|
 Review and Media By Stu
Episode #12 - Pawns Of The Kingpin Written By: Donald F Glut Music Composed By: John Douglas Guest Starring: George DiCenzo as Captain America, Walker Edmiston as The Kingpin and Dennis Marks as Dr. Faustus. Review: This episode sees another guest star from the Marvel Universe appear, and introduces another big rouge from the Spider-Man comics into the show, in the form of The Kingpin Of Crime. I love Kingpin, I think he’s one of, if not the best villain Marvel has to offer. I still think his portrayal in Spider-Man: The Animated Series is one of the finest villains I’ve ever seen in animation, a criminal mastermind pulling the strings and keeping his hands clean the entire time, but I knew not to expect that going in here. He’s a typical thug here, but his design is very reminiscent of John Romita Jr’s original design, which is great in my book. There are very artists out there that come close to matching Jazzy John’s legendary style and it translates so perfectly to animation. I would love to Romita inspired designs in the next Spider-Man show, it simply fits so perfectly on so many levels. As previously mentioned, Captain America guest stars here, but is brainwashed for the majority of the episode, as he and Iceman try and steal a deadly weapon for The Kingpin. There’s very little to Cap’s character here, but the episode is too much fun to notice. His underdevelopment wasn’t anything to complain about in all honesty, he served his purpose and allowed for a humorous joke in the end in which Bobby froze the tape he recorded his interview on. After realising he would have to interview another celebrity, he interviewed none other than himself. Disney cuts this from their airings, which shows how utterly disgraceful they’ve treated this franchise. Please, someone release them in DVD in their original formats so we can watch our beloved cartoon void of any stupid edits. If you’re old enough to remember 80’s cartoons, you’ll probably remember they often forgot to include common logic in their plots and stories, and Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends. The best example happens in this very episode, as Kingpin pushes a button that will cause the gun to self-destruct in 7 seconds. After a good 2 or 3 minutes of screen time, Spider-Man finally abandons the gun and shots “3…2…1” and the gun blows up. I’m not kidding, what should’ve been an almost instant explosion lasted several minutes, as Kingpin explained his plan to escape, escaped, Spider-Man deduced it was time to leave the aircraft and managed to leap out of the craft and float on top of Fisk’s parachute before the damn thing finally blew up. I couldn’t help but laugh at the scene right until the episode ended. Pawns Of The Kingpin is one of the show’s funniest episodes, one can’t deny. It’s not terribly original, or thought provoking, but it’s fun so you really shouldn’t complain. Screenshots: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
|
