7. Spider-Man and Red Sonja “Sword of the She-Devil” from Marvel Team-Up #79 (Marvel, 1979)
by Chris Claremont, John Byrne, and Terry Austin
The team is most famous for their work on Uncanny X-Men, but they delivered a perhaps even more impressive run on Marvel Team-Up. I could have picked a lot of stories from this era, but we only get 12 entries. So let’s focus on the best one. Prior to Claremont and Byrne taking over, Marvel Team-Up was a generally good book, but not necessarily of the highest quality storytelling. Claremont and Byrne brought a better sensibility to the series and told some great little tales.
Somehow, Spider-Man teams up with Conan’s sometimes ally to battle Conan’s arch-nemesis. Various mystic stuff brought Kulan Gath to the present, but had Red Sonja take over Mary Jane’s body to do battle with him. A whirlwind of a story that moves too fast for you to stop to wonder whether any of this makes sense. You just have to hang on.
Similar to Karl Kesel’s World’s Finest miniseries (which you bet would have been an entry if Superman/Batman team-ups weren’t ruled ineligible because of their ongoing team-up series), this is a through-the-years look at the friendship between Human Torch and Spider-Man. It tells 5 new team-up stories at different stages of their history, from their earliest days to the present, with each issue reflecting on their friendship to that point.
It ends in the modern day, when Human Torch finally learns Spider-Man’s secret identity, and Johnny has Peter’s family over for dinner to meet his family.
It’s darn touching, and occasionally insightful. Like, why is their regular meeting place the Statue of Liberty? How does Spider-Man get there?
(SIDE NOTE: The flashback below refers to Strange Tales Annual 2. We’ll be getting there soon in our regular reading of the Marvel Universe.
9. Daredevil and Spider-Man “Devil’s Deliverance” from Daredevil #8 (Marvel, 1998)
by Kevin Smith, Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti
This was how I got into Daredevil. I hadn’t liked the first couple Daredevil issues I’d picked up as a young child and thus never really collected them. But in 1998, I was interested in Marvel’s “Marvel Knights” line, and brought all 4 new titles. Inhumans remains one of the best comics I’ve ever read. Black Panther was great. And the Punisher series is infamous for turning him into an angel, but I enjoyed it well enough at the time. Probably haven’t gone back to it in 20 years, though.
This is also how I got into Kevin Smith. Not long after reading this I’d see Chasing Amy and Mallrats and finally Clerks, which remains one of my favorite comedy films ever. I’ve since taken every opportunity to see Kevin Smith talk live, probably a couple dozen times by now.
This story is a loving homage to Frank Miller’s work on Daredevil, specifically the “Born Again” series, which I had not read at the time, so did not appreciate. I’ve come to love that series (hint hint) and it’s complicated the question of how to appreciate this homage series in my mind. In “Born Again”, Kingpin tore at Daredevil’s life, trying to take away hope. In this, a MYSTERIOus villain tears at Daredevil’s faith.
The story is mostly wrapped up in 7 issues. The villain stands revealed and dead. But Daredevil is left to deal with the insanity of just how many people, including Karen Page, died for seemingly no reason.
In need of a friend, Spider-Man is there. As Daredevil struggles to make sense of it all, blaming himself and all superheroes for their failings and these mad vendettas they end up entangled with, Spider-Man provides him the needed perspective to restore balance: “You saved that baby girl’s life.”
10. Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man “The Battle of the Century!” (DC/Marvel, 1976)
by Gerry Conway, Ross Andru, and Dick Giordano
When the word “crossover” was said, crossovers between DC and Marvel immediately sprung to mind. I do love so many of them. And I know exactly what my favorite is, which was set to be #1 on my list, until I read the fine print of this year’s rules and realized I couldn’t have a meeting of their two flagship teams.
So I settled with the classic. The first time Superman meets Spider-Man.
You could tell it was an event. A gigantic comic. So big, that it’s hard to hold. I feel like I need to lay it across my desk to sit on it. But if I do that, the cats try to sit on it. I could shut the door, but then they get angry. Maybe I can sit on the couch with my knee bent to rest it on my leg… look, you try to read this massive comic with two cats who want to sit on your lap and swat at it.
Andru recognizes it’s time for iconic characters to look iconic and draws them as such.
And it’s time for iconic villains. Superman’s archnemesis is pretty universally recognized as Lex Luthor. There is a little more confusion about who Spider-Man’s most iconic villain is. But this comic gets it right: it’s Dr. Octopus.
One less-than-iconic detail that sticks out is the line that Superman fights for “truth, justice, and the Terran way”. It’s an odd phrase. Born out of controversy. The old Superman cartoons had it that Superman fought for “truth and justice”. A good phrase they should have stuck with. But then came the 1950s and McCarthy’s attempts at fascism that led to an epidemic of public displays of patriotism, and the phrase was altered to “truth, justice and the American way”. Out of place for a superhero who should defend all humanity. They seem to be attempting some course-correction here, but they should have just gone back to the original. “Truth and justice” was a good phrase.
It’s also a bit unfortunate that Morgan Edge was Clark’s boss at the time. It would have stood the test of time better if it were Perry White at the bar complaining about his reporters to J. Jonah Jameson. I also wish Peter had met Jimmy, since they’re both photographers. Ah well, can’t win ’em all.
11. Spider-Man and The Man-Thing from Giant-Size Spider-Man #5 (1975)
by Gerry Conway, Ross Andru, and Mike Esposito
Second Spidey entry. I really could have filled my list with Spider-Man. And a decent chunk of it with this stellar series. But I decided one from this series would have to do. Apologies to the excellent earlier issues where Spider-Man meets Shang-Chi, Doc Savage and Punisher. All contenders.
What do we have here. A lot of focus on character work. Conway uses his page count to shine a spotlight on everybody. It’s during the Clone Saga, so Gwen has mysteriously returned, and everybody is dealing with that. Gwen, Peter, Betty, MJ… we get the first hint of a characterization they will later go all in on for Mary Jane, for better or for worse. We see her on the edge of tears, but then quickly correcting when her Aunt comes in, and putting on a smile and talking about wanting to party. Defalco will later reveal that that’s all she was ever doing, and it will ring untrue.
Conway was more subtle in his treatment of MJ. Maturing her and bringing her and Peter together, while preserving her character.
We also get Curt Connors again turned into the Lizard and see this struggle through the eyes of his wife better than we have before.
We even get solid character work on one random character, a bankrupt chemist on the verge of suicide, whose fate is changed by an encounter with Man-Thing, and who emerges as the hero in the battle against the Lizard.
Not sure if we get good character work on the Man-Thing. You’d have to look closely into his eyes to see what he thinks of these events. All we know is he hears the Lizard’s call with other swamp creatures, and that he seems to respond to intense emotion.
12. Transformers and Spider-Man “Prisoner of War” from Transformers #3 (Marvel, 1985)
by Jim Salicrup, Frank Springer, Kim DeMulder and Mike Esposito
I’ll start the countdown with a comic of purely personal significance. To the best of my fading memory, this is the first crossover comic I ever read. It is also the first Spider-Man comic I ever read. To learn how much I like Spider-Man, I recommend just looking at the rest of my coming Christmas list. Transformers was the first series I ever sat down to seriously collect as a new comic reader. By “seriously”, I think I tracked down issues #2-5 in back issues over the course of several months… I would get much better at collecting when I got older.
Side note: That I got #5 confused the heck out of young me given that it’s a 4-issue limited series. It confuses the heck out of old me, too.
Anyways, in this issue, after Peter Parker is sent on assignment to Photograph the Transformers, Spider-Man and the Autobot Gears team up to rescue a human from Megatron.
Speaking of confusing things, this comic came out during Secret Wars. So Spider-Man’s costume was not only different from the one I knew from episodes of the old ’60s cartoon I’d seen on VHS, but it seemed to be somewhat alive. I think I briefly thought this Spider-Man and the other one might be two different characters.
Was marketing the motivation for this crossover? Probably. Isn’t it usually?
But this comic formed a bridge of childhood hobbies. In my earlier years, I watched cartoons like Transformers. Entering the second decade of my life, I would get really into superhero comic books, with Spider-Man being easily my favorite.
This was also certainly my first encounter with Nick Fury and SHIELD. But since the comic only called him “Nicholas”, it would probably be a little later before I learned his name.
The forum has been around since 2014, but the tradition goes back to 2005. I’ve been a participant since 2006. Every year, there is a comic-related theme. And you choose your 12 favorite entries in that theme.
The theme this year is Your Twelve Favorite Comic Book Crossovers. The thread I linked to has all the fine print for the rules. In particular, this is not for big crossovers with teams or many characters. We’re focused especially on two-way crossovers between comic book titles or between comic book characters and external franchises.
As I am making my entries there, I will cross-post to this blog. So stay tuned to discover my Twelve Favorite Comic Book Crossovers.
In the meantime, consider registering an account and joining the community as CCF yourself. Then tell us what your favorite crossovers are.
