Spider-folk

I was looking for something to watch

Kind of mindlessly scrolling through the streaming channels. That thing where each icon, when ya hover over it , it goes “continue watching x” or “just added”. On the Disney one it showed Amazing spider-man, which made me think for a second “oh ok they got the sony ones” and I thought I could watch spider-verse. Well I was wrong, fooled into the Disney+ den. Out of the corner of my eye (the corner being me scrolling endlessly looking for it like a fool) I saw that they had the Spider-Woman animated series from the 70s and I was sent down memory lane.

So, when me and my sister were really young we had some vhs’s but not that many. It was a fun lil collection that we held very near and dear. Off the top of my head I can remember The little mermaid, toy story 1-2, Tarzan, and The Parent Trap as the movies that we had. There was also though two tapes that I was obsessed with. The first was a collection of old school 40’s-50’s cartoons. I could also talk for hours of that but this is about the other one. The other one being a tape that collected like 4 episodes of both The Spider-Woman series and also the 60’s spider-man cartoon. NOT TO MENTION, it also had a few of those animated Kirby marvel episodes but they were all just short summaries of characters that ranged from Captain America to the Mole Man. I was also obsessed with this tape.

My favorite episodes of the spider-folk, was that of Spider-woman vs mummies and Spider-man vs a theater ghost.

In the former, Spider-woman is tasked with rescuing her friend Spider-man from mummy’s in Egypt and prevent an alien invasion. Y’see the pyramids and mummies are actually aliens from outer space, and now they’re gonna turn us all into mummies unless Spider-woman stops them. Yknow! Aliens! Because brown people couldn’t have made em fool! Especially not the locals who live in the small village of Cairo. Anyways, all this while preserving her secret identity. At one point she says lemme sneak off without anyone noticiting and throws herself off a helicopter.

The latter of the episodes, has Spider-Man tasked with finding out who’s responsible for the recent haunting and shenanigans that’s been occurring at this theater that’s doomed for demolition…but the theater refuses to go! Who are the spirits that prevent the theater from harm? Is it a ghost?? Who’s got Spider-man sat with a knife to his side?? Most importantly, why does JJ Jameson want it gone so bad and why does JK Simmons do such a good job like 40 years later.

The spider-man show isn’t available on Disneys thing. Sadly, neither is the marvel animated Kirby comics but they’re available online!

For now I’ll just hold them dear , flaws and all, in my memory of watching those tapes in our shared room in San Ysidro. Try to make the memory clearer and ultimately just making it fuzzier. Though fuzzy as they may be they will remain, forever joined to the slight static that comes with vhs.