- Title: Spider-Man – The Sting of the Scorpion
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Spidey Saturday takes us back to the 90s New York City and an animated Wall-Crawler. After being turned down by Felicia Hardy (Jennifer Hale) as boyfriend material, and taking down a group of jewel thieves, Spider-Man (Christopher Daniel Barnes) confronts J. Jonah Jameson (Edward Asner) about the man he hired to follow Peter Parker around which has the opposite effect Spidey was hoping for. Shaken, Jameson takes Mac Gargan (Martin Landau) to the genetics lab at Empire State University where Professor Stillwell (Michael Rye) will use the Neogenic Recombinator and a battle suit to turn Gargan from pushover into the Scorpion.
At first Jameson is happy with his creation, as the Scorpion beats Spider-Man, but something goes wrong as Gargan begins to lose control rampaging across the city, eventually turning his attention on Stillwell and Gargan for transforming him into a monster, and nearly causing a nuclear meltdown of New York City. The episode is notable for introducing a backstory for Jameson which attempts to explain his hatred of masked men. His latest interaction with Spider-Man triggers memories to the loss of his wife causing him to push Gargan to become the Scorpion. Seeing his mistake, JJ ends up helping Spidey stop the Scorpion, but that does nothing to change his opinion of the Wall-Crawler or obsession with seeing him unmasked.
The episode is adapted from the comic origin of the Scorpion from Amazing Spider-Man #20 in which Jameson hires Gargan to become the Scorpion to take down Spider-Man. The doctor gets a more gruesome end in the original story, and JJ is more contemplative at the end, but otherwise the episode plays out similarly to the source material and the show is able to add another recurring villain to its ranks (although he won’t be seen again until the show’s Second Season).
