Spider-Man: The Animated Series Episode Reviews

Framed
Review by Stu, Media by Kolbar

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Episode #33 - Framed
Original Airdate: September 21st, 1996

Peter believes his luck is changing for the better when Richard Fisk, son of Wilson Fisk, hires him for a job. Things turn out to be too good to be true when Fisk frames Peter for a federal crime. Enter Peter's lawyer Matt Murdoch, also known as the vigilante Daredevil!

Credits:
Story By: John Semper and Mark Hoffmeier
Written By: Brook Watchell and Cynthia Harrison
Music Composed By: Shuki Levy and Kussa Mahchi
Animation Services By: Toyko Movie Shinsha (TMS)
Guest Starring: Christopher Daniel Barnes as Spider-Man/Peter Parker, Ed Albert as Matt Murdock/Daredevil, Nick Jameson as Richard Fisk and Roscoe Lee Brown as The Kingpin

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Review: Enter: The Man Without Fear! This episode is the first of a two-part story-featuring Daredevil, and is easily the best team-up episode the series ever did. Whilst Daredevil didn't look as good here as he did over his Fantastic Four episode, I found this to be the better written of the two, with this Daredevil clearly being one of the post-Frank Miller era. Just a sidenote: if any of you aren't Daredevil fans, I'd highly recommend picking up some of Miller's Daredevil books. It's the best stuff he's ever written, in my opinion. I find Daredevil: Born Again to be his best work ever.

I could go on all day about my own fanboy dream for a Daredevil animated series, but I'll spare you. These episodes are quite clearly the best we'll see for some time, unfortunately. Given that the majority of cartoons are aimed at children, and Daredevil doesn't seem to be one of the kiddies favourites, he'll probably always be demoted to eternal guest star status. A great shame, he's far more interesting than most of Marvel's superheroes. As for this show, they did a pretty good job with him. A great voice and a pretty faithful translation of his origin makes this The Man Without Fear's greatest animated adaption yet. I couldn't help but be slightly dissapointed the likes of Foggy and Karen didn't appear, but this is Spidey's show.

The plot is something different for Spider-Man. As the title of the episode suggests, our hero has been framed for treason! In an unusual twist, both Peter Parker and Spider-Man were framed, thanks to The Chameleon. This episode had a large cast, and thankfully no one really seemed too underdeveloped here, and I thought there was some great stuff with Det. Terry Lee here. I found her to be a pretty cool character. As far as I'm aware, she was created for this TV show too.

The best part of the episode was Daredevil himself. He had a very badass design, which again, came as a surprise. Beyond the first season, someone in charge obviously lost the plot when it came to visuals. Most of the new designs weren't too pretty to the eye, the animation was inconsistant throughout each episodes, and the colouring made everything look dull and basically, it didn't pop on the screen, especially when compared to the first season's beautiful visuals.

Overall, this episode was one of the best the series had to offer, and started a string of very strong episodes from the third season.

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