Episode Review - Cry Vulture
Review and Media by Stu

Episode #7 - Cry Vulture
Original Airdate - February 10th, 2001
A friend of Naoko's is kidnapped, and Spider-Man sets out to save him. When Spidey learns that the victim is going to be used as a human lab rat, getting to him becomes a race against time-which is complicated by the appearance of two new Beastial foes, Firedrake and Counter-Earth's very own version of the Vulture!

Credits
Story By: Roger Slifer, Michael Reaves, Will Meugniot
Written By: Diane Duane, Peter Morwood
Directed By: Patrick Archibald

Review:
I'm not sure why this show keeps turning the alternate version of Spidey's rogues gallery good, but I'm not really seeing the point of it. This time The Vulture is turned into a good guy, but to be honest, he's so much like The Green Goblin that he seems so superflous to everything going on. The series seems to be using the same bad ideas over again, and for a series that is halfway into its brief 13-episode run, it shouldn't be running out of steam this quickly.

The Vulture himself was pretty uninspired. His childhood back story didn't really hold my interest and there's too many similarities to The Green Goblin, to the point where it's distracting.

The plot of the episode is pretty shallow, and Spider-Man's reluctance to give The Beastials what they deserve is getting confusing. They were experimenting on people, and when their operation was destroyed, Spider-Man stopped the people from killing Sir Ram. Fair enough, Spider-Man doesn't murder. But Ram got away with it completely! Spidey didn't attempt to stop him, which strikes me as a baffling character choice. This plot with The Beastials running the world doesn't seem to be going anywhere, especially since Spidey won't oppose them unless they attack him. It's getting tiresome. Strike that, it's always been tiresome, now it's just getting irritating.

The episode's ending did leave me intrigued, however, with John Jameson turning into The Man-Wolf. I've never been too big a fan of this character, but let's see if this show can change that ...

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