Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is a Marvel classic in the making

Whether you’re a newbie to the Marvel Universe or a seasoned Web-Head from way back, chances are you’ll love Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. The Disney+ series, developed by Jeff Trammell (Craig Of The Creek) and with snappy, retro-modern character designs by comics artist—and legend, if he keeps it up—Leonardo Romero, is a vibrant, funny, dramatic, and endearing return to animation for Marvel Comics’ Wall-Crawler. If it doesn’t match the scope of X-Men ’97, that’s no ding against it; it’s simply because youthful Spider-Man keeps his social circles tighter than Marvel’s mutants. Remember: He’s only a kid in a wide universe, after all.

For now, anyway. One pleasant surprise of this energizing, thoughtful animated series the measured way it builds puny Peter Parker (voiced by Hudson Thames) into a new kind of hero for our troubled times, one that his mentor Norman Osborn (Oscar nominee Colman Domingo) says we desperately need. Our heroes, he claims, have become unreliable, and when you chart the geopolitical sphere of the Marvel Universe as it exists in YFNSM, Norman isn’t wrong: The Sokovia Accords have just gone into effect, forcing all heroes to either retire or register with their governments, splitting the once rock-steady Avengers in half and leaving New York City in turmoil. There’s a void to be filled, and Norman believes Spider-Man is the hero to do it. 

Hold up, I’m sure you’re saying. Sokovia Accords? As in Cap versus Iron Man, Ant-Man-is-huge-now Sokovia Accords? Yes, this Spidey has inherited a few things from Tom Holland’s. Peter sources tech from garbage bins (he scores a DVD player early on), he has a crush on a dark-haired girl a bit taller than him (her name’s Pearl and is voiced by Cathy Ang), and Aunt May (Kari Wahlgren) is young, single, and ready to mingle. It’s a conscious meet-them-halfway creative choice on Trammell’s part to present his series as a variant of the prime MCU—similar enough to ease in casual viewers and different in all the ways that make it interesting and unique. 

That’s no small feat. Remember, Spider-Man is arguably the most popular and well-loved superhero in the world. Since Sam Raimi triggered a bonanza of wall-crawling adaptations in 2002, there has been no shortage of Spidey stories across animation, film, and video games. (Speaking of, there’s a bit of Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man in this show’s DNA as well.) Establishing a distinctive line between fresh-faced Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and all that’s come before while embracing the retro charms of the halcyon Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and John Romita Sr. era is a nimble balance that Trammell and his team strike with sensational ability and care.

Some of the series’ more notable changes have been applied to Spidey’s supporting cast, diverse new versions of famed Spider-Man characters like Norman Osborn (whom Domingo makes his own with a smooth-as-concrete vocal delivery) and new takes on Dr. Connors, Scorpion, and the Rhino. Spidey’s immediate friend circle has also changed: There’s Nico Minoru (Grace Song), Parker’s bestie, who provides a snarky counterbalance to his social anxiety (you may recall her from Marvel’s Runaways); Harry Osborn (Zeno Robinson), now a social-media megastar; and Lonnie Lincoln (Eugene Byrd), functionally the Flash Thompson jock character, revisioned here as a big-hearted athlete whose private life gives YFNSM some of its most impactful dramatic stakes. (In a way, half of YFNSM belongs to Lonnie, and Byrd owns it.)

While Spider-Man’s tangled web becomes more complex than you might initially expect, at first his city patrols are handled rather cleanly and with little incident: Bullies get their just desserts by having their follies streamed online, while thieves are just teary-eyed folks down on their luck. Even NYC’s arsonists ensure that the buildings they torch are empty before going to town. Everyone is so tangibly considerate that when a malicious supervillain arrives midway through the season, it’s almost like they’ve been teleported in from a completely different show. 

Nevertheless, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is surprisingly mature for being this energetic and squishy, a PG-rated take that treats its teen characters with respect by not insulting their intelligence or limiting their growth. Still, light and breezy is how it begins, and at its most joyful moments, the radiant 3D animation from Polygon Pictures (TRON: Uprising) and CGCG (Star Wars: The Bad Batch) bursts from the set with serious Saturday-morning energy. The animation is not perfect; it can get choppy during its more frantic action sequences, while character interactions are sometimes herky-jerky, like Romero’s artwork has been skinned over a PS2 cutscene. More often, the series looks like a living, breathing panel from a comic book, replete with a nostalgic flat color motif. All this pop effervescence would stunt the more sobering moments in another series, but the vocal performances of Spider-Man are always there to ground things. 

A couple of story decisions stand out. A big one takes place in the premiere, which kicks off with an extended battle sequence between Dr. Strange and some interdimensional beastie outside of Midtown High only to end with a spider dropping through a portal. Yes, this is the fateful arachnid that nibbles on Pete and bestows upon him the proportionate strength of a spider, an occurrence that, at least initially, feels tacked-on and random. The show then jumps forward in time with Peter already swinging throughout the city, no fuss, no muss, with his startling physical changes glossed over in the series’ pop-art title sequence (itself a Marvel masterwork). But, as Harry might put it, it’s all Gucci. In YFNSM, Peter’s growing pains come not from adjusting to his great power but from accepting his responsibility in an increasingly dangerous world. And this Spider-Man is very much up to the task.  

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man premieres January 29 on Disney+