{"id":11926,"date":"2022-01-28T00:00:05","date_gmt":"2022-01-28T04:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=11926"},"modified":"2020-12-14T19:44:19","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T23:44:19","slug":"mtu-052","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2022\/01\/28\/mtu-052\/","title":{"rendered":"MTU 052"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the 77. Batroc is way too close to The Tarantula\u2019s turf for comfort, here. From the left? On a yellow background? Come on, Batroc! If you\u2019re thinking \u201cNow that Sal Buscema and Mike Esposito are doing Spectacular, who\u2019s doing Team-Up?\u201d well, obviously, the answer is Sal Buscema & Mike Esposito. And Gerry Conway wrote this one, too. Busy month for those guys. Spider-Man is swinging on his merry way when Off-Brand Abomination from the cover just appears out of a portal on the streets of New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So this is sort of implying it takes place directly after the events of TAC 1, which in turn took place between pages of ASM 163. Complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is all taking place during the events of Jack Kirby\u2019s 3rd run on Captain America which is typically 70s Kirby in that it is gonzo. Other dimensions, cults, brainwash, you name it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is a very strange choice, to just drop into the middle of Kirby\u2019s story for a second and then drop out. We cut to Batroc the Leaper being a jerk to his butler until a rumble down on the street alerts him to the monster from earlier thundering past. Batroc is a cartoon French mercenary who fights Captain America. This is a very Cap-centric issue. Batroc heads down to try to :make the monster his slave,\u201d and just starts talking to it, which is surprisingly effective. But we cut away to\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So this is definitely still the same day Spidey fought Tarantula, and now he\u2019s about to fight Batroc. So much kicking in a single 24 hours! Also, transuranium! Not being a science person, I didn\u2019t know that\u2019s a real term til now. Comics are educational! Things go south as Batroc has his new pet monster chuck a car through the SHIELD flying saucer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spider-Man, not a real football fan. Truly a hero after my own heart. Spidey tussles with Batroc while Cap tries to subdue the big monster, eventually putting them back to back like on the cover. Spidey complains he\u2019s had a long day and wants to wrap this up, and Cap says to hold like that until both enemies lunge at the same time, allowing the heroes to duck and make them crash into each other like a cartoon. The collision puts Batroc down, but his buddy gets up, starts glowing, and runs off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For Heaven\u2019s sake, Fred. The monster finds its way onto a ferryboat, and the heroes arrive to try to stop it. Cap says they have to blow it up before it can pollute the city with its radiation. While he goes to sabotage the engine of the ferry to that aim, Spidey wrestles with the situation internally while wrestling with the monster externally. He\u2019s not comfortable killing it, worrying it probably doesn\u2019t even understand what\u2019s going on. Correctly, even. As Cap works in the engine room, thinking to himself that the monster could be \u201ca walking World War III,\u201d Spidey keeps it busy upstairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is the most in-continuity issue of Team-Up I\u2019ve ever seen. Very tight coordination from the Spider-Office. I guess it helps that Conway did 2 of the 3 Spider-Titles this month, but there\u2019s the Cap stuff, too. I don\u2019t know what the Marvel Method necessarily looked like by this point. I know pretty much every writer after Stan took more and more responsibility for actually writing a story, but also still left a lot of the pacing and plotting up to the artist, to varying degrees. So you almost wonder if Conway spent the last several pages working so hard to justify blowing up the creature because that wasn\u2019t his idea. Could be, maybe not. We\u2019ll never know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the 77. Batroc is way too close to The Tarantula\u2019s turf for comfort, here. From the left? On a yellow background? Come on, Batroc! If you\u2019re thinking \u201cNow that Sal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[35,1029,60,263,73,13,26,71,21,52,37,2],"class_list":["post-11926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1970s","tag-aunt-may","tag-batroc","tag-captain-america","tag-falcon","tag-gerry-conway","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-joe-robertson","tag-marvel-team-up","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-mike-esposito","tag-sal-buscema","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11927,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11926\/revisions\/11927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}