Does Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Matter?

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man stars the voice of What If…‘s Peter Parker, but it is not a What If… story. Marvel’s alternate universe anthology What If… is more than just-for-kicks. Although its episodes play like random mashups of Marvel superheroes, its events are officially canon. Conversely, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man has felt a bit pointless considering the show’s producer, Jeff Trammell, announced his series is no longer canon. So, if it’s not, what is it? Why does it matter?

For a story to be canon, it essentially means the story officially takes place within the shared world. If that’s so, what does Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man do so differently from a shared world show that puts Howard The Duck on an intergalactic pleasure cruise with Thor’s Darcy Lewis, whom he married? Well, put simply, Marvel’s What If… shares the name of a previously established 1980s comic book series. This effectively cemented it within Marvel’s shared world despite frivolous mixing and mashing of established lore.

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Why Isn’t Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Canon?

While Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man tells a new story, it “directly references and remixes” classic story beats, according to Trammell in an interview with GamesRadar. The new Disney+ Series sees Harvey Oswald instead of Tony Stark as Peter’s mentor, a woman as Dr. Connors who will eventually become Lizard, and a non-albino Lonnie Lincoln, as the super-strong underworld honcho, Tombstone.

For the first two months of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’s development, the show operated within the Marvel timeline, as it takes place following Captain America: Civil War‘s Sokovia Accords. After feeling limited by the confines of Marvel’s ready universe, Trammell opted to make his show a fully alternate Spider-Man story, allowing him to tell the story he’d set out to tell. He made the conscious choice to portray a Peter Parker who reminds viewers of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man – something What If…‘s Hudson Thames does exceedingly well, despite his assertion that his voice work is inspired by his own voice.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is a fresh take on the hero, drawing from recent interpretations of the character while juxtaposing them with a classic art style ripped from the original Amazing Spider-Man comics. While this particular animated mashup is novel, it’s not predicated by an existing Spider-Man comic. With Trammell acknowledging the show exists outside the Marvel Universe’s shared world, he’s also rendered it inconsequential. If this Spider-Man show doesn’t even matter to Spider-Man, why should audiences even care?

Why Does Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Matter?

Although Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man will ultimately end up on an island of irrelevance to the larger Marvel umbrella, its inspiration seems to come from the most essential hallmarks of comic book superheroes imaginable: taking your favorite heroes and dreaming them up within a world of your own design. Superheroes were designed to live off of the comic book page as action figures, idols, and at the end of the day, ideas.

In the spirit of Marvel’s What If…, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man poses altered versions of the heroes and villains they’re familiar with. Some of the more intriguing creative licenses taken by Jeff Trammell were his spins on Harver Osbourne and maybe more so, Lonnie Lincoln. In the original comic books and every instance of the character afterward, Lonnie’s origin was portrayed as a kid who was the only albino in Harlem, leading to a miserable upbringing where he was brutally bullied and ostracized. Eventually, he would harness his spite and anger to become a bully of considerable prestige, acting as a top crime boss in New York City’s underbelly.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man seizes its non-canonical opportunity to present Lonnie in what some would call a more relatable context. This is an intriguing move by Trammell, as he demonstrates the understanding that the most relatable villains are often the most compelling. This isn’t to say that feeling like an outcast isn’t relatable, but it’s already a central aspect of Spider-Man’s character. The audience is already backing a kid on the outskirts of society as soon as they see nerdy Peter fumble slang with his classmates and helplessly watch his crush smooch the football team captain. Trammell decided to swing entirely the opposite direction, asking: what if Lonnie Lincoln was the football team captain instead?

Answering this question meant figuring out how a promising, smart, adored high school football player could fall into a life of crime. The key? Lonnie’s school lunch payment is denied because of insufficient funds. His family struggles financially. The result is a story arc that’s a bit farfetched in its simplified interpretation of gang dynamics, while allowing a tragically resonant depiction of a family’s life without means.

What Does This Mean For Spider-Man?

Spider-Man has always largely been a coming-of-age story, as Peter balances his own struggles against a constant barrage of others, innocent or otherwise, who let him see how they’ve developed and dealt with their own. The stories told in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man are just as integral as they always have been, and markedly heartfelt at that. While they may technically matter less than the canonical What If… stories that precede them, they might connect a bit more to viewers watching them unfold. That could be what matters most.