I watched the first two episodes of "Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" on Disney+, and I'm impressed. The character designs and animations are great—they're modern takes on the styles of the early Spider-Man comics, evoking the style of Steve Ditko. The characters themselves are also fresh takes on some classics, while also introducing new ones. I'm certain this will be controversial with some, as the cast of characters is very diverse, and some long-time characters have been race- and/or gender-swapped from the comics, but I found the changes to be fun. For instance, Dr. Connors is a woman, and Norman Osborne is a Black man.
Peter Parker has changed from being a bullied nerd to a nerd who has jock friends, and is relatively well liked. His pressures and social challenges come more from having too many demands on his time—his friends, his internship, and his perceived responsibilities as Spider-Man. This, too, feels like a nice change of pace to me. His origin has changed from being bitten by a radioactive spider to being bitten by an alien spider during an encounter with what appeared to be a symbiote like Venom. Fine, I guess.
Spider-Man's costume is cobbled together clothing that looks good, while being the kind of thing a kid would be able to come up with. His web shooters are a primitive version with a pressure tank on his back and hoses connected to his wrists. All fun details, in my opinion.
One thing I don't like is that this is yet another alternate timeline: it's adjacent to the MCU Spider-Man universe, but it branches right at the beginning, with the introduction of Dr. Strange and the destruction of Midtown High. I think we could do without more alternate timelines right now.
Anyway, we're only two episodes in, so I'm not going to call it a win yet, but it's a great start.
