COMICS-TV stuff: Spider-Man - "The Wrath of the Sub-Mariner"
Speedos, midgets and explosive balls!
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Spider-Man has been probably been through more cartoon revisions than almost
any other comic character. Everybody remembers the nifty 1960's cartoons, with
their psychadelic backdrops, happy theme song and weird storylines (One episode
featured Spider-Man traveling to the future, where New York was ruled by
a giant talking plant...far out, man). People in my age bracket probably
remember the 1980's Saturday morning cartoon on NBC, "Spider-Man and his Amazing
Friends". And I suppose some of you young'uns were exposed to the 1990's
FOX cartoon, along with the recent MTV computer-generated cartoon. Sandwiched in between
these groupings was perhaps the rarest batch of Spider-Man cartoons, the 1981
series.
The 1981 series was Marvel's big return to cartooning. After outsourcing their cartoons
to other companies in the 70's, Marvel set-up their own animation company...
the company that would eventually infect the nation's youth as Sunbow.
"Spider-Man" was the first batch of several 80's Marvel/Sunbow cartoons. Without
it, there might not have been "G.I.Joe", "Hulk" "Transformers", "Spider-man and his Amazing
Friends" and ... horror or horrors, no "Jem"! Aside from the eventual
popularity, Marvel's animaton style was significant because they used fully drawn
panels, including the backgrounds. Hanna-Barbera and Filmmation were notorius
for reproducing or tiling their background elements and re-using character
designs and movements. The late 60's "Batman" cartoons
are a prime example of this (the batmobile
would pass the same sequence of 5 buildings while driving,and
Batman would hit the same pose when throwing a Bat-a-rang)
That was always a cool thing with Marvel's animation- no short cuts. You may not
care, but as a quasi-artist I appreciate that.
The animation style is somewhat slow, but the character designs were re-used the
following year for "Amazing Friends". Spider-Man's
voice actor was not brought back for "Amazing Friends", however
ALL of the familiar background tunes and sound effects are here.
What's interesting about this series is
that it's fairly close to the comic book Spider-Man of the late 70's:
Spider-Man fights most of his usual bad guys, works at the Daily Bugle and
torments its publisher, J. Jonah Jameson. There were some noticeable
differences from the comics, though: several stories had a goofy sci-fi flair to them, and
the writers seemingly tried to establish Dr. Doom as Spider-Man's arch enemy,
since every fourth episode featured Spidey facing off against Doom. Also, while Spidey is
hounded by Jameson, he's recognized by the public and the police, as if he were
Superman. You may also want to note that Spider-Man/Peter Parker is portrayed
as being in his early 20's. Only worth mentioning
'cuz young'uns might be used to the teen Spidey.
The series was known for including several characters you never expected to see on
TV.
Including this episode- "Wrath of the Sub-Mariner", which features not only
Namor the Sub-Mariner, but his cousin Namorita. The story opens with
Spider-Man tracking the gang boss Silvermane, who is in town to meet the
Kingpin. Kingpin's called a meeting of all crime bosses. Along with
Silvermane, Hammerhead and Caesar Cicero show up. Silvermane
looks like a cross between Lloyd Bridges and Lou Holtz, while Hammerhead
is his usual Dick Tracy villain rip-off. I don't recall ever seeing
Caesar Cicero in the comics, but he's basically a midget mobster. Maybe he
popped up in "Power Man and Iron Fist" ...I'm not sure.
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| "..and now fellas, please welcome
to the main stage, the vivacious Nita"
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But wait what's this? Kingpin's resident
mad scientist has whipped up a "universal disolvent" ...and is dumping
its waste products in the river.
Namor and Namorita are swimming along the river (which just happens
to have coral and resemble a deep-sea trench) when they run into the
waste. The waste has mutated a local octopus (umm, an octopus lives
in a New York river?) and has caused Namorita
to become ill. Namor fights off the octopus and flies 'Nita to a hospital.
There, 'Nita is placed in the care of Dr. Donald Blake(!) Namor, being
an environmentalist hippie, declares war on all pollutants
and begins attacking New York. He gets really nasty too.. he bends
the smokestack on a semi truck! Spider-Man swings in to
hinder him, but Namor goes to town by wrestling a chimney! The chimney's
smoke causes Namor to pass out and fall. Spidey saves him and gets him to calm down. The two hang out on a park bench as Spidey
tells Namor that in order to fight pollution, he should get be dealing with
"people of influence". Namor spots a random Daily Bugle paper and flies
away to meet their "man of the year", J. Jonah Jameson. Spidey is happy and continues tracking Silvermane and the Kingpin.
Spidey follows Kingpin's bunch to a fancy yacht. Spidey hitches
a ride, via web-skiing and is quickly caught by Silvermane's bodyguard,
Man Mountain Marko. As was common in this series, Spidey is chained up and tossed overboard. Weird, but almost every
episode featured Spidey being tied up somehow.. like the disturbingly gay version
of Wonder Woman or Phantom Lady comics of the 40's! Namor, meanwhile has been taking Jameson on a flying tour of polluted sites. Namor spots
the Kingpin's yacht and believes the men are adding more trash to the river. Namor hangs Jameson on a flagpole and flies down to deliver a LECTURE to the crime bosses. Namor then realizes that it was Spider-Man they threw over.
He dives down and saves Spidey, evening their score. The two shoot the breeze on the docks, then go back to their
previous missions. Spidey is off to do..umm, whatever, and this time Namor decides to find the source of what infected
Namorita.
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| "Namor, please don't tell MJ.."
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Spidey messes around with Jameson's flagpole (wow, THAT sounds bizarre)
while Namor tracks down Kingpin's vat of evil toxic waste. Kingpin's
waste is piled in a big ass standing septic tank that resmebles the water tower from
Petticoat Junction. WHY Kingpin felt the need to collect all his
waste in a big ass septic tank on the front lawn of his mansion BEFORE
dumping it into the river.... well he's fat, bald and a crime boss, I ain't
arguing. Namor disables the tank's dump piper and heads into Kingpin's
mansion. He has a quick melee with Man Mountain Marko and then fails
to THE deadliest trap known to any superhero - the electrified NET! Yes, the
terrible net... usually used to thwart Skeletor, Scooby-doo villains
or Gargamel.. here it's upgraded with (gasp) electricity!
Spider-Man sneaks into Kingpin's mansion with a lame disguise and saves Namor.
Kingpin has stockpiled several hand grenades of the solvent (actually, they
resemble water balloons) and starts throwing them everywhere. Strangely humorous
scene as Kingpin chases Spidey around the mansion with his explosive balls
(egads! ANOTHER bizarre sentence). Spidey webs the other crime bosses to
the wall as the solvent lab comes apart and the mansion's floor is dissolved.
Kingpin escapes by smashing through a wall and boarding his yacht.
Namor follows, and suddenly for some reason all of Kingpin's balls
blow up (ummm), dissolving the yacht. Kingpin is about to get munched by
the Evil Mutant Octopus, but Namor pulls his tubby-ness to shore.
All the crime bosses get busted while Namor and Spidey pal around.
They head back to the hospital, where Namorita has recovered.
'Nita flirts with Spidey as the two fish heads fly away.
Don Blake and Spidey wave goodbye, but Namor promises that he'll
be checking in on the "surace world" from time to time.
Subby would be back a year later as one of the "Seven Little Superheroes".
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| "Dammit! This is the LAST time
we come over to Kingpin's for Wild Burito Night"
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Okay scorecard: this has a guy in a speedo, male bondage, explosive balls
and a midget crime boss. It's like Namorita was included
to tone down the strange "interactive male" vibe. 'Nita's kinda cute...
she's like The Little Mermaid, only she's blonde and has legs. But aside from that, there's
some decent comic wackiness involved. First off, Namor seemed like a longshot
to ever appear in a Marvel cartoon, much less his cousin Namorita. Well, Namor DID have a slot
on the 1960's "Marvel SuperHeroes" anthology cartoon, but his comics died out in the 70's
and he wasn't exactly in high demand in 1981.
If he did appear,
you would expect to see him in a Fantastic Four cartoon, not Spider-Man.
We also have appearances by all those crime bosses and even the obscure
Man Mountain Marko. There's even the cameo appearance by Thor, in
his civilian guise of Dr. Don Blake. All sorts of nifty comic trivia in
here.
I've never cared for Namor, simply because the character comes off like
a snob. But after watching this I noticed another reason why he's always bothered me.
His costume - Guy flies around in a green speedo. That's it. He makes
Wonder Woman look like she's wearing a parka. At least the worthless
Aquaman had enough decency to clothe himself.
Marvel liked to toss in guest-stars for this series, as Captain America
and Madusa popped up in later episodes. The writers apparently liked
the "Marvel Team-Up" groove, as they re-tooled this series while adding
Iceman and Firestar the next year. Spider-Man's always been a good hook
for guest stars, in both the comics and cartoons. As a kid, that's why
I never really cared for Spider-Man in the Avengers or
another superteam- he teamed up with everybody, anyways.
Intersting note about this series and it sucessor, "Amazing Friends"-
both were put out to promote the COMICS... not a toyline.
Like I said, I think this series is rather rare. I taped this
off of UPN, circa 1999, but the ABC Family channel
might have shown these in 2002 during the Spider-Man craze. A few episodes
were released on VHS in the late 80's, but those are tough to find. Out of all
the Spidey cartoons, this series was probably my favorite, simply because
it was straight-forward stupid superhero stuff.
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