Nicolas Cage dons the hat, mask, leather and goggles and plunges straight into the Spider-Verse in “Spider-Noir,” the latest Marvel spin-off to earn a series treatment.

An appearance previewed way back in the animated “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” predicated on a 1930 or so version of the web slinger fighting crime and monsters in Prohibition Era New York, would hardly seem a natural fit for the 60something but well-preserved Oscar winner.

But who doesn’t love Nic Cage? Especially in the Comic Con classes?

Oren Uziel’s made a superhero series with “supers” — villains with powers — and many of the trappings of film noir — an exotic femme fatale, fedoras, trench coats and tommy guns, a mob boss who “runs this town” and corrupt officials who let him. Standing against them is the last man with principles, a former “hero” reluctant to get involved.

Naturally, he’s a private investigator, a “dick,” a “gumshoe,” a shamus or whichever nickname you prefer.

But “trappings” alone do not a film noir make. “Mortal Kombat” and “Lost City” screenwriter Uziel and his co-writers have no ear for “hard-boiled” dialogue or monologues — the kind gumshoes like Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and Ben Reilly, formerly “The Spider,” are preordained to deliver.

The dialogue here has anachronisms — “I ain’t tryin’ t’die in no PHONE booth!”

And the gimmick of being able to watch this series in bright, vibrant color or “film noir” black and white doesn’t play. Ask any cinephile who saw “Mank,” “Roma” or “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and they’ll recite chapter-and-verse why black and white celluloid and the lighting techniques of the 1940s don’t look like the simple “erase the color” flatness of digital cinema.

I watched most of the series in color, and that just makes the overly tidy soundstages and CGI recreations of “lost” 1930 Manhattan (Penn Station) look even more fake.

Throw in a few performances as colorless as the noir “Noir,” and you too will be comparing this to “WandaVision” and “The Penguin.” Because no way in hell is this in the same league with even B-picture noirs of the past.

Five years ago, The Spider ceased being New York’s savior. As Ben Reilly (Cage) narrates, he lost the woman he was going to marry and with her most of his interest in “getting involved” in Gotham’s problems.

That’s given the Irish mobster Finn Byrne, aka “Silvermane” (Brendan Gleeson) free rein.

But an attempt on the mob boss’s life sets events in motion ensnare Reilly, his sassy secretary (Karen Rodriguez), favorite kiddie pickpocket (Cary Christopher) and the lounge singer Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li) and tears at the very fabric of the city.

The arsonist who torched Silvermane’s mansion can turn himself into a flame, until he’s shot and killed.

And he’s not the only new “super” in town. A select few WWI vets seem to have these powers.

Reilly keeps The Spider under wraps as he takes assignments from this character and then that one, all trying to figure out the nature of the threat and who is backstabbing whom.

LaMorne Morris plays Robbie Robertson, the veteran reporter trying to get back on with the big newspaper where he used to deliver his scoops. He’s also pals with Ben, which gives him an inside track to the “monsters” among them.

Jack Huston plays the great love of Cat Hardy and a “super” whose name gives away his ties to this and every other Spider-Verse — Flint Marko.

And former child star Lukas Haas has the Elisha Cook, Jr. role, that of a mob functionary who may be as tough as he talks. Maybe not.

The narrative plods along from episode to episode, with one or two bits of action per every 40-50 minutes and maybe one laugh per installment.

The assorted screenwriters and the show runner struggle to supply “fan service” sequences — bits of fan-friendly casting and action and the like — and somehow give all this the grit and grim gravitas that putting “noir” in the title suggests. They fail.

Cage, entirely too old to be playing a WWI vet 12 years after the war ended, delivers fair value and seems to improvise a few “cool” takes to go with the digitally-assisted stuntwork of his stunt double.

“I guess I underestimated you.”

“‘Happens.”

Li Jun Li does her own torch song singing, which passes muster even if it’s as bloodless as pretty much every performance in this.

Listening to Gleeson’s 1930 mob boss explaining “entropy” to our private dick is one of a parade of eye-rolls that park this firmly in the realm of over-exposed comic book franchise “content” and not something that even measures up to the best of its contemporaneous super hero TV series.

In black and white or in color, “Spider-Noir” is basically a collection of gimmicks in search of a better story and writers who’ve seen “The Maltese Falcon,” “The Big Sleep” and “Double Indemnity,” or more importantly HEARD them.

Rating: TV-14, violence, smoking, profanity

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Li Jun Li, LaMorne Morris, Karen Rodriguez, Lukas Haas, Abraham Popoola, Cary Christopher, Jack Huston and Brendan Gleeson.

Credits: Created by Oren Uziel, based on the Marvel comics. A Sony/Marvel release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: Eight episodes @ :42-:50 minutes each