The way that I do these write ups is that I initially watch the episode and make sporadic jot notes. Sometime after the fact I’ll go back and attempt to assemble those jot notes into the column you are reading today. Oftentimes I will have to replay sections of the show to remember what happened or what I was talking about. There’s probably a better, quicker way, but that is what it is right now. That said, the last note I made while watching this episode was “Wow these shows are bad now.” That’s not a good sign. The first note I made was “Seriously, how much drugs were these guys doing?” That could be a good or bad sign. Spoilers: it’s bad.
This is the first of many episodes that take Spider-Man out of the familiar surroundings of Manhattan and plunk him down into some weird looking “alien” landscape complete with strange creatures to battle.
On assignment for the Bugle, Peter visits with a scientist that has been receiving mysterious signals from underground that are in an unknown language. When the doctor plays the recording for Peter, Peter can understand what the recordings say and hears plans to make another bank disappear. But, how exactly can Peter understand the recordings? His super enhanced Spider-Hearing? His patented Spider-Translation-Matrix?
At any rate, Peter high tails it to the bank as Spider-Man only to see it “disappear”. Now, there is a giant bank sized hole in the ground, so I think anyone should have been able to put two and two together to figure out what happened to this and any other banks.
Spidey makes his way down into the hole and the LSD induced madness ensues. It takes Spidey forever to descend down into the hole to reach the caverns below, and then he swings around endlessly looking for answers. Makes you wonder just how big these caverns are in length and width?
In his travels Spider-Man encounters some giant black bird creatures that you better get used to seeing. As well as a gigantic blue humanoid rock monster (that you better get used to seeing) who after it’s defeat Spider-Man ironically says “Well, there’s someone I never want to meet again.”
Spider-Man then discovers a stories tall door to a temple that you better get used to seeing. Once inside, Spider-Man finds the temple is home to a species of blue (I guess they used up all the green paint on previous episodes) furry creatures that we’ll learn are the Subterraneans. Spider-Man sneaks his way into the main room of the temple where they are holding the bank on a mechanised platform of some kind. Oh, and Spider-Man seemingly kills at least one of the guards along the way. But they are only lowly Subterraneans, so that’s ok.
After Spider-Man plays “Three Stooges” in fighting with the inept Subterranean guards, he seizes the leader. Tearing off his mask to reveal Muggs Riley, the bank robber! Who is…you guessed it..green! Haha, this is like a bad Scooby Doo episode. Riley manages to get free and pulls a gold gun on the webslinger. It’s not the same model as that used by the Master Technician and Skymaster, but it looks like it came from the same store.
But the Subterraneans, who are not masked crooks, but real, down to Earth cave dwellers, are not too happy about the fact that Riley tricked them into stealing from the surface people. They knock the gun from Riley’s hand and Spider-Man has to save him from taking a major beating.
The Subterraneans thank Spider-Man for revealing the false leader and apologize for the trouble they caused. As they raise the buildings and hostages they had captured back to the service they vow to never steal from the surface people ever again. Remember that. Never. Again.
I think I want to find every awful human leader asking us to do bad things and check to make sure they aren’t Subterraneans in a mask now.