{"id":6265,"date":"2020-06-30T00:00:07","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T04:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=6265"},"modified":"2019-09-14T13:35:04","modified_gmt":"2019-09-14T17:35:04","slug":"smtu-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2020\/06\/30\/smtu-3\/","title":{"rendered":"SMTU 3"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Did you forget about Spider-Man Team-Up? Well, it\u2019s a thing, and here\u2019s more of it. That Dan Jurgens\/Bob McLeod cover is actually relevant to the interiors, written by Dan, drawn & inked by bob and colored by Tom Smith. Itty bitty hand on that wizard guy! I am not too familiar with the FF in this period, but does Reed have a mullet? Why, 90s, why!? As we get going, Spider-Man is breaking into a building he says probably has the finest security in America, if not the world. He takes the chance to explain his powers in case you somehow bought this book by accident as he goes.
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He finds his way into what looks like a child\u2019s bedroom based on the posters on the wall, leaving what looks like a plastic explosive. He sets a timer for 60 seconds and takes off.
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Yes, it\u2019s all an elaborate birthday prank on Spidey\u2019s oldest frenemy, The Human Torch. Which means, as alarms start going off, Spidey is trying to escape the home of The Fantastic Four. Hey, remember how Johnny didn’t believe this was the real Spider-Man when he first debuted, but now he recognizes him by his voice? \/shrug Naturally, Spidey can\u2019t escape before they catch him. Specifically, The Thing grabs him by the neck as the rest of the FF comes running out in their bathrobes and whatnot demanding an explanation.
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Reed DOES have a mullet. Ugh! Reed was \u201cdead\u201d for awhile, replaced on the team by Ant-Man, if you can believe it, but he\u2019s back. And much like when Jurgens killed Superman and then brought him back at DC, he\u2019s back with a mullet. That was just how you cheated death in the 90s, but growing your hair out. It becomes clear quickly that Jurgens falls into the trap of writing Reed like a robot instead of just a smart guy who overexplains things. Back in Johnny\u2019s bedroom, a shimmering gold portal in the air has appeared. Ben leans in to say it\u2019s pretty, then a tentacle snakes out and drags Ben through it. Johnny finds he suddenly can\u2019t use his powers, and Sue says she can\u2019t make force fields anymore, though I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s a previous thing or whatever\u2019s effecting the Torch, but Reed is able to reach into the portal and grab\u2026 someone\u2026
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I take back my comment about the tiny hand on the cover. Here\u2019s some of that guy\u2019s deal, I guess? 
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Lil Gandalf says he tried to teleport to the world he saw, and was greeted by \u201cangels, he assumes\u201d singing happy birthday. No one can figure out why he thought he was going to a space battle as they argue about what\u2019s happening, until\u2026
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Sooooooo Johnny had a video game\u2026 just running while he was asleep? Wut? It\u2019s Ben Sue says they\u2019ve forgotten, of course, who has been falling through space the whole time and smashes through the roof of a castle into\u2026 well, into this:
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Hm. Can he say \u201cCrom’s beard\u201d right now? Wow, yeah, 1996 was the last year Marvel held the rights to publish Conan until 2018. I didn\u2019t realize they had it quite that late. Anyway, I\u2019m not sure this is actually meant to be Conan stuff, in spite of the invocation of Conan\u2019s god, but at least no one\u2019ll be sued. 1996 Marvel can\u2019t afford it. The goons there say none may enter the royal bath chambers but their lord & master, Rasheed Ven Garmchee, supreme wizard of Perrinois. Which is not the name Lil Gandalf gave the FF. The goons break all their weapons on Ben\u2019s skin and then run in terror, leaving him to wander the castle trying to figure out what to do. He thinks he sticks out too much, so he\u2026 pulls out a little gem he says Reed made to give him \u201ca concentrated blast of cosmic rays,\u201d turning him human. What? Is that really a thing? Ben not being able to return to normal is such a big part of his deal most of the time! I have to assume something like this would\u2019ve come from the FF comic, but\u2026 huh. Oh, well, Ben meets some guards looking for him in his rocky form and tells them he ran off into the woods, but he\u2019s no closer to getting home. Speaking of:
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The\u2026 the what now!? It\u2019s 1996 and people are still pretending asbestos won\u2019t kill Johnny!? Holy hell. And since when is Spidey\u2019s web fire proof? It\u2019s like every 3rd page is a slap in the head. Reed, Sue & Spidey lower themselves into the portal, while back on Azeroth, Ben decides to fight his way back into the castle so he can go up one of its towers to watch for the FF to come rescue him (Reasonable assumption) when he runs into the previously mentioned supreme wizard, who looks just like the one in Johnny\u2019s room, but wearing red.
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The wizard turns into a big red monster he calls a Bordock, but Ben just zaps himself with that super convenient thing again, and is suddenly The Thing again.
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Bordock or no, the wizard is no match for Ben in a fight, with Ben pulling down a stone pillar and battling the wizard right through a wall. Up on the parapet now, the wizard returns to his regular form and summons an army of demon dudes riding dragons. And that\u2019s when the rest of the heroes show up, dropping right into the madness.
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\u201cYour-jokes-do-not-compute-Spider-Man!\u201d Ugh, terrible. Lil Red Wizard realizes this is all due to his brother, Lil Purple Wizard, naturally, and assumes the FF & Spidey are his brother\u2019s minions. He looks up through the portal in the sky and sees his brother, even, so he fires some green bolts up into Johnny\u2019s room. Shiwa, though, is just playing the space game and babbling about wanting to go to space. Down in the other world, our heroes have changed their plan to making sure these monsters don\u2019t make it to Earth. Sue can still turn invisible, so I guess she\u2019s just lost her force field powers for now.
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Take that, Murder She Wrote! Jurgens swinging at anybody now. And still writing a very 70s Spider-Man. As the monsters continue to advance on the portal, Spidey shoots a web up into it, what must be miles!, and somehow webs Johnny\u2019s Super Nintendo and drags it down to them, finally getting Shiwa\u2019s attention. Spidey says he\u2019ll give the lil guy the console back if he seals the portal.
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That was prrrrrretty absurd. Dan Jurgens having Johnny refer to his unnamed-but-obvious-SNES as \u201cmy video game\u201d sure was hip. Weird. Good looking comic, though. Bob McLeod is a class act. There\u2019s something else unusual about this one. It barely fis in and out of its bag, and the backing board reveals\u2026
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It\u2019s a subscription copy. I had no idea they came like this. I got your comic, Gregory! And I know what you did with it…
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…you sold it to Sarge\u2019s Comics. Naturally! That was an interesting discovery.
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Did you forget about Spider-Man Team-Up? Well, it\u2019s a thing, and here\u2019s more of it. That Dan Jurgens\/Bob McLeod cover is actually relevant to the interiors, written by Dan, drawn & inked…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[455,191,474,288,2,703,706],"class_list":["post-6265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-ben-reilly","tag-bob-mcleod","tag-dan-jurgens","tag-fantastic-four","tag-spider-man","tag-spider-man-team-up","tag-tom-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6265","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=6265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6304,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6265\/revisions\/6304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}