EPISODE REVIEW

Episode #7: Catalysts
Original Airdate: April 26th, 2008

It's the night of the Midtown High Fall Formal, and Peter Parker finds his overconfidence is nearly his undoing – as both a teenager and a super hero. While his date, Mary Jane Watson, threatens to invert Midtown's social structure, Pete lets her popularity go to his head. So when the mysterious, murderous Green Goblin tries to force L. Thompson Lincoln (a.k.a. Tombstone) to step down as NYC's Big Man of crime, will Spider-Man take this new threat seriously enough – or will he be so cocky that he loses his big head?!
Credits
Written by Andrew Robinson
Directed by Victor Cook
Music by Lolita Ritmanis, Kristopher Carter, Michael McCuistion
Animation By Dongwoo animation

Voices
Josh Keaton as Spider-Man/Peter Parker
Lacey Chabert as Gwen Stacy
Joshua Lebar as Flash Thompson
James Arnold Taylor as Harry Osborn
Allana Ubach as Liz Allan
Steve Blum as Green Goblin
Andrew Kishino as Kong
Phil Lamarr as Rand Robertson, Robbie Robertson
Peter Macnicol as Otto Octavius
Vanessa Marshall as Mary Jane Watson
Daran Norris as J. Jonah Jameson, John Jameson
Alan Rachins as Norman Osborn
James Arnold Taylor as Harry Osborn

Review: Stu - Catalysts finally sees the reveal of The Green Goblin but the intrigue doesn’t stop with his arrival – it’s only cemented it further as the identity of The Green Goblin has only strengthened the show as there’s a few viable options as to who is actually under the mask beyond the obvious. Norman doesn’t really have anything to gain from being The Goblin, Harry is seen to be taking the formula to improve his footballing abilities (he should just train every Wednesday like I do with soccer, you know, proper football!) and with this show, you never know if they’re going to pull out some random character and have him be The Green Goblin. With Blum voicing The Green Goblin, even The Chameleon looks like a plausible candidate.

Speaking of Blum, I thought he did a stellar job here. I’m only familiar with Blum from his work as Wolverine in the X-Men: Legends and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance video games (a role he will reprise in the upcoming Wolverine And The X-Men cartoon) but he managed to pull of a maniac Goblin well here. Design wise, it’s pretty cool. I admit to not being too fond of the design when I first saw the toy of it but I’ve gotta say… the toyline for this show sucks badly. Out of all the figures seen so far, only The Sandman looks halfway decent. I did think the Glider was cool though – perhaps the best looking Goblin Glider we’ve ever had.

I’m loving The Big Man’s involvement here – I’ll always miss The Kingpin but Tombstone’s involvement here is going a long way to helping me getting over it. Kevin Michael Richardson is great in the role and his dialogue is spot on – Richardson is much better at playing chilling, sombre characters than over the top wackos in my opinion. I’m looking forward to seeing where this storyline is going, it’s been a gripping ride so far. I’m really looking forward to getting this show on DVD, hopefully as a nice season set, with all the bells and whistles included.

The show continues it’s string of stellar fight sequences here as Spidey’s smackdown with The Green Goblin was another first class throw down. The animation has been consistently strong as has the staging – while the models themselves do take some getting used to, one can’t deny that they move with grace.

Overall, another very strong episode which has only further added to great story this season has set out to tell. Kudos to all involved, it’s been great so far!

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