Shows : 1960's Cartoon : Season 1 : Episode 7a

"The Kilowatt Kaper"

(*Ahem. Ahem* "Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can. Spins a web any size. Catches thieves just like flies. Look out! Here comes the Spider-Man!")

A major lightning storm fills the skies over the building known simply as "Federal Prison", if the plaque on the wall can be believed. Inside, Spider-Man is having a chat with the Warden, warning him that the storm could rekindle the powers of Electro. The Warden agrees and decides to move Electro to an isolation cell until the storm passes. A worthy sentiment on the Warden's part, though, perhaps he should have also taken Electro's costume from him before he put him in prison and maybe should have checked Electro's cell to see if he's smuggled anything in. For there is Electro in full costume (including the funky-looking lightning mask), speaking in a voice that sounds like the Crypt-Keeper, and it appears that he has been busy in the prison fabric shop, the prison string shop and the prison metal-posts-for-street-signs shop since he has managed to smuggle in enough cloth, rope and metal struts to put together a handmade kite.

He gloats and shakes his fist for a while ("The first thing I'll do is to destroy Spider-Man for putting me behind bars!"), then releases the kite out through the barred window. (Why do these cell windows always only have bars? Doesn't it get pretty cold in these cells in the wintertime?) This is a trick in itself since the window looks far too small for the kite to fit through but, trust me, he manages to get it done. By the time Spidey and the Warden arrive, the kite is flying out in the midst of the storm.

Neither the web-slinger nor the Warden seems particularly concerned about it. They stand casually on the other side of the cell door and make no attempt to stop Electro. "We're too late!" Spidey says even though they aren't yet too late. The Warden just stands around with his hands behind his back. Some time after Spidey decides he's too late, the lightning finally hits the kite, has to travel all the way down the string to the cell (you could go to the bathroom and back while waiting for this to happen) and reinvigorates Electro, who turns and fires an electric bolt at Spidey which blows the cell doors off their frame and knocks the web-slinger on his butt. Not waiting to see if the wall-crawler is dead (which seems to be his M.O.), Electro blasts a hole in the wall and escapes.

Spidey is not dead, of course. (Even Electro would have noticed this if he had stayed around long enough to see the webhead sitting there rubbing his head.) The Warden certainly wasn't worried about it. He has emerged completely unscathed from the attack and tells Spidey "Electro will be after you when he finds you're still alive" in a monotone voice that displays as much emotion as if he was telling the web-slinger the time. "I'll be ready for him," replies our spunky webster.

Later, in Manhattan, Electro stands on a rooftop and looks over the city. Now, he thinks, with Spider-Man destroyed, the city will be ripe for the taking.

(Is he strong? Listen, bud. He's got radioactive blood. Can he swing from a thread? Take a look overhead. Hey there. There goes the Spider-Man.)

At the Daily Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson is not a happy man. "Electro has escaped and no pictures!" he bellows. He presses a button on his intercom to speak with his secretary Betty Brant and instructs her to fire Peter Parker for failing to bring in photographs. Betty reminds JJJ that Peter cannot be fired since he is a free-lancer. "Put him on the payroll and then fire him!" says Jonah. "Yes, Mr. J." says a frazzled Miss Brant.

Seconds later, JJ buzzes the intercom again and tells Betty he has changed his mind. Peter is rehired if he can hurry right in with some Electro photos. Betty tells Jonah that Pete has called in to say he will not be available since he is busy with a chemical formula. JJ opens the door of his office and yells out at Betty, telling her to "tell Parker he's fired", then he slams the door which rattles the framed portrait of Jonah on the wall behind Betty (in which he is grinning like a fiend) so that it tilts on it's picture hook. Poor Betty, who is clearly heading for a nervous breakdown, puts her hands up to her ears and winces.

Meanwhile, Electro surfs the power lines to a place simply called "Power Plant". Perched outside, he fires a lightning bolt at a generator situated on the roof, which sends part of the city into blackout. A balding worker at the power plant (apparently the only worker at the power plant) tries to pull a lever to save the machine ("The circuits are overloading! They'll explode!") but only electrocutes himself when he touches it. The generators continue to overload, glowing with the excess energy. This is exactly what Electro wants. He plans to drain all the power when it gets high enough. For now, though, he leaps back up to the power lines and, with a "zip", he sails away on his little electric surfboard.

In Queens, Peter's bedroom light is the only one on in a dark house. Pete is inside mixing up a batch of a special web formula (it is green and bubbling in a beaker) when his rotary phone rings. Betty is calling to tell him to come right away because "Electro is blacking out the city". Peter starts to give Betty the bum's rush but then his own lights start to flicker. Instead, he just hangs up on Betty without saying a word. He can't be civil enough to talk to Betty but he blabs plenty to himself. "No time to finish the new web formula" he says, "Electro has to be stopped now!" And so, Peter changes into his Spidey costume, opens his window, gets out on the porch roof, shoots his webbing at a tree, starts swinging and is instantly transported to Manhattan.

On a rooftop, Spidey deduces that Electro is at the Midtown Substation. He shoots webbing at a nearby flagpole and then webslings through the city... his webbing apparently attached to something above the tops of all the buildings.

(In the chill of night at the scene of a crime, like a streak of light he arrives just in time.)

At the Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson has Betty bring in a candle, griping about Electro in the meantime. ("Just because he wants revenge on Spider-Man, does he have to take it out on me?") Even with the candle in the room, Jonah trips and falls. "Who moved the furniture?" he bellows. Betty is so shocked, she puts both hands up to her head. But who's holding the candle up while she does that?

At the Substation, Electro recharges his powers by standing between two electric turbines. Spidey spies on him from outside. He peers through a window that is just a square hole cut in the wall... with no glass... like the stereotype of a window in an igloo. He is sorry he didn't have time to finish his new web formula. Now he needs to find some other way to defeat Electro.

He starts by shooting some webbing through the window and attaching to a lever. He yanks on the webbing, which pulls the lever, which shuts off the generator. Then he apparently jumps through the window but we don't get to see that. With his power shut off, a fuming Electro fires a bolt at Spider-Man. The web-slinger leaps away and the bolt only creates a big jagged hole in the wall. (This is, perhaps, how this building gets windows that don't have any glass in them.) Electro promises to stop Spidey once he is fully recharged. "Don't overcharge yourself, glitter puss," says the witty wall-crawler. Then he shoots his webbing at the villain but it only burns away as soon as it touches Electro.

Somewhere along the way, Spidey ends up standing on a girder up near the ceiling. Not a good idea. Electro fires a bolt at the girder. Spidey leaps away but the electric charge turns the girder red-hot. Electro shoots another bolt at Spidey, who is now perched on the ceiling. This forces the web-spinner back to the girder and creates a hole in the ceiling. Except, remember, the girder is still red-hot! So Spidey ends up doing the Funky Chicken on the girder to keep his tootsies from being toasted and then leaps to the wall. While this is going on, Electro pulls a lever (is anyone keeping track of the levers in this story?), which starts up the dynamos. Spidey, for reasons unknown, decides to leave the wall and web-swing in the confined space of the building. Electro severs the web with a lightning bolt that is so delicately placed that Spidey falls right through a very small, conveniently placed hatchway into the top of the dynamo. He grabs both sides of the hatchway and lifts his feet up and away from the spinning turbines.

Which is where we all had to pause back in the 60s while the network fed us some ads.

Back from the commercials, Spidey announces that he must turn off the turbines or else he is sure to be sucked in. So, he pulls himself up out of the hatch (Yeah, he's really getting sucked in all right.), shoots some webbing at yet another machine, which clogs up enough holes and covers enough flashing dials and lights to cause the machine to blow itself up! This stops the turbines (though it seems to be a bit excessive). Spidey pulls himself out of the deathtrap. "Lucky for me Electro doesn't wait to see if I've had it", he says. (Yeah, Electro has a bad habit of doing that.) Then he swings back out of the glass-less window where he decides to head home and finish his new formula if he has any chance of defeating that "electrical egotist".

At the Daily Bugle, JJJ gets a call from Electro. (Why does Electro call Jonah, of all people? Because he is one of only nine people who live in New York, as far as I can tell.) Electro, sitting on top of a telephone pole to make his call, tells Jameson that the electricity for the city will be restored as soon as a ransom is paid. "Just make your checks payable to Electro Power Company", he says. ("Hmm. A check in the amount of a million dollars made out to Electro Power Company, eh? I'll have to check with the manager before I can cash it.") JJ, who is apparently in charge of the city, refuses to pay so Electro retaliates by sending an electrical bolt along a telephone line that somehow knows to follow the connections that lead to Jameson's telephone. Poor ol' JJ recoils from the sudden electric shock.

Meanwhile, back at his home in Queens, Spider-Man declares himself ready for Electro. "I'll spin a web he won't ever break," vows the web-spinner.

(Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. Wealth and fame, he's ignored. Action is his reward.)

Outside the Daily Bugle, a red-haired newsboy, another of the nine inhabitants of New York, hawks an extra edition to the empty streets. The headline reads "City Agrees to Pay Electro" because, I suppose, he gave Jonah Jameson a shock through his telephone.

Without even waiting to receive his check, Electro turns the lights back on. He stands on a roof and gloats that "Every light out there means a fortune for me and with Spider-Man out of the way no one can stop me." (You'd think he'd learn not to boast until he actually sees Spidey's bloated dead body.)

But elsewhere in the city, Spidey is very much alive and ready to put his plan into operation. His chooses Times Square (completely devoid of people) as the location for his trap. First he goes to a power facility, and finds a machine with three switches. The one on the left reads "West Side", the one on the right says "East Side" and the one in the middle is for "Times Square". (Bet you didn't know the New York power system worked like that.) Spidey turns the "Times Square" switch off.

Somewhere along the way, J. Jonah Jameson has made his way home and is now snoozing peacefully in bed... when his phone rings. It is Spidey calling from a pay phone and Jonah is outraged that the web-slinger would give him a call. (But whom did he expect? There are only a few other people it could be.) The web-slinger tells Jolly J. to meet him in Times Square if he wants "to see the fireworks of the century". "I'll meet him all right", Jonah decides, "but with the police!"

Over in Times Square, Spidey works fast, setting up a complex array of webs. From his perch on a TV antenna, Electro notices that Times Square is still blacked out. He travels over to the area to see who has stolen his act. Meanwhile, Spidey finishes stringing his webbing just as Jonah arrives with two cops, each with a squad car. (They may as well each drive a car since they appear to be the only two cops in New York.) Spidey lands on a billboard that magically changes size each time we see it. One cop pulls out a bullhorn and orders Spidey to "come on down or we'll shoot". Spidey requests the cops to "hold your fire, the show is about to begin!" And, sure enough, Electro suddenly shows up sliding along some of the webbing. "I knew they were working together," says JJJ.

Spidey taunts Electro from atop a light bulb studded billboard. He removes all of the bulbs (in seconds!), hooks them up to a net made of webbing, and drops the net on top of Electro (who stands on a rooftop without moving, allowing the net to fall on him). I have no idea why Spidey added the bulbs except that they light up rather nicely when they get electricity from Electro for, apparently, the villain has no trouble disintegrating the webbing and the bulbs, though we don't get to see that. Below, JJJ asks the cops to arrest the super-foes but one cop tells him, "Don't blow a fuse, Mr. Jameson, I think Spider-Man knows what he's doing." (Yeah, that "bulbs on the net" thing has sure convinced me!)

Now, Spidey decides to test his new formula and spring his trap. He stands on a walkway attached to the billboard until Electro joins him. Then he whips up a shield made of webbing. When Electro fires a bolt at him, he blocks it with his shield. The new web formula causes the bolt to bounce off the shield and make a hole in the walkway in front of Electro. The unbelievably stupid villain approaches Spidey and steps right into the hole, falling through and getting trapped in "an electronic spider-web" strategically positioned below. (This was Spidey's plan? Count on the ricochet of the bolt forming a hole in the walkway and on Electro being so dumb he'd walk right into it? It's brilliant!) JJ yells to the cops to "Arrest them!" but then all three men (a third of the population of New York) look up at the billboard. Spidey has written "Do not touch until this battery runs dry" up there by using bulbs, which must have taken more planning than the entire rest of the plan combined. "Oh no!" bellows Jonah, "Don't tell me he's a hero again!" And as Electro's power gets drained by the webbing, our hero swings off into the city and the closing credits roll.

(To him, life is a great big bang-up, wherever there's a hang-up you'll find the Spider-Man!!!!!!)

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My Rating...

By Al Sjoerdsma (E-Mail)