Is Spider-Noir the next The Penguin?

When writing about Clayface, I mentioned The Penguin, and how if every superhero show was as good as The Penguin, people wouldn’t be tired of superhero cinematic universes. Well, here’s a superhero TV show that might be at The Penguin’s level: Spider-Noir has a new trailer, and goddamn, this show really does look GREAT.

The black and white cinematography is just so stunning, and I appreciate that they are offering a “true hue” color version—which increases accessibility, beyond the technical aspects of two different visual versions of the show—but I love the look of the black and white so much. It looks like ink on paper comics cells, not to mention how well it suits the detective noir tone of the show. On top of that, there is the promise of a great Nicolas Cage performance—his vocal performance as Spider-Noir in the animated Spider-Verse movies is already very good—and I am loving Li Jun Li as the femme fatale in the story. Everything about this looks really good.

But in terms of operating within a cinematic universe, what I want to see is if Spider-Noir can stand on its own. Like The Penguin functions perfectly fine if you’ve never seen The Batman. The Penguin also functions perfectly fine without Batman himself showing up. Yes, I love all the jokes about Bruce Wayne just shrugging off the organized crime carnage happening in Gotham throughout the events of the show, but really, The Penguin doesn’t need Batman. It is not a Batman story, it just happens to occur in the same world as that other character.

That’s the problem for the MCU’s TV side, nothing really works on its own. Some of the one-off stuff stands alone better than others—Hawkeye is about as independent as MCU TV gets—but at the end of the day, you will have to have SOME familiarity with the MCU to make the TV shows make sense. What I am judging superhero TV on, though, is a “no homework” curve. I shouldn’t have to watch a movie for a TV show to make sense (and vice versa). That’s where being a crime show really helped The Penguin, there were decades of visual language already established to ground the show not in a superhero context, but to frame it is a gangster drama.

Spider-Noir might have a similar advantage with its detective roots. Because this does look like a good old-fashioned detective story, with a down on his luck PI, an alluring femme fatale, a crime boss (played by Brendan Gleeson), and a missing person everyone is trying to find. These are very common elements of detective cinema, regardless of sub-genre qualifications. I love the LOOK of Spider-Noir so far, I will watch based on that + Nicolas Cage alone, but I am so curious to see if Spider-Noir can deliver a satisfying detective drama, regardless of superhero trappings.

I think we all—executives to creatives to audience—got lost in the sauce in the 2010s and kind of forgot that these shows need to be good in and of themselves, it’s not enough to just be connected to a popular movie. But maybe we’re moving past that and are now getting Superhero TV 2.0, in which everyone is devoted to telling good stories first, serving cinematic universes second. Time will tell.

Here is the Spider-Noir presentation at CCXPMX 2026 on the weekend.