The Mutant Ages

Kraven the Hunter has hatched a plan to breed a dinosaur army that will help him take over New York, and the technology that he's using to do it requires Firestar's heat powers. To Bobby and Peter's chagrin/jealousy, Angelica is easily seduced by Kraven and doesn't realize what's going on until after he's kidnapped her and put her in an airplane hangar. But this isn't just any airplane hangar; it's a glorified Danger Room made up to look like the Savage Land, and it's full of traps designed to stop our heroes. With Ms. Lion in tow, because she gets to go everywhere with them, Spider-Man and Iceman set off to save their BFF. Unfortunately for us, Kraven and his traps are far less entertaining than those of his more beloved sibling Chameleon (or at least, more beloved on *this* podcast).

Next episode: "Along Came Spidey," Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

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Currently removed from Disney Plus, "The Quest of the Red Skull" is both offensive and poorly written. The Spider-Friends team up with Professor Hiawatha Smith, an indigenous American version of Indiana Jones who would be a really cool character if he weren't also a Noble Savage stereotype with magic powers based on "Indian lore." In this episode, Red Skull and a couple of Nazis are seeking out an old map to Hitler's hidden stash of missiles and cash, and Hiawatha Smith is the one who's been holding onto the map for protection all these years. Once the Nazis steal the map, our heroes follow them to the island, overcoming a series of Legend of Zelda traps and swastika-based environmental puzzles once they arrive.

Next episode: "The Crime of All Centuries," Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

E-mail us questions and feedback at [email protected], or follow us on social media at TheMutantAges. If you like what you hear, please consider supporting us via patreon.com/themutantages. Thanks!

Kingpin makes his debut on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends and he actually comes off pretty well, devising a plan to brainwash Captain America and steal a multi-purpose ray gun developed in secret by the US military. The brainwashed version of Cap enlists Iceman to help him, and Iceman doesn't need any brainwashing in order to do whatever Steve Rogers tells him to do, including treason and murder. Spider-Man and Firestar have to help their gay BFF out of trouble, as usual.

Next episode: "The Quest of the Red Skull," Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (note that this episode was removed from Disney Plus because Hitler is in it! Look for it on Daily Motion if you're watching along with us.)

E-mail us questions and feedback at [email protected], or follow us on social media at TheMutantAges. If you like what you hear, please consider supporting us via patreon.com/themutantages. Thanks!

Remember the Black Knight from the movie Eternals (2021)? The Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends episode "Knights and Demons" actually does a better job introducing this character. Prior to the events of this episode, the Black Knight banished Modred (not to be confused with Mordred) to the Land of Shades, so Modred sends an enchanted gargoyle statue to Earth to steal the Black Knight's magic sword from a museum at the Spider-Friends' college. The gargoyle and the Black Knight both show up to fight over the sword in the NYC streets (and skies), so the Spider-Friends get involved, but they sure aren't helpful. The entire rest of the episode plays out like a Dungeons & Dragons game in which the Black Knight has surprisingly few points allocated to dexterity. Although, actually, it's not a Dungeons & Dragons game, because in this show, that game is called Sorcery & Serpents. Also, Peter and Bobby and Angelica are all members of the SCA, and we aren't even kidding about that bit.

Next episode: "Pawns of the Kingpin," Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

E-mail us questions and feedback at [email protected], or follow us on social media at TheMutantAges. If you like what you hear, please consider supporting us via patreon.com/themutantages. Thanks!

Many miles north of Norway, a tanker crashes into an iceberg and it's all according to Loki's evil plan. Iceman gets a call from an old hookup and/or government contact to rescue the crew on the sinking tanker; he brings Firestar and Spider-Man along, even though only Firestar is useful at all. Thor shows up for maybe no reason, and it turns out that all of this stuff happened because Loki was trying to steal a magic gem from an ancient Viking vessel embedded in the iceberg. The gem gives him ultimate cosmic power, blah blah blah. What actually matters in this episode is that Bobby Drake meets a Frost Giant queen and then has a full-on panic attack because she wants him to be her king. Poor Bobby...

Next episode: "Knights and Demons," Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

REFERENCES:

An article about Loki: https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/loki-hero-or-villain-comic-book-history

The Comphet Google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vT3f5IIzt5PG-M7G9_Z-gjY4gZaiUneTdMlYrFAcdBGcJo0-N-RDQcj2JfxOaBTxKa6J_DiDQNgqVpg/pub

E-mail us questions and feedback at [email protected], or follow us on social media at TheMutantAges. If you like what you hear, please consider supporting us via patreon.com/themutantages. Thanks!

Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends does a very strange send-up of the film industry in "Spidey Goes Hollywood," in which Mysterio has built an elaborate lair underneath a studio lot on which a famous director named Sam Hollywood is filming a Spider-Man movie. Mysterio kidnaps Sam and forces him to get the real Spidey to star in the film, but Spider-Man won't agree without bringing along his friends Firestar and Iceman. Mysterio's real plan is to make a snuff film in which Spider-Man literally dies on set, and he needs to distract Iceman and Firestar from saving their friend so he creates sexy robots to seduce them. Now, you read all of that, and I bet you were thinking, "You know what this episode needs? For the incredible Hulk to show up!" That's what Marvel apparently thought. Why? Who knows. Who knows!

Next episode: "The Vengeance of Loki," Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

E-mail us questions and feedback at [email protected], or follow us on social media at TheMutantAges. If you like what you hear, please consider supporting us via patreon.com/themutantages. Thanks!

Todd, Ryan, and Maddy meet Video-Man for the first time (well, kind of) in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, and we find out that he was originally created by the villain Electro, who may or may not be a video game developer. Either way, Electro lives in an underground lair beneath Manhattan, and he's been sending Video-Man arcade cabinets to select locations. That's because Video-Man has the power to leap out of his arcade machine, suck people into it, and also collect various pieces of metal for Electro to use to build a high-powered transformer. Flash Thompson gets sucked into a game cabinet first, in a game of Pong — actually, uh, it's called Pongo — and soon after, Bobby and Angelica get stuck in a game cabinet as well. It's up to Peter to save them all, which he actually doesn't need to do because everything just explodes at the end and Electro dies. We think? Also a bunch of other random shit happens along the way that doesn't even matter. What is this show?!

Next episode: "Spidey Goes Hollywood," Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

(The next episode chronologically should have been "The Prison Plot," but we already watched that because we watched this show out of order! Yay!!)

E-mail us questions and feedback at [email protected], or follow us on social media at TheMutantAges. If you like what you hear, please consider supporting us via patreon.com/themutantages. Thanks!

Ryan, Todd, and Maddy meet their new favorite character, the Chameleon, in "Seven Little Superheroes," the latest wacky episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. This supervillain is a gender-fluid shape-changer who has a grudge against Spidey, Iceman, Firestar, and also four other random superheroes (Captain America, Namor, Doctor Strange, and Shanna the She-Devil). All seven of these superheroes get a mysterious invitation to the Chamelon's private island, which is a lot bigger than it looks and is full of traps designed to entice and ensnare them all. We love the Chameleon and we love how goofy this episode is.

Next episode: "Video-Man," Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

E-mail us questions and feedback at [email protected], or follow us on social media at TheMutantAges. If you like what you hear, please consider supporting us via patreon.com/themutantages. Thanks!

Ryan, Todd, and Maddy watch the Cold War-era horror story that is "Swarm," an episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends in which Earth is suddenly under threat from a mysterious object from outer space. The outer space object first lands near a beehive, which results in the bees transforming into a human-shaped swarm that has the power to shoot brainwashing beams at people to turn them into insect-like worker drones. Iceman and Firestar are susceptible to these beams, but Spider-Man isn't, because he's already a bug. Except he's also a free-thinking, individualist human, darn it!

Next episode: "Seven Little Superheroes," Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

E-mail us questions and feedback at [email protected], or follow us on social media at TheMutantAges. If you like what you hear, please consider supporting us via patreon.com/themutantages. Thanks!

Maddy and Ryan invite Todd to the wild ride that is Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, specifically the episode "Sunfire" in which, you guessed it, the mutant Sunfire shows up alongside his evil uncle. For some reason, his evil uncle from the comic books isn't in this episode but instead a new character named Uncle Genju is here, with a rather more kid-friendly storyline than Sunfire's uncle had in the comics. Firestar and Sunfire have the exact same power set, and that plays a role in Uncle Genju's evil plot to create a fire monster that will destroy Manhattan and facilitate his world takeover. Once Firestar figures out what's really going on, she gets Spider-Man and Iceman to help her defeat the monster and clear the way for her to hook up with Sunfire. Up until that final battle, Bobby and Peter have mostly spent the episode dicking around and helping out Aunt May with her various helicopter-related foibles. We talk about the helicopter a lot.

X-Men spotlight: Sunfire

Next episode: "Swarm," Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

E-mail us questions and feedback at [email protected], or follow us on social media at TheMutantAges. If you like what you hear, please consider supporting us via patreon.com/themutantages. Thanks!