Spider-Man, the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, faces off against unfriendly neighbors. Screenshot: MarvelWhat is the Worst Episode Ever? A complete lack of humor? Any plot that is coherent? A failure or unwillingness to honor the source material. Production of low quality? Is it so bad it's good? Or should it make you feel bad about it? It can be either of these, which is why it was so difficult to choose the worst episode from the 1967 Spider-Man animated series.AdvertisementSpidey is often outwitted in Horn of the Rhino. Spidey is outwitted (often!) by the super-villain who is a dimwitted genius and inexplicably weaves himself into a literal ball to escape cops. Revolt in the Fifth Dimension sees Peter go through a Hunter S. Thompson drug nightmare thanks to a group of tiny aliens. The third season has multiple episodes that retell old footage, making it even more boring and dreadful. I'm essentially saying that many episodes of Spider-Man 67 are horrible in different ways, but often to the same extent.Vine stood out to me for some reason. In which Peter Parker accidentally lets an ancient plant-monster run free in New York, and then heads three million years back in time to find a ridiculous and moronic solution, Peter and Jackie, his girlfriend of the episode (seriously he had multiple love interests in cartoons; Mary Jane appears in one episode). They are looking for a solution in the attic of a house that belonged to Professor Smithers. Three items of note are found among his junk and junk: a large seed and a journal. The portal also has a permanent time portal to 3,000,000 BC.How did the professor manage to get the time machine into his attic. Who is paying the electric bill Screenshot: MarvelPeter exposes the seed immediately to the sunlight. It grows into a huge vine monster and crawls out of the window to make its way to NYC. Jackie opens the journal to discover that the Professor is still chilling in the past. Peter decides that the best way to stop this vine creature is to ignore the past three million years of human technology and weaponry advancements. He also discovers that he's Spider-Man.G/O Media could be eligible for a World of Warcraft 60 Day Time Card at Eneba. Use the promo code: 20210704One of the most interesting things about this classic cartoon is how Spidey is constantly owned by his many foes. This villain I like to call Total Lack of Continuity.Spider-Man shoots his webbing at the beast but he hasn't made any menacing moves towards him.After jumping into the air, the frog is apparently webbed and frozen in mid-air.AdvertisementWebs so sticky that they stick to the air! Except when they don't. Screenshot: MarvelThe frog suddenly lands on the ground, free from the Spider-Man. He flies over a 100-foot cliff.Spider-Man approaches the frog, who is now caught in a tree near Spider-Man's eye.Spider-Man again webs the frog, and this time it succeeds for some reason.Spider-Man is instantly brained immediately by a blue giant, who somehow sneaks up upon him. Spidey's Spider-Sense doesn't go off at any time during this.AdvertisementThese blue giants appear to be friends with Professor Smithers and bring Spider-Man along. Smithers is warned by the hero that the seed has sprouted, and the Professor responds, "I was afraid of that,"The Temple in the Heart of the City that the Professor Built for...reasons. Screenshot: MarvelAdvertisementThe Professor is able to stop this creature with radium, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, radium can be difficult to find. He explains this in his backstory. Smithers had all the men that he could find to build a city in 3,000,000 BC. He discovered that the vine creatures could also be destroyed by large gems made of radium. Two gems of radium were left after the vines had been destroyed. The prof said that they put the eyes of the large idol in their place. Unfortunately, the radiation that had killed the vines then began to transform them into sentient beings. Smithers were eventually expelled from the city. To live, they need the energy of the remaining two gems in the idol.Spider-Man approaches the city and discovers that the idol is in the temple. Batman's title of Worlds Greatest Detective continues to be unchallenged. Spidey is attacked and thrown through his web by several plant-people. One of them throws a trident through the web, which causes him to fall about 50 feet to the ground, landing directly on his back. It is not necessary to say that Spidey was alerted by spiders. He also did not have the idea to shoot another web. Spider-Man awakens in an arena and is forced to face a monster he can easily swing away from. He grabs the radium gemstones and then runs, leaving behind the city littered by the bodies of all the plant-people.AdvertisementHere's what the giant vine-monsters have been up to:The Big Apple is home to the big vine monster. Screenshot: MarvelAdvertisementIt's not going well. Spider-Man still swings through it. He literally swings through it with his webbing, passing through impossibly both sides of the time machine frame. The far side opens into a house attic, which impossibly doesn't break Peters momentum nor arc whatsoever. Peter then promptly shoves the gems down to the monsters throat. The bizarre thing is that this electrocutes the plant creature, before it dies. It is not mentioned in the episode how many deaths the vine thing must've caused during its rampage. Jackie mentions the disappearance of the professor's journal the next day at school. The time portal also stopped working. It was not wrapping up loose ends but letting them fall apart to the ground.LET THE BODIES GO TO THE FLOOR Screenshot: MarvelAdvertisementThis is not enough to describe how badly the Spider-Man cartoon looks. Yes, there are some excuses. TV cartoon budgets were often very low in those days and many were forced to reuse sequences to cut costs. Spider-Man only has three to four animated swings. This is a problem considering webslinging takes up nearly a quarter of an episode's runtime. This doesn't excuse the fact that the backgrounds aren't designed to accommodate these animations. Spider-Man is never able to feel like he's part of the real world, as his webs seem to be attached to nothing. In the few occasions he isn't swinging, he doesn't look like he's sitting straight on the ground.This is something that I am sure older Spider-Man games were guilty of, but it is still very serious. Screenshot: MarvelAdvertisementThere are some budgetary reasons for the animation's terrible quality, but there is none. It is absurd that McGuffin, the radioium, kills plant creatures and then somehow mutates them. This then makes the McGuffin the only thing keeping them alive. Even more bizarre is the fact that a random NYU professor created a time portal and decided to create a whole city millions of years ago with his friends. He then became friends with some blue giants and was kicked out by his own city. Then he just sat around waiting for what? There is a chance that some hero might eventually hide in his attic. It's hard to call the story illogical. It is so lazy it almost seems contemptuous, especially since so much of Vine's run-time is still padding out beyond this absurdity.This lazy storytelling has one advantage: it allows us to explore the space by ourselves, especially in regards to Professor Smithers's actual activities. Who would travel back three million years in time to build a city like that? What kind of person would be willing to volunteer their time to assist with such a project. What is the point of a huge temple that houses an immense, monstrous idol in a city? Smithers specifically states that we placed [the radium gemstones] in the eyes the great idol we constructed. The screenshot clearly shows people worshipping the idol before the attack by the plant-beings.The Professor and his cult worship their dark god. Screenshot: MarvelAdvertisementWhy, oh pourquoi, does the city's door need to be so big? It's not clear who will pass through it.Spidey was able to kill all the plant-people so that the Prof could continue his grim work. Screenshot: MarvelAdvertisementThere is only one reason why someone would do this. It's because they worship an H.P. Lovecraft-esque, Cthulhu style Elder God is trying to summon the unfathomable beast beyond time and space to destroy the world before the scourge ever comes. This is the only way to make a semblance of sense. Smithers and his fellow cultists didn't go back in history to build a huge temple and pray before the dark idol for their own health. They had a goal and it was unimaginable.If Vine had made any one of these things explicit, it could have been a great episode of 1967 Spider-Man. It didn't. Enjoy it and the rest for their old-school charm, extreme campiness, irony, or simply for fun. You should know that Professor Smithers power increases and the dread God beyond inches closer to our world when you do.AdvertisementPoor guy is so afraid he won't kill Spider-Man. Screenshot: MarvelAssorted MusingsSpidey's second battle with the past monster looks very anxious and is a little cute.Spidey runs into another monster on his way to the city and is forced to cross a huge chasm. It's hard to cut to: Spider-Man swinging merrily with the chasm behind him. His solution to this problem is not mentioned.I am proud to say that the plant guys have a king. He praised his vegetable superiority and hated Spider-Man's protein body.Spider-Man webs up a large creature and must tie his webs around a ring. Spider webs could be sticky like the spider webs attached to the monster.Another point is when one of Spider-Man's webs hits a guy with a plant, it explodes.AdvertisementScreenshot: MarvelSpider-Man takes the two radium gemstones that are at least three inches thick and one-foot in diameter. He then sticks them under his shirt, where they are placed in an alternate dimension in his stomach.Jackie asks Peter to help her explore the basement. This is not a good sexual metaphor, but it could have been worse.AdvertisementAre you curious about where our RSS feed went. The new one can be found here.
