I have a well documented love for Spider-Man. I’m a big fan of the webslinger from Queens and I have been for as long as I can remember. Even in 2023, the year of Baldur’s Gate, I chose Spider-Man 2 as my game of the year, I connected so deeply with it. Many of my childhood Saturday mornings were spent watching Spider-Man cartoons alongside Batman and X-Men. So I was pretty excited when I found out that Disney+ was making a new Spider-Man animated series.
Cautiously excited. Disney+ series have been a little hit or miss in the Star Wars space and very hit or miss in the Marvel space (with more misses than hits, in my opinion), and with the MCU kind of in a state of storytelling shambles, I didn’t know what to expect. Despite the fact Spider-Man: No Way Home was a miss for me, the games and the Spider-Verse movies kept the fire burning for our plucky thwipper, but caution was still the watchword of the day.
And I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. The show plays with some of the origins of Peter Parker and his friends in a fairly refreshing way—this time instead of a radioactive spider biting him while on a field trip, an interdimensional radioactive spider bites him when a Dr. Strange portal opens up on his first day of school and a Venom creature and the doctor himself duke it out. As the portal closes, the 8 legged plot device drops from its web and gets Peter right on the back of the neck. It’s a pretty cool opening sequence with some good action and a glimpse of the kind of hero that Peter could be. When the Venom creature goes to attack someone while Strange is preoccupied, Peter steps up to distract it. There wasn’t much of a plan, but his heroic instinct was irrepressible, as was his lack of forethought, which speaks to his improvisational style as a costumed hero. I always love to see this kind of behavior in a character before they get their powers, like Steve Rogers wanting to stick up for people even before he got his serum in The First Avenger. Doesn’t matter that he knows he’s going to get beaten senseless, he’s going to do the right thing. It shows that the hero was in them all along and it’s not the powers that made them heroic.
The show subverts some expectations, but sticks fairly close to the MCU formula while not being strictly part of the MCU. It’s definitely MCU adjacent, as the events of the Avengers films are referenced and the film squarely takes place during and around the events of Captain America: Civil War. But obviously, Spider-Man was in those movies, so this is an alternate telling of his story. The depiction of Peter here is fairly close to Tom Holland, his appearance and mannerisms remind me of the big screen wall crawler for sure. That has its pros and cons—the movies take Spider-Man to very high levels, end of the world stuff, and elevate his status as a street level hero to a global hero, which was always kind of a strange vibe for me. The Spider-Man I know swings around stopping muggings and murders, not fighting aliens on distant planets. I’m sure he does that too, with the way comics work, but I don’t need Spider-Man to be fighting the end of the world everyday. After all, saving millions starts with saving one life, and Friendly Neighborhood never really forgets that, keeping Spidey more down to earth, letting him be the quipping, fast talking, street level hero he used to be. In other words, it never forgets the “neighborhood” part of “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man”. The action in the show is genuinely exciting, utilizing Spider-Man’s ability to cover distances quickly and change directions in tight spaces, and he uses his webs to engage in environmental combat (at one point, he webs up a brick about to be used as a weapon against him and fully domes his attacker in a way that would most definitely kill him graveyard dead if it weren’t a cartoon). It’s so much fun to watch, it’s almost as fun as the combat in the Spider-Man games. It’s funny too, with Spidey telling his jokes to people who most definitely aren’t in the mood to laugh, but instead of being purposely cringeworthy, it’s an added layer of comedy when they don’t land, because most of his quips are pretty good. And there’s a fun little montage where Peter goes through different versions of the Spidey suit, which I thoroughly enjoyed (I absolutely love his blue and white one, too; classic red and blue is great, but I love a costume variant).
Friendly Neighborhood has some room to breathe as well, letting the characters grow—the side characters don’t feel like afterthoughts; they’re fully realized people with their own concerns, their own problems, and their own unique personalities. It took me a few episodes, but I found myself emotionally invested in their stories as well, not just Peter’s. Pete’s got a lot of problems—not least juggling life as a high school student and a superhero in the most dangerous after-school program I’ve ever seen (and I thought lugging my saxophone to and from school had its risks), but also his crush is dating the captain of the football team, who then becomes Peter’s lab partner and is an extremely good dude. So neither you nor Peter can actually hate him, even though he stands in the way of Pete’s romantic endeavors. However, I will say that I continue to find it very strange that Disney and the MCU are so scared of Mary Jane Watson. Sure, we got Zendaya’s great depiction of MJ in the films, but MCU MJ is explicitly a different character from the lore Mary Jane we’re used to seeing. I’m happy to have new characters, of course, but I feel like Peter and Mary Jane’s relationship is so key to his character, I’m missing it. Their personal ups and downs in the games are very compelling and keep you invested in them as people. I hope the show sticks around long enough to introduce her.
And on the topic of characters, there are a lot—a lot—of Easter eggs here and references to other characters in Marvel Comics that are at least adjacent to Spider-Man. We even get a glimpse of Luna Snow in selfie with Harry Osborn, which was a treat; she’s been a background character almost since her introduction, so it would be nice to see more of her considering how popular she is in Rivals. I know, I’ve said before “hey, I recognize that thing from that other thing!” isn’t a feeling that’s enough for me anymore, but Friendly Neighborhood is different. For one, many of the inclusions are deep, deep cuts that I’ve never heard of before, and yet there’s no winking. It wasn’t until I listened to a podcast about the show that I even realized they weren’t mostly original characters. And I’m fine with that. Friendly Neighborhood doesn’t require you to be intimately familiar with the ins and outs of Marvel lore to enjoy it. And the cameos from characters you do know (which I won’t spoil for you) aren’t just drop-ins or drive-bys, they make sense from a narrative perspective. After all, since everything in the world is based in New York, it makes sense that they’d at least run into each other every once in a while and sometimes crime fighters will go up against the same crime.
The animation here is really interesting. It’s got a bit of a cell shaded, vintage comic book look, mixed with a bit of Archer, but luckily, I don’t expect Peter to pull a gun out of his suit. There is clear Spider-Verse influence in the way the action unfolds, but not in the animation. It’s good that they’re trying to do their own thing—Spider-Verse was groundbreaking and massively influential, leading to other great animated films like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and The Bad Guys playing with animation styles. But Friendly Neighborhood isn’t trying to copy that style, thankfully. Having that more modernized comic book look to the animation definitely adds to the aesthetic appeal of the show, with the title card being a reference to Spider-Man’s first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15. There are even moments where the screen is divided into sections strongly reminiscent of comic book panels.
Gone is the traditional Spidey jingle, this time replaced with a referential hip-hip song that updates the sound of the show—after Into the Spider-Verse’s bespoke hip-hop soundtrack, it’s really nice to hear something different in franchises from long-running IPs. There’s only so much classic rock that you can pump into every property before it turns into a cliche and we hit that moment years ago. However, there are issues there that get to me a little. There’s the theme song, sure, but it’s hardly a musical motif; the rest of the show is largely divorced from the theme. And we’re talking about a show set in the home of El-P and the Wu-Tang Clan. I would have loved to have more of a throughline from the theme song to the score of the show, but it’s been just about nonexistent. Now, the show has made great strides in representation, for the most part, but I would have liked to hear more of the music of the city. After all, New York without rap music and minorities is, well, Friends. And that’s not realistic at all.
On the topic of representation, there are some issues that have been raised. I’m never one to have a problem with race or gender switching—in fact, I think it’s great, especially for characters created long ago when things like representation weren’t issues in the public consciousness, and possibly would have been a hindrance to acceptance of the media (oh my, how times haven’t changed), but I have noticed that a lot of the characters who have been race- or gender-swapped happen to be villains. Norman and Harry Osborn are now Black, so is the now lady Dr. Connors. Now, I know a lot of these characters have complicated arcs and are sometime allies of Spider-Man as the stories progress and it is good to have the representation, but am I in the wrong for wanting more? There’s great diversity in the supporting cast, with Peter’s crush Pearl and his best friend Nico being Asian (with Nico being, in the Disney tradition, quietly queer, but in a way they can easily cut for certain markets), as well as more diversity when he gets to meet some other young, bright minds (including a young woman from Wakanda and Amadeus Cho). I just can’t fathom, for any reason barring legal issues to which I’m not privy, why this isn’t a Miles Morales story. Miles is such a great character in every piece of media I’ve seen him—from the expansion to Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, where they set him up to be the focus of the game series moving forward, to the aforementioned and excellent Spider-Verse films.
I appreciate the changes they’re making and the small twists to Peter’s story and I love Peter Parker—he’s been my Spider-Man for my entire life, but it’s still Peter’s story. The same story that we’ve now had three movie trilogies about since 2002, plus 5 seasons of a cartoon in the 90s, and countless comic titles since Amazing Fantasy #15 over 60 years ago. Miles, on the other hand, debuted just before Andrew Garfield took up the mantle to hold on to the license, back in 2011. I don’t really read comics anymore, I do occasionally, but there’s a reason that despite the fact that I love physical copies of books and filling my bookshelves with well thumbed through paperbacks that I have a Kindle now; it’s just too much stuff. Streaming media is so much easier and more accessible for people. I want to see more Miles stuff. Peter is great, I’d even have loved to see an older version of Peter rather than revisiting his high school days, but if you’re going to tell a story of a Spider-Man just starting out, why not give us Miles? Maybe they’re planning on spinning him off into a new series if this one is successful (but with the way Disney has been handling TV series, you never know if this is intended to be an evergreen series or just the kickoff for a new “universe”), but take a little bit of a gamble, for goodness sake, and try something just a little bit new. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is proof that they can make a good show with compelling, fully realized characters and strong, well-plotted storylines, but it’s just too much retreading of well trod upon ground that we didn’t really need. But at the same time, I hate to complain because this is a good show and I genuinely enjoy watching it. Maybe this reaction is a because I’ve felt so starved for good Marvel content since Endgame wrapped up the core story and led to an aimless period of formulaic movies (with a few bright spots, certainly), but I want more. I’m out here Oliver Twisting about a show that I really like because it still just doesn’t feel like enough. Maybe it’s a testament to how good Friendly Neighborhood is, because it’s putting ideas in my head of how good a version of this starring Miles Morales could have been or how good an X-Men ‘97 style version of an older Peter Parker could have been.
Those concerns aside, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is a great show for all ages, with relatable characters, good writing, and frankly, I can’t wait for more episodes, should we get them.
