s head, and tries to save her. Good job, Peter. Way to go.

They do mention briefly, at the very beginning of the episode, that things have been rough since Uncle Ben died. So we’re already past that inciting moment.

The Art Style Isn’t for Me

The art style is just not for me right now. It’s very reminiscent of the Steve Ditko 1960s stuff, and the problem is that it’s very stiff armed. When characters move, you can see the boxiness between the arm and the upper part of the body, and in a lot of ways it just looks very early 2000s CGI.

I know they’re going for cel shaded. They’re going for an animation style that looks like the original artwork from the 1960s, and they’re hitting that, more or less. But there are other parts of it that are kind of annoying, because you can still sort of see the edges. I guess we’ve just seen this style of animation done a little bit better in other places.

This is definitely a choice, and it’s one they’re going to live with, obviously. It doesn’t necessarily hold up to Into the Spider-Verse, or the Spider-Verse movies in general. And I’m not really sure it holds up even against something as different as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, which itself kind of recaptured the lightning in a bottle that was the Spider-Verse movie, in terms of having a unique animation style that tells a story from something that was obviously, at one point, a comic book.

The Spider Isn’t Radioactive Anymore

All that said, the story is not bad. Once he gets bit, you find out that the spider that bit him is extradimensional. The radioactive spider is gone, and I feel like that’s going to give us some trouble.

You’re taking Peter Parker from being science driven, created by a mishap of science, and making him a magic or otherworldly based hero. I don’t have a problem with people wanting to find their own unique version of those things. But I’ve always felt like what kept Marvel grounded was that it was sciencey. If DC was gods, and superheroes of that caliber, then Marvel was science creating them. Jekyll and Hyde with the Hulk, and things like that.

I don’t mind what they’re doing. It just felt very awkward.

The Bullies, and Norman in Tony’s Seat

Then there’s the part where he saves Harry Osborn, and I didn’t mind that either. What I thought was obnoxious was that these guys from New York were all trying to bully this person. It felt odd. Even the Spider-Man movies with Tom Holland took a different approach to a character like Flash Thompson, where his bullying is mental and not physical, and that was a better choice. I feel like this went backward a little bit. And that’s fine, especially for the time frame they’re trying to put it in, so do with that what you will.

The very end of the episode is interesting. Peter has some adventures, he saves some people, you see the stuff he’s doing. Then he gets home, and you get the moment from the MCU with Tony Stark, only now it’s Norman Osborn who has shown up. Harry’s father, voiced by Colman Domingo. That whole moment borrows very heavily from that MCU origin, and that’s fine. It works.

I don’t know if this is supposed to be Tom Holland’s iteration of Spider-Man or not. I want to lean toward maybe not, but at the same time I don’t know, so we’re just going to play it by ear. All in all, I think Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is probably going to live in its own little universe. A pocket dimension, if you will.

Episode 2 and the Balancing Act

Episode 2 begins very much where that one left off. Peter has received an internship at Norman Osborn’s company. He goes to school, he’s got friends there, and there’s a whole lot of school drama that happens. It’s all the usual stuff.

They do the whole Peter trying to balance life and superheroing really well. So far, I feel like every iteration of Spider-Man has gotten that right. Maybe the Amazing Spider-Man movies with Garfield didn’t exactly land for me, because I feel like he was too pretty to be the geeky, sciencey guy they made him. Tom Holland really grabs the nerdy, geeky kid thing well. And then of course Tobey Maguire. You know, the GOAT.

He’s supposed to go to a football game, and there’s this whole thing where he’s neglecting his friend Nico. All of that is very normal. It’s standard Spider-Man stuff, it’s perfectly fine and serviceable, and you’ll like it. Your mileage may vary. I’ve seen it before, so I move on. There’s obviously more story coming with his football buddy, the one who’s dating the girl he likes.

The Internship, and a Different Dr. Connors

When he skips out of the football game to go to the internship, we meet some interesting characters. We meet Amadeus Cho. We meet a young Wakandan lady. We meet some other young scientists. And then of course we meet Dr. Connors.

Dr. Connors in this is a woman. Okay. I don’t have a problem with that. She’s a one-armed woman, just like Dr. Connors was a one-armed man.

They’re trying to come up with a steady power source, very much like the Arc Reactor that Stark Industries created, which they do name drop. That told me, again, that all that stuff is still in there. So this is very much like the MCU, but we now have an Oscorp, and it’ll be interesting to see how that whole thing plays out.

“So You’re Spider-Man”

Peter’s on break from work when he sees a fire nearby, and he goes to help. That’s when he changes into Spider-Man, the whole bit. He gets back from fighting the firebug, or whatever the guy’s name is, and he gets called up to Norman Osborn’s office. Everybody around him is acting like there go his career prospects.

He gets up there and he’s apologizing. I’m really sorry, please don’t fire me. And Norman turns the monitor around on his desk, and it’s Peter in the stairwell putting his outfit on.

“So you’re Spider-Man.”

That’s where they leave off.

I’m interested to see where they go with the storyline. I have a feeling it’s going to be very similar to some things we’ve read in the comics, where Norman wants to build a sort of super soldier, and he’s ultimately going to put Peter in the middle of that whole situation. If we don’t get a Lizard story, I’ll be surprised. I think we’ll probably get something along those lines, especially with Dr. Connors introduced as the woman she is here. And there are some other characters I feel like we may see more of.

There you go. Now you know. And if knowing is half the battle, you’re halfway to being a know-it-all yourself.

The Verdict

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man episodes 1 and 2 both land at a really strong 8 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

It’s not exactly my cup of tea, but that’s a personal preference. That’s a subjective thing that has nothing to do with how it’s made, what story they’re telling, and whether it’s interesting or not. It kept my interest for two episodes.

The art style isn’t why I’m watching it. I honestly put it on, and once I understood what was happening in the episode, I was doing other things at my workstation with it sort of on in the background. Then I’d stop and rewind if I wanted to catch something. But the story still sounds exciting. It sounds amazing. I can’t wait for some of the characters we know are going to be coming.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Are you excited for this show, and is it scratching an itch you’ve needed scratched while we wait for the bigger projects to descend upon us in the coming weeks? Let me know in the comments on the video above.