‘SPIDER-MAN BATTLES THE MOLEMEN’

Please feel free to comment on my review.

Here we are again with another dreary ‘Spider-Man’ episode from Season 2 to sit through. Except this time, it’s a sequel to a previous episode – ‘Menace From The Bottom of the World’. And it’s not a very good sequel, judging by how much of the animation from the previous episode is being reused.

In the episode, a bank disappears underground. Just like in ‘Menace From The Bottom of the World’! Spider-Man wonders if Mugs Reilly, who was the Mole Men’s leader, has escaped from prison. That must’ve been fast work for Mugs Reilly to escape as it has been two episodes since the previous one.

Spidey soon swings down into the underground again and fights the Molemen again. In fact, I’m puzzled. Weren’t the Molemen upset that Mugs Reily had been using them to steal from the banks of New York? How did he manage to regain their trust so quickly? This is all pretty confusing for me.

As I’ve indicated, a lot of shots from ‘Menace From The Bottom of the World’ get reused in this episode. You can tell that the animators and the production team were struggling to come up with new stories to tell in the series. It makes the Season 1 episodes even better than the Season 2 ones!

Mind you, there is something new in this Molemen episode. Spidey comes across some small bearded green-skinned trolls (are they related to the Hulk too?) who attack our webslinger when he tries to be friendly with them. Wouldn’t it be a lot better for the trolls to be friendly to Spider-Man?!

I’m not saying it would make the episode better, but at least we’d have an interesting story where the trolls were being oppressed by the Molemen underneath New York City. There’d be a question of how the trolls exist underneath New York City, but this series is not very good at explaining things.

There are also a number of unnamed New Yorkers, who I’m sure were in the ‘Menace From The Bottom of the World’ episode too. In fact, that Daily Bugle reporter might be the same one from the other episode. Jameson doesn’t appear in this episode compared to the other episode. This is a pity.

In the end, Mugs Reilly attempts to shoot Spidey but destroys his machine instead when our hero ducks. Rather stupidly, I think. The Molemen also promise to leave the surface world forever, which was what they promised in the other episode and failed to do here. Overall, this has been really dire.

‘Spider-Man Battles the Molemen’ rating – 3/10