The Many, MANY Intros Of Spider-Man> Your Friendly Neighborhood

I saw the preview for Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, seen above if the embed still works. I’m not impressed.

I don’t have Disney+, and this gives me less reason to do so. Let’s count the failures:

1. For the second time in a row if you don’t count shows for five year olds (although I do) we have Peter going to a genius high school, like with Marvel’s Spider-Man on Disney XD.
2. Is May still Peter’s aunt? In addition to another deaged Aunt May we never see Peter call her “Aunt May”, just “May”.
3. Looks like we’re going for a time paradox or something interdimensional as Doctor Strange fights a symbiote victim of some kind by the looks of it.
4. The animation isn’t the worst I’ve seen but the aforementioned five year olds show was better.
5. See that kid at the school that looks like Flash Thompson and thus shouldn’t be at a genius school? He’s not Flash Thompson.
6. Peter will never be seen in the proper Spidey costume if all the trailers and clips are to be believed. It will, however, have a lot of cringe humor that makes Ultimate Spider-Man look hilarious in comparison.
7. Apparently “radioactive spider” was too much for this one so they swiped Miles Morales’ power origin from the Spiderverse movies. Which DID have the radioactive spider as Peter’s origin.
8. Peter’s social awkwardness issues in high school got turned up past 11 on this. Another thing they got from Miles and the Spiderverse, and I’m not the only one to notice this. I wasn’t even the first. Someone else mentioned it and after seeing the clips I have to agree.

Surprisingly it’s the series available on demand that brought back the intro, something that two of the three shows I just mentioned didn’t have. (Advantage: five year olds.) Even more surprising? Apparently the theme song cares more about Spider-Man than the animation and show. It was in the above clip, but let’s isolate and examine it.

Visuals first: that actually looks like Spider-Man if you ignore the outfit. The way he swings and sticks to stuff is how I expect Peter to look while doing it. The admission that this comes from comics in the form of the various actual Spider-Man outfits in the corner box makes me think someone really wanted to make sure you knew this was totally Spider-Man because it’s the only thing. There’s even an homage to the cover of Amazing Fantasy #15’s iconic Spidey cover, with the wrong outfit and the random guy replaced with Effeminate Black Harry Osborn. Even the reveal of the replacement supporting cast is actually a cool review of all the decent people in Peter’s life that will be drawn into Spider-Man’s world, including the latest not-Mary Jane Watson love interest.

I found a version of this intro that was backwards for some reason, but the title card was different, possibly to reflect the episode. If so that’s a nice addition. I do like when they go that mile because it leads to something unique and another reason to watch the intro each week, to see what change will be added significant to the episode or just to stand out from the last one.

Then you have the theme song. While rap mixes are usually closer to Voltron Force‘s “Let’s Voltron” in quality. That quality being low. “Neighbor Like Me” is the opposite. It’s actually a really good theme song. Performed by the team up of people I’ve never heard of–The Math Club, Relaye, and Melo Makes Music, it mixes in the original Spider-Man intro song with lyrics that celebrate how cool Spider-Man is and the nickname that the show gets its name from. Here’s the full version.

It retains the catchiness of the original and gives it a fairly decent update. So many of the rap update intros were clearly made by people who didn’t care about rap music or the source material, but this does both. I like it.

So this is a really good intro to this Spider-Man series. Too bad the show itself looks so lame and un-Spideylike. What’s a good intro like this doing in a show like this. Maybe the next Spider-Man series will have a good intro, be a good adaptation, and be a good show overall? We don’t seem to get those anymore.