8.5

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Is a Fresh New Take on Classic Spider-Man

By Garrett Martin  |  January 29, 2025 | 3:00am
TV Reviews spider-man
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Is a Fresh New Take on Classic Spider-Man
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It’s hard to mess up Spider-Man. Steve Ditko and Stan Lee struck on a bulletproof formula when they cooked up Peter Parker in 1962: the nerdy teenager that was in the process of becoming their target audience was now the hero, and it kind of ruined his life. Marvel became a comics juggernaut in the ‘60s by introducing superheroes with defining flaws, and to their audience none of them were more relatable than Spider-Man. That remains true today, as proven by the character’s ongoing preeminence among the superhero set. The power of Spider-Man and that original formula are reinforced by the new animated series Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, which premieres on Disney+ today, and which tells an excellent Spider-Man story despite changing almost everything other than that most basic formula. 

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is simultaneously a very traditional approach to Spidey and a complete reshuffling of the individual ingredients that make up the character’s history. At the start of the first episode this Peter Parker, an “alternate reality” spin on Tom Holland’s MCU version voiced by Hudson Thames (who I will always and forever know only as Caleb Went from I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson), is as Peter Parker as it gets. He’s a scrawny, awkward high school freshman and science genius with no real friends—for approximately the first three minutes of the first episode. It took the comic book Peter 31 issues to start forging a strong friendship, in that case with Harry Osborn; here he immediately saves the life of fellow student and immediate best friend Nico Minoru (in the comics a member of the non-Spidey-related team the Runaways, and the first of many references to other Marvel characters that pops up in this series), preventing her from getting squashed during an unexpected fight between Dr. Strange and… Blackheart, I want to say? (Or at least a Blackheart who’s also somehow Venom’s alien symbiote?)   

Those first few minutes set a lot of this show’s ground rules. It establishes a strong visual identity from the start, referencing the look and structure of classic comic books, complete with borders and screens that split into multiple panels (editorial notes even pop up on-screen in boxes on occasion), and paying clear tribute to Steve Ditko’s signature art style. It’s like a considerably more restrained take on the comic-indebted aesthetic of the animated Spider-Verse movies (just don’t expect to be counting any Ben Day dots). That opening also makes it clear that this isn’t the same old Spider-Man, with a new group of friends that includes only one name historically considered one of Peter’s pals. And by making Dr. Strange the first reference to the larger Marvel ecosystem, it underscores the show’s devotion to Ditko—his two biggest Marvel creations, after all, were Peter and the Sorcerer Supreme.

No matter what medium he’s appearing in, Spider-Man (and Peter Parker) are heavily defined by their relationships—from caretakers Aunt May (here basically a one-for-one copy of Marisa Tomei’s MCU performance) and the deceased Uncle Ben, to Peter’s friends (in both normal and superhero life), to his mentors. In the original Marvel comics that includes the Fantastic Four, who are almost like family to him; in the Marvel movies, that role is filled by Tony Stark. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’s biggest (and most marketed) twist is that Peter is taken under the wing of Norman Osborn—traditionally his arch-enemy, and here making his MCU debut, as voiced by the electric Colman Domingo—via an internship at Oscorp. This Peter-Norman relationship has shades of Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man movie, with Peter once again having an intellectual relationship with Osborn that his own son Harry (here a popular social media influencer, and yet still somehow a truly nice guy) could never match. It goes far deeper than that film, though, following the beats of Peter’s MCU relationship with Stark; Osborn doesn’t just empower Parker’s scientific experimentation, but starts to turn Spider-Man into something of a corporate product—an Oscorp-owned weapon used to protect the status quo. That friction between Osborn’s exploitation of Spider-Man and his seemingly genuine paternal fondness for Peter is a constant (and dramatically rich) throughline for the show.

And despite that all, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man maybe isn’t really Peter’s show at all.

Yes, Peter (and Spidey) is the protagonist here. Throughout the first season’s 10 episodes he is clearly and consistently its main focus. And yet he’s not its most interesting character, or the one I was most emotionally invested in. Spider-Man’s name is in the title, and is always at the show’s center, but the character it loves the most—and the one you might wind up loving the most, too—is Lonnie Lincoln.

If you’re a diehard reader of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe you already recognize that name. This Lonnie Lincoln is very different from the one in the comics or Into the Spider-Verse; instead of the lifelong criminal turned brutal middle-aged gangster known as Tombstone, this Lincoln is basically the Flash Thompson of Peter’s school, the quarterback hunk Homecoming king type—only he’s legitimately a cool, easy-going guy instead of a bully, and both Peter’s lab partner and the boyfriend of Peter’s dream girl, Pearl Pangan. Peter Parker’s a pretty tragic character, what with his father figure uncle dying because he selfishly refused to stop the crook that eventually killed him (a crucial part of Spider-Man’s origin and Peter’s personality that is intentionally not repeated in this series); here Lonnie is an even more tragic figure. He’s a kid from a rough neighborhood who gets to travel to a good school far from home due to his NFL-level talent, but who also works hard to be as good of a student as he is an athlete. He has a brilliant future ahead of him, but when he sees his younger brother falling in with a local gang, he steps in to save him—and gets trapped in an environment he had largely escaped. The war between Lonnie’s gang and their rivals, the Scorpions (whose leader is, yes, named Mac Gargan), drives most of the action throughout the season, with Spider-Man, Nico, and Pearl all becoming involved; in a sense Lonnie is the character the whole season pivots on, even more than Peter. By the end, as he starts to show some of the traits of the comic book character he’s based on, Lonnie’s fate seems sealed, even if the season ends on a positive note for him; but then this show is all about defying the expectations of comic book fans, so perhaps this version of Tombstone will wind up on Spider-Man’s side.

This inspired take on Tombstone sums up how Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man sorts through comic book history to create something familiar but new. That’s also evident in the intricate season-long story it establishes around the rivalry between Norman Osborn and Dr. Otto Octavius—the villain best known as Dr. Octopus, and the traditional Spider-Man character who (along with Peter) sees the least amount of reinvention. If you didn’t know Norman Osborn was Peter’s greatest enemy you wouldn’t be able to tell by this first season; he’s definitely more sinister at the end than he initially appears, but throughout these 10 episodes Norman mostly seems like a positive force. His true nature is revealed late in the season, when he delivers a speech that turns Ditko and Lee’s defining thesis—“with great power comes great responsibility”—on its head. It’s enough to make you wonder if this show will actually commit to a Spider-Man with completely inverted morals—one for whom the end justifies the means, who whole-heartedly embraces the corporate, military-industrial complex core of Norman’s worldview. You’ll have to watch to find out, but it’d be a pretty huge break with the character as it’s always been portrayed, wouldn’t it?

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man may or may not be willing to go that far, but it does take surprising liberties with specific notes while retaining the key and structure of the classic Spider-Man tune. This is clearly, recognizably Spider-Man, in its original Peter Parker flavor, and pointedly a part of the MCU despite being animated. (The “superhero civil war” caused by the Sokovia Accords pops up in the background throughout the season as a muted, tangentially related footnote happening somewhere far away from Peter’s high school life in Queens, a hint at the bigger role this character plays in the movies and might play in this show’s next season.) It’s a Spider-Man in a New York that looks far more like the New York of today than the one Ditko and Lee portrayed six decades ago, and a Spider-Man series unlike any of the many others we’ve seen throughout the years. It’s a Spider-Man filled with references and allusions for the hardcore fans, but straightforward and freestanding enough to not alienate anybody who’s never picked up a comic book before. Most importantly, it’s a Spider-Man story that knows what makes the character work, and knows what it can (and shouldn’t) change to keep things interesting. If you’ve ever cared for the original, ungainly teenager version of Ol’ Webhead, you’ll probably enjoy Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. And you’ll no doubt want to join me in my letter-writing campaign to make sure Paul F. Tompkins gets to voice his character Bentley Wittman not just as a sniveling scientist at Oscorp but in his classic supervillain guise of the Wingless Wizard, the one-sided would-be arch-foe of the Fantastic Four, at some point in season 2.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man premieres on Disney+ with two episodes on Jan. 29. Eight new episodes will be released weekly on Wednesdays through Feb. 19.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.

For all the latest TV news, reviews, lists and features, follow @Paste_TV.

 
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