One of 77. I’ma keep it real witchu, chief: I do not expect to agree with that caption! Let’s have a look at what was going on in some other Marvel comics in June of 1978…
The Enforcers? Arcade? Captain America fighting The Lincoln Memorial? Maybe I spoke too soon. At least Byrne is back in the hands of a seasoned inker here, Tony DeZuniga. The Living Monolith is now Stay Puft Marshmallow Manning his way around New York with Spidey in hand. Spidey webs his eyes to try to give people on the street time to escape, but that just makes him mad, and he throws our man as hard as he can. He’s pretty much definitely going to die at this speed, but lucky for him…
Yes, Thor is making up for lost time after he didn’t manage to get involved in this caper last issue. But after setting Spidey down to recuperate and fill him in on the details, Thor flies off to just get swatted by the big baddie himself. Meanwhile, Spidey realizes that if he can get Havok out of the case, the fight is over, so he tells Thor to smash it.
I’ll tell ya one thing about this issue: “Benighted simpleton” is going into rotation for me. “Benighted simpleton, I ordered a number one, not a number five!” (I’m just kidding, being rude to service industry workers makes you an awful person) But I thought the point of the case keeping him alive was to… help… The Living Pharaoh… somehow. Ok, I’ve actually already forgotten what they said last issue. Wasn’t he a “living battery” or something? Many things are “living” here. But if that was true, how is killing him a good thing? I wonder if Claremont forgot about that between issues. Anyway, Spidey ends up going for a ride on Thor’s hammer, forcing Thor to catch him as the hammer returns to him. Thor gets to work on the Monolith out in the river, whipping up a hurricane, while Spider-Man… swings to the top of the Empire State Building to watch the fight through an old couple’s binoculars. No, really.
An outstanding achievement in comics art, indeed! Spidey finally has the idea to do what he should’ve from the beginning, though: free Havok. So he whups the Monolith’s goons as they’re trying to load Havok into a van and begins disarming the bomb as the battle between Thor and the Monolith rages. In short order, he succeeds, Havok wakes up, and…
“Web-hurler” is awkward, Thor, come on. Kind of a random ending, but I do like it when the situation is such that Spider-Man can’t possibly affect the physical battle, but instead saves the day on the sidelines. And that’s that. We, of course, saw a version of The Living Pharoah in Sensational 19 & 20. This is Chris Claremont & John Byrne’s last regular issue on Team-Up. Since becoming a reprint title, X-Men only published 6 issues a year. Even after the new X-Men debuted and the title began gaining fans and momentum, it remained bi-monthly. Which is what allowed Claremont and Byrne to team up on Iron Fist and this and what have you. But X-Men finally returning to 12 issues a year nixed that. I think it’s kind of interesting that those 2, who became one of comics’ all-time most famous duos due to the runaway success of their X-Men, had all these far less well remembered runs together, too. You’d think their other titles together, while not as groundbreaking as X-Men, would still be pretty sought after just by people who liked their work together, but I never knew they had an extended run together on Team-Up before starting this blog. Anyway! Next up: The final ASM of this block, and therefore the final 70s ASM I’ll ever read for this blog.