The advance previews of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man have proven divisive for a number of reasons. Much has been made of the changes from the classic comics mythology. What is more important is the deeper changes that weren’t in the previews, which renovate the Spider-Man saga. Most important of all, however, is what remains the same.

The first episode opens with Peter Parker preparing for his first day at a magnet school for aspiring scientists. This is where he gets bitten by a spider and befriends fellow outcast Nico Minoru. Fast forward a few months, and Peter is now your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, trying to balance school and secret superheroics.

His efforts at the former win the attention of billionaire entrepreneur Norman Osborn, who offers Peter an internship. This further complicates Peter’s life, as he adds a job to his responsibilities at school and on the streets. Throw in an unexpected friendship with star quarterback Lonnie Lincoln (who is dating Peter’s crush), and Peter is soon in over his head.
Changes in Your Friendly Neighbor Spider-Man

Most of the negative advance comments regarding Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man involved its cast and charges of forced diversity. Classic Spider-Man characters like Liz Allen and Flash Thompson are replaced with Pearl Pangan and Lonnie Lincoln. There are also a variety of people shown in the friendly neighborhood. However, this is an accurate representation of Peter’s hometown of Queens (aka The World’s Borough).

It is the subtler changes, however, that are more interesting and far more important. Uncle Ben dies of unspecified causes before the show starts, so there are no monologues about power and responsibility. The spider that bites Peter is an anomaly, emerging from a magical portal as Doctor Strange fights a symbiote. Finally, Peter is shown to have a hero’s heart, trying to save Nico from the symbiote even before he has spider-powers. These changes make Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man seem fresh yet familiar to long-time Spider-fans.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man nails the hero

For all the cosmetic changes, the core of Peter Parker in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man remains unchanged. He’s a decent person who tries to help, in and out of costume. He’ll stop a robbery and then suggest letting the thief go after learning they just lost their job and were desperate for money. He’s also a hard-luck case who can’t catch a break, with often hilarious consequences. A prime example of this comes in Episode Two, where Peter fights an arsonist with a super-suit in a pet shop and has to move Heaven and Earth to save all the animals.

While the show’s writing and voice acting are great, its animation is its biggest weakness. The characters aren’t expressive and there are many sequences with multiple objects in motion that just look off. I thought at first this might be a stylistic tribute, visually referencing the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, like Peter’s street clothes. However, if this was intended as a stylistic tribute, it is not well-realized.

Despite the uneven animation, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man gets far more right than it does wrong. Most of the changes are superficial, and the ones that aren’t make everything old seem new again. Underneath it all, it is still the same story about power and responsibility that continues to resonate to this day.
Grade: 7/10
The first two episodes of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man are now streaming on Disney+.