Episode #62 - Secret Wars, Part Two: The Gauntlet Of The Red Skull
Original Airdate 14th November 1997

Spider-Man summons the Black Cat from earth, who despite her anger at being kidnapped, decides to help him fight the villains on the alien planet. The heroes must defeat the Red Skull, Doctor Octopus, and Allistair Smythe's robots while protecting a group of rebels, who are trying to take their planet back.

Credits
Written By: Virginia Roth
Music Composed By: Shuki Levy and Kussa Mahchi
Animation Services By: Toyko Movie Shinsha (TMS)
Guest Starring: Christopher Daniel Barnes as Spider-Man, Robert Hayes as Iron Man, Joan Lee as Madame Web, Earl Boen as The Beyonder, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Doctor Octopus, Earl Boen as The Red Skull, Maxwell Caulfield as Allistair Smythe, David Hyter as Captain America, Iona Morris as Storm and Joseph Campanella as The Lizard

Review: Whilst it’s true that part 2 is easily the weakest part of Secret Wars, it’s still entertaining. One odd point is the beginning, in which we see Blade and Morbius. I wasn’t expecting to see them here (the voices must have already cost a fortune!) and to be honest, I’d rather have seen more time on the alien planet rather than a few essentially wasted minutes here. It was all relevant however, as Spider-Man used the last of the machine’s power to transport Black Cat to Battleworld in order to help him and his team.

Speaking of Black Cat, good God she was annoying as hell here. Her arrogance towards Captain America, her attitude towards Spider-Man and her lack of well…everything when it came to The Red Skull. I mean, Spidey asked her to help a planet full of people and he gets lip? The sheer number of times she fell or screwed leads me to believe that Spidey should’ve called on someone useful to help him… like Ms. Lions.

The scene, which they are walking to the fight, was a little weird, as they were stopped 3 times for almost exactly the same thing. At last Spider-Man took charge, and used his Spider Sense for once.

Another annoying aspect of this episode was telling us Black Cat’s origin. Again. For an episode which bridged the beginning and ending of arguably the biggest story the series set out to tell, I don’t see the point of telling the story again. Surely it could’ve used on something… anything.

Despite the fact there was a hell of a lot of characters to animate, this was a very nice looking episode, as were all Secret Wards episodes. The designs of the aliens were a little generic, and once again, there was a few 12 foot tall robots built by Alister Smythe. As much as I love this show, I don’t think I could stomach more ‘Slayer’ robots. The original Spider Slayers were the best, the rest of them were dull, generic robots, most of them defeated far too easily.

The guest stars were still handled pretty well, specifically Iron Man, who revealed a little about himself. Despite the fact I’d seen all of season one of his own show at the time, I knew relatively little about him, as none of the writers of his show bothered to develop him. I was a little disappointed we didn’t see the FF, but they were basically the stars of the next episodes, so it made for it.

Spidey’s being the leader is a little unnatural for the character, but it works so well here, even with Captain America’s logical arguments. Whilst this episode did waste a little time, and was nowhere near as entertaining as part one or it’s conclusion, it was still an entertaining endeavour.

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