This is one of the 75 MTUs I got for $48. I keep bringing this up because I still can’t believe it happened. You might think I’d lose track, but I can tell because they all have the same specific kind of label on the back of the bag, which means nothing to me, but clearly meant something to a previous owner:
Marvel Team-Up 121 is “B21-092,” got it. It’s the same creative team as last issue, and they kick things off with The Human Torch flying away from the Baxter Building. He’s just bored, out looking for action. He sees a crowd forming under him and thinks about how crazy it is that people love the FF so much, but then he hears a robbery going down, so he lands on a nearby roof and prepares to give them a superhero speech.
As Torch & Spidey start giving each other a hard time, the crooks split up and run for it. But, of course, the heroes didn’t REALLY forget about them. Well, maybe, I dunno, but they each nab 2 dudes and return the loot to the robbed store owner. Or try to, anyway, as Spider-Man’s danger sense warns him just as…
Thanks, Officer Explaintheplot! Torch says he’ll handle this and takes off after SD, and Spidey is irritated and takes off after him. You might think we’re in for a rousing chase scene where the heroes are bickering and constantly getting in each other’s way, but instead we turn our attention to this guy:
That’s Vincent Patilio, also known as the 6th-rate supervillain Leap Frog. He used to get beat up by Daredevil and hung it up, and we’re told he and his son and his wife lived together on her salary until she recently died of cancer. Now Vincent is mad at himself for messing up their lives and taking it out on, well, anyone and anything. Including his son, Gene, who he slaps without thinking. This makes Vincent feel extra-bad, and he goes off to his room to sulk. Leaving his son Eugene to be a very stupid person.
Ugh. He hops outside and decides if he can take down Speed Demon, it’ll make his dad happy. He also explains he’s been secretly practicing with this suit. I did not sign up for this. Meanwhile, Spidey & Torch have been doing the bickering and getting in each others’ way thing off-panel, and we join it already in progress, as Speed Demon creates a wind tunnel that pulls the overconfident Torch down to Earth and momentarily extinguishes him.
As the heroes chase their speedy foe,… sigh… Leap Frog spots a mugging in progress, and clumsily disrupts it, mostly by accident. The old lady he sort of saved beats him up with her handbag, and be bounces off. As it happens, he bounces past a police car transporting a goon who’s worked with the original Leap Frog, and calls out to him.
He flees the scene as the cops call for backup. Elsewhere, Speed Demon is actively robbing more stores as Spidey & Torch struggle to keep up. Oh, I do not like where this is going. Spidey webs up the whole street, but Speed Demon hits the web before it can harden, zipping through it, though the loot he’s stolen sticks behind. Then he stops in the street and “super-speed karate chops” the pavement until he has big chunks of it to throw at out heroes.
DeMatteis is really jobbing out The Torch this month. Spidey manages to mess up SD’s trajectory and sending him smashing through some store windows, but it’s only a few seconds before he’s back. While that’s going on, Vincent is on the street looking for his kid. He knows exactly what Eugene is up to and is terrified he’ll get hurt. Back at the fight, just as Torch & Spidey are finally starting to get somewhere…
Leap Frog’s bumbling allows SD to take out both Spidey and the Torch, and there’s only 2 pages left, so you can guess where this is going…
I believe I have groused before that JM DeMatteis only has 2 speeds when it comes to Spider-Man: super-serious or super-silly. And… Sometimes you get this. This is not the last we’ll see of The Fabulous Frog-Man, whether we like it or not. DeMatteis, in particular, has clear fondness for him, but if memory serves, he’s not the first to bring him back. That’ll be coming… later. Like it or not, Spider-Man now has a Jar Jar Binks.
And on that grim note, we take our leave of this era. Next post, we’ll jump ahead almost 2 years to get into a very famous period of Spidey history as a new team takes over ASM to take the franchise into 1984.