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Matthew
I don’t know if there’s wind blowing inside this studio. I don’t know if you can watch us on YouTube in black and white, but we are here to discuss Spider-Noir, the new show that just dropped on Netflix about Ben Riley, one of the Spider-People who was introduced in the Spider-Verse movie, who’s been a part of comics at various points. And here he is in a live-action Nicholas Cage eight-part gumshoe detective show set in the 1930s in a superhero kind of world. And I’m here with Will Freeland, one of our MCU experts from Hype Is My Superpower. Will, how are you doing today? Tell people a little bit about yourself because they probably haven’t heard from you in a little while.
Will
Will Freeland, how are you doing today? Hi, yeah, it’s been a minute. I am all over the internet as SylverDreamer — S-Y-L-V-E-R dreamer. I love Marvel. I read Marvel. I read way too much Marvel. And whenever there’s a Marvel property that comes out, Matthew and I see if we can cross paths and chat a little bit about it.
Matthew
Yeah, definitely. You and your podcast partner Steve have become two of my favorite Marvel guests, especially with stuff like this where I think we’ve talked a lot about X-Men, we talked a lot about Spider-Men and things like that. And today we’re diving into the Spider Universe.
And many of you may have seen the show — we’re going to spoil a lot of it, but even if you haven’t, we’re going to kind of keep you up to date because I think there’s some interesting questions both around the making of the show, but also within the show itself because it is very much a hardboiled detective, who’s-the-good-guy, who’s-the-bad-guy, not really clear, everyone-has-their-own-agenda kind of show — the kind that we really love and love to talk about. So let me just ask you to put on that Marvel expert hat. Who is Ben Riley, Spider-Noir or Spider-Man Noir?
Will
So this is a little tough because this is a brand new Spider-Noir. Conceptually, there’s been a Spider-Noir in the comics, there’s been the Spider-Noir in the Into the Spider-Verse animated movies, and this is a third, brand new take. So the Spider-Man Noir from the comics is Peter Parker in his timeline, and he gets bitten by a genetically altered spider — I think from Oscorp. And he has that holy-goodness-I’ve-got-spider-powers moment, and there’s superhuman things going around the town that he feels he should deal with. So he does the Spider-Man thing. It’s your classic kind of blend of Jessica Jones Alias P.I. stuff and your typical Spider-Man Peter Parker story: great power, great responsibility, that kind of thing.
Matthew
So it’s noir in that it’s playing off of the film noir gumshoe idea? It’s not black and white?
Will
It is. In the late O’s — 2008, 2009 — Marvel did this noir series with different characters. They did a Daredevil Noir, a Luke Cage Noir, a Spider-Man Noir, an X-Men Noir, and all of them were four-issue mini-series set in the early 1930s, black and white, just a fun new take on Marvel.
Matthew
And there was a question of whether this fit into — I’m trying to find the number — 616? This wasn’t supposed to fit into that. This was supposed to be kind of a “what if,” a fun alternate thing.
Will
Yeah, its own thing, a different Earth. This was a little before they really got obsessed with multiverse stuff. It’s like Dan Slott on Spider-Man introduced the Spider-Verse storyline in like 2012, I think. Before that, you just have all these different versions of Spider-Man out there: the Japanese TV Spider-Man that inspired the Power Rangers, Spider-Man 2099 with Miguel O’Hara, Peter Parker, Ultimate Spider-Man — just all these different versions. Dan Slott introduced the idea of the Spider-Verse, where we’re going to get every single Spider-Man that’s ever been on paper or on screen and throw them into one giant multiverse-spanning story. That really took off. But before that, it was just its own thing, standing alone, doing whatever.
Matthew
And so in those comics, is Peter Parker still the high school or young adult version, or is he the kind of 30s/40s Sam Spade, down-on-his-luck gumshoe detective that we associate with film noir — the private eye that at least the Spider-Verse and now this show is referencing?
Will
He’s always been the adult version of Peter Parker. His coming of age — he figured that out as a child. He’s very much aware of what it means to be an adult in New York. Admittedly, I didn’t read the original Spider-Man Noir stuff. When it came out I was getting into my big comic book renaissance, and I’d asked my buddy who managed the comic store I frequented: should I be caring about this noir stuff, because more and more books are coming out? Luke Cage Noir was out, and at the time Luke Cage was my second favorite hero right behind Spider-Man. He said, no, don’t worry about it. So the first time I really came across Spider-Man Noir was in the Spider-Verse stuff.
Matthew
Let’s talk about the Into the Spider-Verse stuff. I know some comics, but I want to talk about the movies, because that’s what I think a lot of people know and probably how Spider-Man Noir came to kind of mass consciousness. For those who haven’t seen it or don’t remember, in that movie Miles Morales’s Spider-Man comes into contact with spider-people from many different universes. That’s the kind of thing you’re talking about. It involves Peter Parker, Spider-Ham in a very early Looney Tunes kind of style, the Japanese anime little girl piloting a spider mecha basically controlled by a tiny spider. A couple of others. And one of them is Spider-Noir, who is played by Nicolas Cage — very much a private eye, but a spoof of the private eye. A character drawn in black and white, with the wind always blowing in his world, and everything he says is the most overblown purple-prose kind of detective fiction of that era. That one really took off. Now, had that character being such a spoof been something from the comics, or was that really for the Spider-Verse movie?
Will
No, I feel like that was very much for the movie. Spider-Man Noir was also a playable character in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, a four-universe-jumping Spider-Man story. In that one, you basically play as stealthy — playing with the shadows, very Batman: Arkham Asylum feel. In that version he’s serious. Spider-Man Noir was always just not a banter type. He’s more serious and black and white about the situation. But he’s never been the parody of a P.I. He does the investigations, but he’s not the joke character he’s portrayed as in Into the Spider-Verse.
Matthew
Well, that makes sense, and I think it helps better explain this TV show. I always try to go in completely blind now. I didn’t read any previews, didn’t watch any trailers. I just knew there was a Spider-Noir TV show starring Nicolas Cage, who voiced that character in Spider-Verse. So first I find out it’s live-action, which I thought would be animated. Then I find out it’s a very different thing. There’s a lot of humor in it, but it feels much more like what you’re describing from the game and the comics than from the Spider-Verse movie, because there is real drama. I expected some of that, but it is nowhere near as playful with the concept as it is a pretty straight-shooting modern telling of a “what if Spider-Man were Sam Spade.” What was your take? Did you know that going in, or were you also a little surprised it wasn’t more jokes about the wind?
Will
I was honestly expecting this to be a side-story spin-off from the Spider-Verse movies. I fully expected this to be set in between Into and Across, maybe, because he shows up at the end of Across the Spider-Verse but he’s not really in Across. I thought at the very end he’d get scouted by Gwen: “Hey, we’ve got to go help Miles.” So I was really happily surprised that this was very much its own thing — just playing off the popularity of the named character but doing its own storytelling. And I think that let them have more fun with it, being able to do whatever they wanted without being constrained by what he said in Into the Spider-Verse. Yeah, it was fun. I was very happy with it.
Matthew
Yeah, it’s a weird thing because I admit I was very thrown, and probably it took me an episode or so to get over that feeling. That character was so much fun, and you can’t just have him making jokes about the wind forever — you have to develop character with a real show. But I felt like there was a way to do that. I think it took me until something like the end of the first episode to feel: okay, this isn’t what I thought it was going to be, but this is pretty cool. I’m locked in. And it sounds like for you it barely took that first episode to adjust?
Will
Yeah. I had a great time. I was surprised at how great a time I had, honestly. I thought it was going to be campy. I thought it was going to lean a lot more into the Into the Spider-Verse version, because I don’t think Spider-Noir from Into the Spider-Verse can carry his own show. I don’t think he can be a main character. But this version we got was just so much fun. I love when you tell a story that’s not an origin story. You don’t have to do the hero’s journey for the character because they’ve been through it. There’s no learning curve. It’s just using the tools at hand to figure out the plot they’re dealing with now. That’s why I think the Spider-Man PlayStation 5 game was so good — because he was already years into being Spider-Man. And that’s why I think this Spider-Noir did better than I expected, because he’s already been Spider-Man. That’s already a thing. So it’s really just about Ben — and there was one scene where he said he doesn’t go by that anymore, he goes by Ben Riley. I think it was one throwaway line in maybe episode five, so I’m not even sure if that’s a thing.
Matthew
I think it was kind of a nod to the Uncle Ben type of thing. In the Spider-Verse movie, he does reference a Ben Riley who is his version of the Uncle Ben character. So it well could have been that. I think it also could be that this is the guy who then becomes a later Spider-Noir. But I think you’re right — it was kind of like, we’re going to play into that, but mostly not focus on it. And actually there really are some twists on the great-power-comes-great-responsibility theme.
Will
Yeah, that came up a couple of times, and I liked how they changed it up a bit.
Matthew
And I hear what you’re saying about being glad it wasn’t a spider origin story. Now as origin stories become a bit overdone, I do think a new cliché is evolving: the pick-the-suit-back-up story. And often this is the third movie in a trilogy, but now some things are just starting with it. In the video game, he just is Spider-Man. In this — as with a lot of other properties recently — he’s tried to retire. Something tragic happened. And a lot of the story is about will he become Spider-Man again. I thought that was a bit of a cliché, but I liked how they did it because you’re right, it doesn’t have to be about the suit. There’s one small gag about him breaking back into his apartment to find the suit, but beyond that it’s not about how to shoot webs. It’s really the question: do I want to be a hero? Do I want to use these powers?
Will
I really agree that the “do I pick up the suit” storyline is done best as a third kind of movie, because you need to connect with the character first to understand how big a deal it is to pick it back up. That said, the tidbits we get of Ben’s struggle — the city thinks I’m a hero, but I never did it for that reason. I did it for the thrill, for the jollies it gave me. I’m not a hero. And so it’s this back and forth: what is a hero, can I be a hero, do I even want to be one? All that comes into play when the first time in a long while he gets back into it, he screws up somebody else’s operation because he’s a solo player. And that’s classic anybody’s story. He’s like, well, I guess I’ll never try again. Take my ball and go home. Seeing something so relatable happen in a show like this pulled me in more. I got really invested in seeing Ben. He’s already accepted his powers — now it’s how does he use them, and why. That was a really fun arc.
Matthew
In some ways it is the hero origin story, because by the end he has decided to become a hero and to be selfless and to use his powers not only to help others but to put himself aside. Spoilers, but I will say: this show has many things. It was not terribly unpredictable. But there’s this element of the femme fatale — he thinks she’s in love with him and they’re going to run away, but it turns out she’s really using him to rescue the person she’s actually in love with. He does the Humphrey Bogart Casablanca thing — helping the two of them be together while he goes off by himself. I really like that because, to me, it’s not the origin of a hero in terms of “I would do good if I had this power.” It’s really a discussion of what do I do with this power.
And one thing that really helps it is the fascinating origin story they give us. Let me ask you to start here. The origin story is that a group of men who were soldiers in the American army in World War I come across a German camp where the Germans have created a way to make super soldiers. The Americans who liberate the area all get exposed somehow. For example, there’s a straight-out-of-a-horror-movie half-spider, half-person who bites Ben Riley, and that’s how he becomes Spider-Noir. So, is that idea — a Spider-Noir origin tied to World War I and PTSD — something we’ve seen before?
Will
That was totally different and brand new to me. I can’t put money down and say no Spider-Man has ever had this origin before, but I strongly believe no Spider-Noir has.
Matthew
Yeah. I did some digging, including talking to Jessica Plummer, our real history of comics expert, and doing some of my own research. In the 1930s, as part of the huge wave of noir detective novels and movies, there were detective comic books — DC Detective Comics comes from that era, and Batman was the idea of one more hard-bitten PI, but with a bat thing. None of them went into the idea of PTSD because they were pulp. As the 1930s were, the language didn’t exist — you might call it “shell shock” — and you certainly weren’t going to address it in a comic book. But I never really thought of this before: part of why so many of these men are cynical and broken and having real trouble is probably because a lot of them were in World War I and got really screwed up by it. I’ve never put that together before, but I loved how they used it here.
Will
Oh my gosh, yes. Are we doing spoilers on that part? Cool. So I thought the reason Ben was more genetically stable was because he was like a second-generation, you know, air-quotes thing. They did the experiment on one guy, he became a half-spider mutant type thing, and then he bit Ben. So Ben was a second, diluted dose. I thought that’s why he was stable, not because Ben was genetically special.
Matthew
Oh yeah, that makes sense. Because it’s not really clear how the others got it. One of the ideas is that Ben Riley is one of the only stable ones — a lot of the others are having massive anger issues. A lot of the PTSD-adjacent behavior — and I want to be careful not to play into stereotypes of people with PTSD — but the impulse control issues, the instability, and the fact that it will eventually kill them: that’s a major thread.
Will
And Ben’s PTSD manifested as his alcoholism and his self-destruction as the Spider. They didn’t explicitly say it, but if you look at it through the lens of shell shock, self-destructive behavior — that’s very much how Ben looked at being the Spider: I’m just going to go out there and get punched in the face voluntarily, and maybe I’ll do some good at the same time.
Matthew
And like you said, it’s to get the thrill. And it feels like they weren’t doing Easter eggs, but they were saying: we know this is a Spider-Man story, and we’re not ignoring that. Part of that is that he has a girlfriend who died because he couldn’t protect her from his nemesis — very much the detective noir cliché. He had a woman he thought he could protect. And what’s her name? Gwen. I only think they said it once or twice. But I had that moment: oh, right, because Spider-Man has Gwen Stacy, who often dies. I thought that was such a brilliant little way of saying: we’re mostly telling you the detective cliché, but don’t worry, there’s a little Spider-Man DNA rattling around in here.
Will
Yeah, God, it was just so much fun. I had such a great time. And I love the antagonists and the powers they use. You’ve got to love a Sandman.
Matthew
Yeah. And that’s what I was building to with the whole World War I thing. Silvermane is pretty clearly the main antagonist — he’s the crime boss, the kingpin. He does not have superpowers, but he’s manipulating all these powered people to work for him. But beyond him, everyone else in that show is someone with pretty mixed motivations. They’re often antagonists to Ben, but in the same way Ben didn’t start out doing things for the most heroic reasons, these people are often just trying to survive. Some of them are veterans not getting paid properly, Black men being treated badly, using some of their powers to fight back against that. The guy who’s Sandman — he’s in love with the femme fatale character, Cat Hardy. He works for Silvermane for a while, but his point is always to protect his woman. When he realizes how Silvermane is taking advantage of that, he switches sides. I never felt any of them were truly evil. I could always understand where they were coming from, even when they were antagonists to Ben. How did you feel about the way they were portrayed?
Will
Sure. And just as a storytelling overarching theme, I feel like there are very few purely straight villains anymore. It’s always a contention of principle: here’s one way to deal with this problem that involves a lot of death, and here’s another way that doesn’t entirely solve it but saves the most lives. And one benefit to that approach is you don’t have to kill off the villain by the end — you can have recurring antagonists, as long as they’re not your Joker or your Thanos, where all they care about is total destruction. I found it very entertainingly convenient that everybody’s motivations, if you twist the perspective a little, can have them team up: “This is my situation, I can sustain myself working for Silvermane, so just let me do that unless you’re going to go and change the world.” It was very well done. I was very happy with it.
Matthew
And especially because it’s told against the backdrop of desperation. Silvermane’s running the city, the mayor is corrupt, the police are corrupt, and it’s the 1930s — the Depression. Everyone’s hungry, everyone’s trying to figure out where their next meal is coming from.
Let’s talk about Kat for a second, the femme fatale. I didn’t realize this until I looked it up, but Kat Hardy — played by Li Jun Li, who was just fantastic in this role — I thought she was a character made up for the show. Certainly they don’t indicate she’ll become a powered person. But what I learned is that Kat Hardy, or rather Felicia Hardy, is the actual name of Black Cat.
Will
Felicia, not Felicity. Yeah, talk about that — I assume you clocked that in a way I didn’t. What did you think of this take on the character?
Matthew
Oh, it’s so much fun. My biggest fanship is Peter Parker and Felicia Hardy. For those who don’t know Black Cat or who she is, she’s literally Catwoman to Batman.
Will
Morally, sometimes villain, sometimes helping him, always flirting with him.
Matthew
Always flirting with Spider-Man, ends up learning who Spider-Man is, flirts with Pete in front of Mary Jane. So Kat — burglar, Black Cat, Felicia Hardy. She has an implant that creates bad luck for the people she pursues as enemies. Don’t ask how it works, because: magic, man.
Will
And she is fantastic. In the comics or other portrayals, is the idea of her alter ego being a loud singer connected to the mob — is that something they created for this, or is that in the source material?
Matthew
That’s not how she’s portrayed in the comics. However, that is exactly how she would be portrayed in the 1930s in a noir-style story. That’s the perfect casting for a Black Cat in that era. Absolutely.
Will
Yeah, I thought it really worked. And my not knowing it didn’t take anything away from enjoying the character. But knowing it now adds a fun little wrinkle. So let’s talk about her role in this, because I think this is a more modern, feminist twist on the femme fatale — she’s not just the object of desire, there’s a real arc.
Tell me if you think this is accurate. We start with her clearly wanting to save Flint, the guy who’s become Sandman. When it seems like he’s either unsavable or has been bad to her, she kind of gives up on him — or at least what she shows Ben is: I’m over him, but I still need you. First she hires Ben to help rescue Flint. Then she hires Ben to protect her. Then she starts flirting with Ben. They make out a few times, and they start planning to pull one over on Silvermane and run away to French Polynesia or somewhere. Eventually it’s revealed she’s always been trying to save Flint, and she tries to do that by betraying Ben’s secret identity to Silvermane, which gets him and everyone else in a lot of trouble.
I think there’s a way this story could have been told as: look at this terrible woman who’ll seduce men left and right to get her way. But they had a very different play on it, because she also flirts with Silvermane a lot, and he thinks she really means it. My sense is the story the show is actually telling is this: here is a woman who, in this time and place, every man expects that all she is is the romantic ideal, the sexual ideal. They can’t conceive she might be faking romantic interest — that’s the only way she can survive, let alone get these men to do what she wants. So they all feel betrayed when they realize she was playing them, because they underestimated her, because they saw her only as the femme fatale. And at the end, Ben kind of grudgingly accepts that, even while still being angry. Does that read right to you?
Will
Yeah. I think that’s a plot you can only tell in a 1920s/1930s setting. If this were set in the 21st century, I think they would have played up her sexualization a lot more and it would have been less well-written and less well-received. It fits in this early-20th-century timeframe where women were seen as tools by most men and not actual people. So there’s this blatant, non-sexualized objectification of Cat that again only works in this setting.
And the way they wrote Cat — she played so well this character who follows her feelings and feels for everyone she gets close to, but is able to play the role the man in front of her expects. You see where her heart actually lies. In comparison, the way she acts with Silvermane: she’s clearly just playing the role for him and he doesn’t see it. He’s just like, yeah, that makes sense, that’s my girl, moving on.
Whereas with Ben, you can see how she fell, or could see herself falling, for him. It’s very much like: if Flint wasn’t here, Ben would be the perfect man for me. When she’s not around Flint she sees Ben and thinks: there is a future here, I’m going to see where this goes. But then every time Flint comes back, she realizes where her true feelings lie. Anyone who’s spent time single as an adult and navigated dating gets it, I think.
Matthew
So I was a fan, especially because it’s not just “when Flint is around.” There’s a real duality of Flint, and a real sense of: is the man I knew as Flint, the man I loved, still there? Or is he just a different person now because of the powers?
And he does treat her pretty badly. I think you’re right — this is a story that only really works in this time period. And you and I are both male-presenting people, so women fans, if you disagree, please let me know. But I feel like the story they’re telling could very easily fall into a bad direction of “it’s not really him when he hits her,” playing into clichés. The fact that we know it’s a specific condition he’s dealing with — with a subplot about a doctor trying to heal him but making things worse, amplifying his violence and emotional instability — feels like the show saying: we’re not talking about people who just have mental problems and lash out at others. We’re trying to talk about something different here.
But yeah, Ben jumping to see her as manipulative is both understandable, and we’re also supposed to understand: it’s not that, and it’s a little sad. I think for telling it at the end, she tries to say she was really thinking about running away with him, that it had genuinely come back to her. And he comes back in part because the MacGuffin of all this is an antidote that takes away all superpowers. Ben was going to use it on himself, but they get down to only one last dose — of course — and he gives it to Flint when Flint is in danger of dying without it. So Ben’s sacrifice is to make his romantic rival whole again. And she says: I want you to know I would have been with you. And he says: go to hell. He’s angry at her. Part of me didn’t want that, but it also felt real. On some level he will eventually understand and believe her. But right now it’s easier to be angry, easier to feel betrayed. And even if you let go of her feelings for him, she did betray a secret identity to the big bad and almost get him killed.
Will
Exactly. And that’s why I love it so much. I can’t put any of these characters into a simple black and white — which is funny, because the show is in black and white, but everything is morally gray. No one is clearly a good guy or a bad guy, except maybe Silvermane.
Matthew
And I think the whole plotline with Cat is only believable because of how convincingly Li Jun Li played it. If there was ever a moment where you couldn’t see the emotion in her eyes, or any lack of conviction when she’s saying to Ben “I totally would have” or reminding Flint how much she loves him and that they’ll figure it out — if she ever didn’t sell it, the entire plotline would have fallen apart. But she did such a great job.
Will
Yeah, I loved it. So let’s talk about some of the other powered people, the other antagonists. We have Flint, who’s clearly Sandman. And there’s another guy — I think they give him a different nickname — but he’s basically the Electro of this world. He becomes the main antagonist in terms of who’s actively fighting against Ben.
Matthew
So Megavolt is a character — oh, he’s just taking Electro? Yeah, he’s like a zealot character from an older era. Actually, I want to say Megavolt just got put on West Coast Avengers, I think. He’s trying the hero thing. Anyway, Johnny Watt is the one I’m thinking of, though I’m not sure that’s who Megavolt was in this version. It doesn’t matter. He’s electricity-based powers.
Will
Yeah — pull any electricity-based character. Having someone who is naturally incredibly violent and then giving them a walking taser is a hell of a villain to throw in. And we talked about this way back when we were doing Falcon and the Winter Soldier: how it was hard not to side with the Flag Smashers until episode six or so, when they actually start killing people. You need a Megavolt to continually cross that line, to make clear: oh wait, yeah, you guys need to be stopped. Because if you have your Lonnie Lincoln and your Flint Marko who are just tragic stories trying to get by, it’s harder to root for Spider-Noir until Megavolt shows up and always takes it too far.
Matthew
Yeah. And it’s nice the way they do that, because I think the idea is that Megavolt was like this before his powers manifested. He was drunk, he went to war to be a bully, he was a bully afterwards. There’s even a moment where Silvermane tells him: you’ve got to learn to control your impulses. To me, if you take Silvermane and Megavolt in this, you have lawful evil and chaotic evil. Silvermane is very much the mob boss. Megavolt is just random destruction.
Let’s talk about Lincoln, because he was also a character I found really fascinating. His powers start to develop where he is a veteran fighting to get his benefits. They do some interesting things with race in this that I don’t really feel qualified to speak to at length, but just acknowledging that on the one hand there are a lot of Black characters with significant roles in this world that wouldn’t necessarily be realistic for the real 1930s. But they do talk about the racism those characters are dealing with, and Lincoln certainly is. And Lincoln — is he supposed to be like the Lizard? Because he gets kind of lizard-like scales on him.
Will
Yeah, I think they just made him more monstrous. Because Lonnie Lincoln, originally, is a Black man with albinism. He has indestructible skin — he’s like a bad-guy Luke Cage. He ground his teeth to points. His gangster name is Tombstone. He was a side boss in Spider-Man 2018 on PlayStation, a supporting character in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man on Disney+. He’s been used a lot more in the last decade. He’s also a heavy player in — I think it was Nick Spencer’s run of Spider-Man, a few years ago.
So Lonnie Lincoln, Tombstone: just a mafia-level, kingpin-type character. Historically, a Black man with albinism, and in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, when a Black man gets powers and it starts manifesting, his skin turns white — it’s almost an ego or logo kind of thing. Whereas here, they gave him the more lizard-like, monstrous look. I think that’s partly a play on the black-and-white format — if you’re watching in black and white, you’ve got to make it visually distinct that his power is manifesting and becoming a problem for him. I’ve never seen Tombstone portrayed monstrously like that. That was new for Noir.
Matthew
Well, if you think about it, both the physical presentation is monstrous, but the character portrayal as well — I think even before Marko, before Sandman, Lincoln is probably the first one to start saying “wait a minute, I kind of got wrapped up with Silvermane because the cops were after me and all this other stuff, but this doesn’t feel right.” I think he’s one of the most morally gray “I’m not sure this is what we’re supposed to be doing” characters in the show.
Will
Yeah. In the comics he has a daughter who’s a villain, so there are family dynamics. He always shows restraint until his daughter is in trouble. And as far as Spider-Man villains go — or antagonists, I should say — they tend to have at least one or two storylines where they team up with Spider-Man. Lonnie is one of the more frequent characters to do that.
Matthew
In that last Spider-Man run, Lonnie’s daughter is engaged to Joe Robertson’s son, so they have a lot of history together — just from Joe Robertson being at the Daily Bugle and outing Tombstone’s operations. They have an antagonistic relationship in the comics, but they keep coming to the table because their kids are involved.
Will
Having two Black characters doing anything of importance in the 1930s blows my mind. I don’t see a newspaper of any stature bringing on a Black investigator. But you know what, fine, whatever. It’s totally fine. And so yeah, I was going to raise that about Lamorne playing Joe Robertson — or Robbie Robertson, sorry, his name is Joe but he goes by Robbie. My complaint was just: there’s no way a Black man would be doing this in the early 1900s. That doesn’t make sense to me. And then in around episode three, they have some conversations about what a Black man is going through with the VA and at the park and getting their rations. I was like, okay, so they’ll touch on it. It’s not a major plot point, so you don’t need to spend too much time on it. But I appreciate that it was acknowledged.
Matthew
Yeah, I hear you. Well, I think there’s so much more we could go into about this. This isn’t a critique show, but I’ll say it wasn’t my favorite of the Marvel shows. I think it dragged a little bit in the middle episodes. But when I look back on it, I really did like the overall story and the things it had to say. Is there anything else — a character you want to touch on? I want to comment quickly on the black and white, but I’ll give you a chance to say any last things first.
Will
I had a good time. Janet, the secretary — she was fantastic. I think people will be happily surprised by the show and I recommend checking it out, even if you’re going in blind, even if all you know is that character from Into the Spider-Verse or Across the Spider-Verse. Just check it out. Nick Cage — I feel like for a romance story he’s a little old, but that’s nitpicky. It’s not a big deal. Just chalk it up to having those powers aging you, because there’s a character whose entire plotline is that he got infected at the POW camp and he rapidly ages now.
Matthew
So just let it be. There are ways to make it work. I had a similar feeling, and I think it played into the idea that him taking her seriously as a romantic option meant maybe he should have realized she’s not that into you. But yeah — to me, I feel like early on, you’re asking Nick Cage to play a different version of a character he got a lot of public acclaim for, and I think in the first couple of episodes he’s still wrestling a bit with which one he’s playing. But he definitely knows it by the end, and I liked it a lot.
The last thing I want to say: did you watch it in black and white or in color?
Will
Black and white, of course. I can’t even fathom voluntarily watching Spider-Noir on Netflix in color. That’s crazy.
Matthew
And I hear you. When I heard it was both available in black and white and in color, I thought it was going to be a story about the Rubik’s Cube bringing color into his universe and how crazy that was — there was a movie from around our childhood, I think called Pleasantville, that was about something similar. But that’s not the movie we got. By the end of the first episode I was just like: no, I’m doing this in black and white. And the way it uses the format is so perfect for it, especially because they’re so clearly using modern technology. A lot of times they were in darkened rooms — drapes mostly closed, blinds drawn, but a couple of sunbeams coming through. And once you start noticing them in black and white, you can’t stop. The way those sunbeams were just shining through, so clear in a way they never would be in color. To me it really hinted at this idea of: they’re all in this incredibly gray world, striving for the light, trying to get to the light, but they’re not there yet. I thought it was so beautiful and so well shot.
Will
Absolutely. When I thought this was going to be Spider-Noir from Into the Spider-Verse, I remembered that at the end of that movie he took that colorful Rubik’s Cube back with him. That implies that in the Noir-verse, everything is black and white, because he was so confounded by this little colorful thing. So in my head, when he was struggling with motivation in the show, he was going to open up a drawer and see this little pop of color — and it was going to remind him there’s so much more to live for, to discover, to reinvigorate him to go out and do the hard thing. But that’s nowhere near what we got. And so yeah, I can’t imagine watching this in color. There’s a Spider-Noir story that came out like four years ago, a mini-series in color, but the old Marvel Noir mini-series were all black and white, the Shattered Dimensions Spider-Noir levels were black and white, Spider-Noir in Into the Spider-Verse is black and white. I just can’t fathom watching this one in color.
Matthew
Yeah. And I hear you — when I heard it was both, I thought it was going to be that Rubik’s Cube story, the Pleasantville kind of thing. But it was still fun, it was still a great TV show. Well, thank you as always for coming on and doing this. Where can people find more of your stuff?
Will
The easiest answer is my Twitch, which is twitch.tv/sylverdreamer — S-Y-L-V-E-R. I have links on there to every other social media I’m on: TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Bluesky, Twitch, everywhere. Right now, Hype Is My Superpower is on a pause. We’re going to be coming out with volume two down the line. We’re going to come up with a better system than what we had before. But I am still always reading comics and love talking about them. We do deep dives on Twitch pretty frequently, basically doing something like this as a channel-point redeem. And it’s been a lot of fun. So yeah, that’s all.
