"King Pinned"

Now that we’ve seen how Peter Parker became Spider-Man, it’s about time he had his first big adventure as a super hero. And who would be the first villain to take him on?

Guess who.

After a brief time-killer of Spidey swinging, we open with Peter trying to convince Aunt May that he should get a job to help out with the bills, since Uncle Ben bought the farm. Turns out the medicine she needs is pretty damn expensive. It's settled, Pete tells her, he's going to apply for a job at the Daily Bugle as copy boy.

Yeah, sure kid. Like your idol, Clark Kent.

Pete thinks to himself that he could cash in on his spider powers, but alas, he's a crime fighter now. “Gotta avenge Uncle Ben!”, he says as we're treated to a few minutes of Spider-Man swinging around town on his way to the Bugle. If it wasn’t for the familiar re-used stock footage and music cues from Season one, you’d think these later episodes were from an entirely different cartoon series.

The Daily Bugle: World’s Tallest Building.

At the newspaper office, publisher J. Jonah Jameson makes it clear that the Bugle doesn't need another copy boy, until he finds out that Peter is the kid whose uncle was murdered. Because, you know, there’s not a lot of murders on any given day in New York. He hires Peter, declaring, “That's my good deed for today”. Betty ( Lookin’ like a mighty fine 60’s babe ) shows the new kid the ropes. 

This is NOT a scene from "Mad Men: The Animated Series"

Pete makes himself at home in his new desk, but his spider-hearing ( You read that right, spider-HEARING ) picks up a conversation coming from Jameson's office, between the publisher and a Dr. Omar, about a fake medicine racket. Someone is manufacturing watered down medicine, and it seems the culprit behind this scam may just be the Kingpin, who Jameson refers to as a “Fat slob of a racketeer”! 

Proof that someone else works at the Bugle besides Pete, Betty, and J.J.J.

Parker carries out one of the menial tasks he was hired to perform, and overhears Foswell, one of the Bugle's star reporters, squealing to the Kingpin about Jonah's little expose'. This pisses off the “Fat Slob” to no end. Kingpin reminds that fink, Foswell, about a "black box", and tells him not to act further until the presses start rolling at midnight. Furious about Jameson's defiance, K.P. smashes his desk into little splinters with a karate chop, “I lose more desks this way”. Kingpin's outburst startles his goons a little, causing them to jump up in their seats, and their hats to fly off of their heads.

The Kingpin's goons have never heard the expression "What goes up, must come down".

K.P. decides to put the hurt on Jameson, so he rounds up his henchmen and goes to pay a visit to ol’ J.J.J. Smashing in Jonah's door ( With his cane? ) Kingpin insists the publisher kill the fake med story, but Jameson refuses. They haul Jonah's blindfolded ass out of the office, with a stealthy Peter Parker watching from behind a door. Pete changes into Spider-Man to better follow the crimelord, and pinpoint the location of the medicine lab. Gee, it’s Pete’s first day on the job as a super hero and a copy boy and he’s already seeing all kinds of action!

I believe the actual line is, "Why, that pip-squeak INK-SLINGER!"

In the comics, the Kingpin, a.k.a. Wilson Fisk was a crimelord operating under the guise of a legitimate businessman, covering his tracks and keeping his connection to the underworld a secret. Here he’s clearly threatening Jameson, a newspaper publisher for Kotep's sake! I can see the headline now: “Wealthy Prominent Businessman Actually a Blackmailing Scumbag!” Not what I would call shrewd.

Spidey follows the Kingpin’s car, well, at least I think that’s what’s happening. It's hard to tell. Spider-Man and the car are never in the same frame together. While the "chase" commences, a bystander named Harry ( Not Osborne ) witnesses the Wall Crawler swinging by on a long rope and walking on walls. He tries to convince his skeptical wife of what he'd just seen, but she's not buying any of it. 

Harry's wife is kind of a beyotch..

Spidey continues to follow the Kingpin up until the commercial break. So far this season we’ve only heard Ray Ellis’s music cues from Season 1, but after the break, suddenly we’re treated to “Beat Street” by Johnny Hawksworth, “Hellraisers” by Syd Dale, and “The Eyelash” also by Hawksworth as the soundtrack. Why the change? My guess is, for the excessive stretches of stock animation footage, the original music cues from Season 1 were too short, so library music was used, since it’s generally longer. If they’re gonna pad out these episodes, they might as well do it to good music. I won’t cover the music on this show too much. I’ll leave that subject to the experts. If you are interested in more info about the soundtrack to Spidey, check out the Spidey-Jazz forum at Yahoo Groups, moderated by Professor H himself, Henry Kujawa. Those guys are dedicated to tracking down and identifying the music tracks used on all three seasons of the classic Spider-Man cartoon, and so far they’ve accomplished a lot!

Listen to some Spidey background music HERE

When the Kingpin's men finally arrive at the penthouse, K.P. once again tries to get Jameson to kill the story. They brought Jonah all the way here JUST FOR THAT? They couldn't just as easily have put the screws to him back at the Daily Bugle? It's not like they were trying to avoid drawing attention to themselves, they smashed Jameson's friggin' door down, for gosh sakes! Just then, there's a knock at the window. The relatively unknown Spider-Man makes his appearance, prompting Jameson to exclaim, “So there IS a Spider-Man!”, and Kingpin to send his boys out on the terrace to take care of the Wall Crawler. Spidey makes short work of K.P.'s thugs, and then moves inside to confront the Fat Man himself in one of the most stupid showdown of this series. The tub of lard gets the best of the Web Slinger by gassing him with his smoke-emitting cane. K.P. and his hired thugs contemplate removing Spidey's mask, but decide there'll be time for that later. Not that it matters, because Web Head was faking it anyway! Ker-POW!

Spider-sense? WHAT Spider-sense?

Right after he gasses the Web Head, Kingpin mentions something about throwing Jameson and Spider-Man “in the tank”. However, we didn’t exactly get to see that happen, at least not until the Kingpin’s next appearance in this series, in the Season Three episode “The Big Brainwasher”. There he does put Spidey in a tank, which proceeds to rapidly fill with water, intending to drown our hero. Makes ya’ wonder if this is something the writers had planned for “Kingpinned”, but it didn’t make the cut. I’m guessing so.

The Tank, from "The Big Brainwasher"

Moving on... The Kingpin makes a break for it and ducks into an elevator. Spidey follows, but the elevator is booby-trapped with explosives, slowing down our hero and scaring the hell out of Jameson who cowers behind the desk. The Web Head tells Jonah to call the cops, and get the new edition of the Daily Bugle out, post haste.

Cool shading.

Kingpin tries to make his getaway in a helicopter, but the Wall Crawler is right behind him. The crime lord stupidly tells our hero "You win the round, but I win the fight! Remember the BLACK BOX!" We're treated to a few minutes of Spidey swinging after the copter to stretch out the episode a few minutes more, until he realizes that the black box the Kingpin spoke of is a bomb in the Daily Bugle press room, set to go off when the presses roll at midnight. Not that the clock on the bomb tells very good time..

The clock reaches zero at least twice.

As the next edition of the Bugle is about to be printed, Spidey arrives just in time to stop the presses and yank the wires out of the bomb, saving his place of employment from annihilation. It's such a happy moment that the show's producers felt the need to play the Spider-Man theme one more time. As if opening and closing the show with it weren't already enough.

What I believe is, that reference was already outdated at the time this episode first aired!

Pete returns home to Aunt May, already feeling better, who asks him how his first day on the job went. “Oh, just routine!” he says, winking to the camera.

Creepy!

This episode seems to come up a little short in the story department. Sure, Spidey dis-armed the bomb and saved the Daily Bugle, but Kingpin clearly got away ( Indeed returning in “The Big Brainwasher” ). The fake medicine lab is never found, and the drug ring plot is never resolved. My guess is, some of these subplots ( Including the scene with "the tank" ) were abandoned during the production of this episode in favor of those extra long chase scenes.

You'd think these guys would learn to draw Spider-Man's costume correctly.

While it is cool that we get to see that portly protagonist the Kingpin in animated form, he's really not much like his comic book counterpart. For starters, what's with the baggy eyes? Is his lovely wife Vanessa ( Unfortunately not featured in the cartoon ) keeping him awake all night?

Another character from the comics making his first appearance in cartoon form is ace reporter Foswell, who moonlighted as somewhat of a crime kingpin himself in the comics, as The Big Man.

So much for bringing in villains and other characters from the comics. We won’t see any of that again for quite a few episodes.

Something seems to be missing...

What's up with Spidey's eye?

"Peter? Why are you...winking at me?"

Next: “Swing City” and its “sequels”.