“To Judge a Nighthawk!”

The art in this is a really mixed bag. A lot of panels are very uninteresting, especially the backgrounds, and look like they’ve been crapped out really quickly. Some, though, are surprisingly bad-ass. Most of this bad-assedness seems to be coming from Esposito’s inks, which are really picking up the slack from Bingham and Sharen.

Kyle Richmond, a.k.a. Nighthawk, gets mixed up with a robot version of his dead girlfriend. It’s all some elaborate revenge plot masterminded by the actual dead girlfriend. See, everyone thought she died when Kyle was drunk driving 12 years earlier. It turns out, though, that she had just been paid off by Kyle’s dad after the accident and had been plotting this elaborate, dumb revenge ever since.

Unlike most of these issues, Nighthawk and Spider-Man don’t have a misunderstanding and fight. Instead, Spidey is just kinda helpful and they actually work together the whole time. The issue wasn’t especially good, but at least this change was refreshing. It made the whole thing a lot more readable.

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but this issue at amazon.com

Karma!

The 100th issue of Marvel Team-Up! Spidey and the Fantastic Four! Surely it must be amazing? I hope… This issue was apparently inspired by Ithacon ’79. Given the quality level the last time a story was inspired by a con, I’m not optimistic.

…and I was right to feel that way. The issue was bad enough that it took me almost a month to get through it and review it. Suck. The formula was exactly the same as usual for Team-Up: misunderstanding leads to heroes fighting, they make up, team-up, and triumph. I doze off.

Update: a lot of people really seem to like this issue. Maybe I’m crazy? I still think it’s bad.

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buy on amazon.com: single issue or trade paperback

A team-up with Spider-Man and the Black Widow. Comic Book DB calls this “The Fatal Attraction of the Black Widow”, but I don’t see where they got that title. The bad guy on the front cover looks like Wolverine. Is it him? Read on!

Spider-Man is patrolling and spies the Black Widow on a gig. They’re both after some arms smugglers; Spidey wants to team-up but BW doesn’t. This ends up being a fairly by-the-numbers crime story — Spidey and Widow both follow some leads and end up at the mansion of a bad guy, just in time for a huge crime convention. It turns out the big bad is not Wolverine, but the Owl. He was in Marvel Team-Up 73 with Spider-Man and Daredevil, in which he was soundly trounced. Now, he’s pissed.

Spidey is fairly often facing dudes who want to clean out all the cities gangs and take over. This isn’t much different than normal. The writing here isn’t great, but the issue is more or less enjoyable.

Oh, I don’t really like Will Meugniot’s inks. Everything just seems kinda dirty. Or maybe it’s just the printing?

BTW, part of me wonders if I should be reading Black Widow comics along with everything else. I mean, she’s a spider-related super-hero right? But then the number of comics to read would probably double, and I can’t really have that. Oh well.

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Doctor of Madness

Another Marvel Team-Up, this time with the Hulk and Spider-Woman! Let me say right off, from the first page, the Hulk looks freaking weird here. Kind of like Blanka from Street Fighter II, or green Nick Nolte.

The story starts with the Hulk in Jude, New Mexico facing off with a Sheriff Bradley Martin. Predictably, men make Hulk made and Hulk smash. Nearby, Jessica Drew happens to be pulling into town on a bus. Apparently the town is home to a group smuggling criminals out of the country. Finally, we learn that the Sheriff is in cahoots with someone named Doc Benway, a potentially mad scientist who is interested in capturing the Hulk.

Quickly:

• Benway turns Hulk into Bruce Banner and captures him.
• Spider-Woman tracks criminal Johnny Yen to Benway’s “clinic” (i.e. the smuggling HQ).
• She discovers that Benway’s got weird beasties about his villa, which are apparently mutated criminals. So they aren’t so much smuggled as experimented on.
• Benway shoots Spider-Woman in the face with a raygun and captures her.
• He explains his dastardly plan

OK here’s the Doc’s plan: lure criminals to his villa with the promise of escape, transplant their brains into weird fantastical monsters which can be used to conquer other planets (what?), sell the organs from their original bodies to make money.

Here’s why it doesn’t make sense: Spider-Woman stumbles upon Johnny Yen in some sort of transformed state on an operating table. It’s clearly Yen, but mutated into some kinda half-bear or something. It is not just Yen’s brain in a weird man-bear body. So that’s a major contradiction within the span of about a page and a half. Also, why the hell does Benway care about making creatures “that can survive on the hostile worlds that mankind must someday conquer”? That’s just stupid.

Spider-Woman escapes her confines, finds and rescues Banner, he hulks out and then there’s a big brawl. Then we find out that the creatures aren’t even alive, they’re robots. Huh?! So are they robots with criminal brains? Or is that completely unrelated? This makes no sense. Whatever, then some shit happens and it ends. Good guys win.

This was horrid. Ugh, I just want to read some good comics!

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Panic in the Park

This whole issue, the whole thing, was done by Alan Kupperberg. That’s nuts.

This is a team-up between Spider-Man and Howard the Duck. A lot of people like Howard the Duck. I am not one of them. Waugh!

This takes place immediately after the end of Amazing Spider-Man 208. Once again, the issue opens with a traffic jam. This time, though, Howard the Duck, cab driver, is stuck in it. He has driven a “weirdo…bozo” from Cleveland to New York City and is in a fowl mood. HA! SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!

Unfortunately, that joke I just made is better than this entire issue. Onwards…

For no reason the guy in the cab introduces himself as Status Quo and starts telling a boring origin story:

Listen, writers: if your characters know that a story is boring, how do you think your readers are going to like it? So this dude is basically a square that’s annoyed by new fads and things changing. He has made it his goal to “destroy the faddists”. His plan is to use subliminal messages and the media to attract followers…and then use them for something? This, of course, is ridiculous, and not in a way that’s even remotely entertaining.

HowDu drops Status Quo off at the park to recruit more followers. He causes some sort of commotion, which a world-weary Peter Parker sees on his TV back home. Pete also happens to see Howard there and, because apparently his spider sense now operates through television, Pete decides to go check the whole thing out.

Check out this great panel about jogging:

So ya, Status Quo incites a riot. He also hands out “explosive TNT frisbees” and “jet-propelled skate-boards”. I hate this issue.

Nothing much really happens for awhile, until Spider-Man compares Status Quo to Hitler and says that this whole thing is about human rights.

Then nothing again for awhile, until Spidey and Howard both separately attack Status Quo. Howard basically just talks SQ out of the whole thing in the space of a couple panels, Status Quo gets arrested, and everybody goes home.

This was horrible. It read like a really shitty, really long hostess ad. I hated it.

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Sword of the She-Devil

In this issue, some creep named Kulan Gath possesses the body of a museum security guard and Red Sonja possesses the body of Mary-Jane Watson. You know, because they both have red hair. It’s really terrible, and clearly just a ploy to sell Red Sonja comics to Spidey fans (although I guess that’s kinda the point of Team-Up as a whole).

So, this takes place December 22, before the new school year and while Pete is still working at the Globe. That makes it especially strange that he is at the Bugle Christmas party, that Jameson gave him a bonus, and that he got sent on assignment. However, it’s not crazy, as he still has lots of friends at the Bugle, did work there for part of the year thus perhaps earning a bonus, and is freelance so still able to take the assignment when nobody else was able. An annoying little chronological glitch, but not the end of the world.

Oh, you know what else is weird? Clark Kent is at the Bugle Christmas Party.

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…And No Birds Sing!

Arriving at the airport in LA, Pete witnesses a lady getting attacked by some dudes. Although the lady defends herself well, Pete jumps in as Spider-Man to help. Unfortunately, it turns out that the dudes were SHIELD agents and the lady, Mockingbird, is a wanted woman.

Later, Pete decides to help SHIELD capture Mockingbird. Everything goes bananas, and it turns out the SHIELD agents in question are corrupt and Mockingbird is good. Nick Fury pops in to dish out the punishment.

Although all the baddies end up put away, at the end Mockingbird is gravely injured.

This was a nice intrigue-y issue. Good, entertaining read. Also, there are flying cars, like in Back to the Future.

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Darkness, Darkness…

This issue has an awesome cover by Al Milgrom.

The Shroud story is continued, with Spidey fighting and then teaming up with the Shroud to defeat this hypnotic woman, Dansen Macabre. Dansen is part of a Shiva cult, and hates the Shroud because of his connection to Kali. Steven Grant has a really screwed up view of Hinduism.

At the end, Pete flies back to NYC.

Pretty standard issue, not great, not terrible.

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Rags to Riches!

This Team-Up issue ties into all the recent Spider-Woman stuff, specifically her encounters with Spider-Man, Werewolf by Night, the Enforcer and (I suspect) the Shroud.

It’s the last day of Pete’s LA trip, and as he’s trying to relax at a club he (along with WbN, Jack Russell) is confronted by a legitimately creepy baddy, Tatterdemalion. They fight, and we also see four other people acting super mysteriously. Tatter D. gets away with Jack Russell, leaving Spider-Man drugged and groggy.

Unfortunately, from that point it gets really weird and bad. Spidey ends up fighting Tatterdemalion in a sewer, then in a fight with a bunch of homeless people in a halfway house. As the story progresses, Tatterdemalion also becomes less creepy and more silly. It’s too bad Grant couldn’t keep up the momentum of the first few pages.

In the end we find out that one of the mysterious women from the beginning is “Dansen Macabre”, and there’s hint that the Shroud will be involved in the next issue. That might be interesting.

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Fear!

This was surprisingly decent. I liked Mr. Fear. The relationship between Spidey and Hawkeye was nice too. It wasn’t just all buddy buddy as usual. Hawkeye was embarrassed a bit about working with Spidey but the two just basically acted professionally. There were some other nice touches too, like Hawkeye having to work a security job and Spidey browsing Hawkeye’s record collection.

My two biggest complaints are that the art wasn’t as crazy and imaginative a I would have liked for a fear issue, and Hawkeye’s gimmick is kinda lame. Rescuing himself from a fall with a flare arrow is kinda bullshits.

Overall I really enjoyed it.

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Carnival of Souls!

Pat Broderick’s pencils have a very different feel than most other Spidey artists I’ve seen. It’s a cool and welcome change — spices things up a bit!

This issue was about a revived one-off character, Moondark, who was lame initially and slightly less lame this time. Actually, the book started off really cool and I was totally into it, but once Moondark introduced himself and every other word was “soul” it got very tedious. Oh well, it was orders of magnitude better than the crud Marvel Team-Up‘s been dishing out lately.

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Death on the Air

This was a decent done-in-one. My biggest complaint was that the tone of the book would have us believe that the villains were far more impressive than they were in actuality.

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Shoot Out Over Center Ring!

I found this issue really confusing. I wasn’t sure why Amos Jardine was hiring anyone to kill Spider-Man, and I was even less clear on why he first hired Arcade, then fired him and instead hired some loser named Cutthroat.

Why does Team-Up have to be so bad? Why can’t they integrate it into the larger Spidey storyline better?

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A Child is Waiting

This was a mildly entertaining kidnapping caper, in which little Franklin Richards gets abducted and held for ransom. Spidey and the Invisible Girl team up to get him back, and everything ends up wonderful.

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The Razor’s Edge!

The Black Panther is framed in a pretty straightforward (and unimaginative) political “thriller”. At the end we find out the oil company is behind it! Also, Springer’s inks really stink here.

I’m getting pretty sick of Team-Up over here. Ugh.

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Story of the Year!

The Guardians of the Galaxy seem interesting, but they weren’t used very well. This was a done-in-one that was basically an extended fight.

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Last Rites

Why must Chris Claremont always be credited as “author”? I find that so pretentious.

I can’t believe how over-the-top sexily Satana and Clea are drawn. It’s ridiculous. Satana dies in this issue but it probably won’t last, knowing Marvel.

This relationship with Cissy has come absolutely out of nowhere… some setup / intro would have been nice.

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A Sorcerer Possessed!

Lame issue in which Pete’s on a date with Cissy, and Dr. Strange turns into a werewolf. At the end, Satana shows up looking like a hoochy slut.

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Claws!

Spidey fights the Griffin in a wholly forgettable tale.

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If I’m to Live…My Love Must Die!

Another boring Claremont issue that is basically two simultaneous long fights. I’m glad I’m done with this particular story.

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If Not For Love…

Super boring story that barely features Spidey. Here’s the thing with Dr. Strange stories — because they involve magic, anything can happen, and not in a good way. Every Dr. Strange story I read is the same: a bunch of crazy magic crap happens, and to fix it there’s some more crazy magic crap. This issue only featured the first half of that formula, with the second half I’m sure coming in the next issue.

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The Smoke of that Great Burning!

I don’t know what happened to my review of this issue, but it somehow got deleted. It’s a shame, because I really liked this issue and wrote nice things about it. Highlights:

• Amazing, fantastic art by everyone involved
• Sharp writing, with a different story that was a nice change of pace
• Classy dedication to NYC firefighters
• First Ralph Macchio credit in my project

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Live From New York, It’s Saturday Night!

This was gimmicky bullspit. Pete and MJ go see a taping of Saturday Night Live. When John Belushi receives a mysterious ring in the mail, though, things go down the shitter. The Silver Samurai shows up to retrieve it and for the entire length of the show, Spider-Man and the cast have to fight off him and his goons.

This was, in my opinion, terrible. Normally Spidey can be pretty funny, but here all the jokes fall flat — inexcusable in an SNL issue. The plot is completely nonsensical, The one good thing about it is that the art is passable, and the SNL cast actually look like the real actors (most of the time).

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A Fluttering of Wings Most Foul!

Spider-Man and the Daredevil take on a bad guy named the Owl. His helicopter was very Nightowl-from-Watchmen-esque. There was nothing really special about this story, but it was entertaining enough.

I may have read this in the wrong order, as Spidey seems to be wary of cops, but in ASM 186 he was cleared of all his charges.

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Crack of the Whip!

Fairly boring issue that sees the return of Jean DeWolff and her brother, the Wraith. This was very bland, and Iron Man did basically nothing.

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