The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 796: Marvel Team-Up #79, March 1979

One of the things I noticed this year at the con was a propensity for "mystery boxes." A couple of years back I bought one in the shape of a giant Lego figure head and it had some interesting stuff in it. This year, they were everywhere, in all shapes and sizes and patterns. And the comics people got in on the trend by offering mystery grab bags. This particular comic came out of a "15 comics for $10" grab bag, some of which was really cool, like today's comic, and some of which are probably going to be terrible. But I kind of love the terrible stuff in its own right anyway.

There's a great panel in this comic, very early on, at a Christmas party at the Daily Bugle. There's a bespectacled man in a blue suit chatting with Robbie Robertson, who says, "So tell me, ol' buddy. How does it feel to be a mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan TV network?" The man is quite obviously Clark Kent, who at this point in time was a news anchor on TV, rather than his traditional role as reporter. It's a nice touch, especially since the crossover between Supes and Spidey was only a couple of years off. This scene sets up a strange space in the Marvel and DC universes, as we're seeing a completely unmediated crossover (in that, there's no dimensional travel or anything) between the two comic book continua. And the DCU isn't even the only other fictional universe to cross into the Marvel U in this comic. While Conan and Red Sonja enjoyed a long run at Marvel, they were more often than not considered in their own fictional universe, yet there's a moment in this comic where Spider-Man notes the artifacts in the museum were recently discovered to "pre-date man's oldest recorded civilizations," thus suggesting that the Hyperborean age was somehow a precursor civilization to the Marvel superhero universe. Whether or not this ever became canonical I have no idea, but this blending of three very distinct universes into one story is quite a treat.

As I noted yesterday, I'll be reading some comics from the stuff I got at the con this weekend, probably a mixture of the old stuff that fills in the collection and the newer, indie stuff that I picked up in the Artist's Alley. Very exciting.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 741: Marvel Team-Up #135, November 1983

As I searched through my boxes for a comic to read this morning, I realized that Marvel Comics has named a lot of their comics after themselves. You'd think that the box up in the corner would tip people off to the fact that a comic features Spider-Man (he pulled a lot of guest appearances in the 80s. Transformers #3 is one of my favourites), but I guess branding is a thing in advertising, so there you have it.

I liked today's comic. Kitty Pryde was one of my first crushes as a young boy - I loved her in Uncanny X-Men, in her occasional appearances in The New Mutants, and in her transformation into ninja badass in the Wolverine & Kitty Pryde miniseries. For me, more than any of the other characters, Kitty was always the heart of the X-Men, that rebellious teenager who emblematized the rebelliousness inherent in the X-Men. It broke my heart when Joss Whedon did what he did (which I won't mention in the service of SPOILERS), though, as with all comics characters, she recovered. So putting her in the situation of having to babysit a couple of obnoxious kids, and then end up teaming up with Spider-Man to fend off some strangely technologically-advanced Morlocks fed so much of my inner adolescent. Not that he's hungry very often.

The art is standard 80s Marvel art, which means, again, the nostalgia factor kicks in for me. Though this comic was perhaps a year or so old by the time I started collecting comics, Ron Frenz's art is just how I remember those first comics I picked up from the House of Ideas: West Coast Avengers, Secret Wars, Avengers. These were my introduction to the world(s) of superheroes, so whenever I read something that resembles those titles, the thrill of discovering, or its memory, hits me again.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 144: Marvel Team-Up #137, January 1984 (Two Weeks From The Dollar Bin - Day 8)

Aunt May gains cosmic powers and she and Franklin Richards save the Earth from Galactus by feeding him all of the "Twinkles" snack cakes on the planet.

I don't think there's much more I can say about this. Comics like this one are the reason you should be scouring your dollar bins. Pure gold. Or rather, a giant lump of cheese in a gold foil wrapping.

See you tomorrow.