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Ultimate Spider-Man
#66 - S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy
Original Airdate - July 7th, 2015
Spider-Man's education at S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy begins! But Spidey's academic career might be cut seriously short when a long-dormant villain awakens from hibernation and sets his sights on destroying S.H.I.E.L.D..

Ultimate Spider-Man is produced by Marvel Animation and carries a TV-Y7-FV parental guideline.

Pretty good episode. The humor is still kind of lame, but I thought it was at least toned down this time. There were some dumb moments but the story played out rather well. The action scenes were staged well, the only thing that bothered me (at least during the team's first training exercise) was Spidey explaining everything that was happening on screen. Other than that, I don't really have any complaints. Since the last episode aired I pretty much forgot which other heroes were introduced on the show, and joined Spidey's team.

I thought the concept of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy was pretty interesting. Various heroes being instructors for different stuff. It kind of makes sense, and it could lead to some nice cameos along the way. It was pretty great seeing Whizzer on this show. I could have lived without the jokes about his name or Spidey laughing at it, though. Neat to see one of Marvel's Golden Age characters animated again. I liked his brief moment with the scrapbook, with pictures of him fighting alongside Captain America. The little talk Nick Fury had with Spidey at the end of the episode was decent.

Arnim Zola was a pretty decent adversary. Great to hear Mark Hamill voicing him. Zola didn't really seem that threatening (not only because of his silly true-to-the-comics design), but his army of synthezoids was pretty cool. The fight scenes between the heroes and Zola's army was good. I doubt this was the end of Zola, though. The episode felt like it was setting him up to make a comeback. Hopefully his next story will be better, or at least more entertaining, than this one.