10. Spider-man and Dr. Strange
Amazing Spider-man Annual #14 (Marvel, 1980); “The Book of the Vishanti” by Denny O’Neil, Frank Miller and Tom Palmer

The basic story is that Dr. Doom is planning to bring about some manner of supernatural chaos on Earth called the Bend Sinister – which, by combining his scientific and sorcerous knowledge, he intends to manipulate to his advantage. His point man for the project is a geeky assistant named Dilby, who ultimately gets sent to Dormammu’s dark dimension. It turns out that Dormammu is in on the plot with Doom, and he gives Dilby powers, which the latter uses, among other things, to make some kind of killer robot which is a hybrid of magic and technology. Dormammu then sends Dilby back to Earth – and the power-mad lackey promptly sics his robot on Dr. Strange and captures him – but not before Strange can send out an astral call for help that eventually reaches Peter Parker. It’s up to Spidey to save the day – and he pretty much does so all on his own. Although the supernatural usually isn’t Spidey’s element, he acquits himself more than adequately here.
I’ve always been a fan of annuals, and this one is a particular favorite. It’s an action-packed story which still has time to show us some day, or rather night, in the life of Peter Parker moments (this was the time when he was having that odd, are-they-dating-or-not thing going with Debra Whitman). The art is really fantastic, as well. Miller, of course, was no stranger to portraying noirish urban night-time scenes coupled with wonderfully choreographed action, but he and Palmer also did a bang-up job of rendering the Dormammu’s realm in all of its Ditkoesque glory.

10. Giant-Size Spider-Man #4 (Marvel Comics, 1975):






In this crossover, which I first read in a UK reprint annual, Spidey and Punisher take on Moses Magnum. It's a gripping and slightly dark tale, particularly the fate of one of the characters (I'll say no more for those who haven't read it).

I'd grown up reading rather fantastical Spidey adventures, whether it was him battling costumed supervillains or perhaps facing supernatural/sci-fi threats. This was the first Spidey tale I read where his exploits were less fantastical and more grounded in reality - as he and Punisher take on Magnum in what I think is meant to be a South American country (I can't put my hand on the issue right now, so cannot remember the country).

I like loose alliances. Spider-Man and Punisher make for strange bedfellows, always the best kind of team-up. But, and perhaps my perceptions are wrong, I sense a mutual respect between the two. Daredevil and Cap never seemed to care much for Punisher, not even begrudgingly. Spidey is never gonna have Christmas dinner with Frank Castle, but I sense a certain pragmatic respect towards him, which I felt was conveyed in this action-packed and enjoyable tale.

It was also my first taste of Moses Magnum, and after reading this story (late 80s), I set out to track down further Magnum appearances. In the pre-Google age, that wasn't as easy, not unless you could find a bibliography somewhere!

10. Conan the Barbarian #24 (Marvel 1973)

Conan and Red Sonja




Red Sonja made her debut in Conan #23, but it was really their team-up in the next issue that cemented her as a smash hit character. From the awesome Barry Smith cover to a cool interior story where she more than holds her own alongside Conan, Red Sonja was a great foil, giving Conan as a character something I think he needed: an equal. For me, this story is still Sonja at her pinnacle — before later stories twisted her character into a pretzel and undermined her, and before that idiotic bikini debuted. It's also just a really good, fun story, with one of the best covers of all time.

10. The Brave and the Bold 52 (Feb/ March 1964, DC Comics)
“Suicide Mission!”
Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert



With issue 50 of B and B, DC changed the format from Showcase-lite to team-ups. After two issues teaming superheroes, DC turned to Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert, who teamed Sgt. Rock, Johnny Cloud and Jeb Stuart and his Haunted Tank in “Suicide Mission.” It’s a classic war story in which the three stars must spirit out of France a vital Allied agent (code-named Martin) whom the Nazis have encased not just in an iron mask, but in a full suit of iron armor... or else.

In other words, the three battle stars must, as the shellburst blurb on the first page screams, “SAVE HIM – OR KILL HIM!”

Hyperbole and purple Kanigherian prose aside, “Suicide Mission” is one of the all-time great team-ups, combining the best elements of Kanigher’s melodramatic but hard-hitting war books with top-notch storytelling. It’s paced beautifully (those 25 pages sure help), with the heroes encountering each other gradually and plenty of attention devoted to each separately.

The cover is a fine example of Kubert’s skillful draftsmanship; his eye for design turns an odd arrangement of shapes into a perfect display of each of the heroes on his home field, so to speak. The battle scenes and the raw emotions of the characters are beautifully presented by Kubert, who in the same story gets to draw dogfights, tank battles, and infantry skirmishes as well as the kinds of poignant and sad moments he and Kanigher were known for. Bu then, did you need me to tell you how good a Kubert art job is? 



Kanigher’s story shines thanks to the unforced interplay and camaraderie among Rock, Cloud and Stuart that’s rare in many team-ups. Because they are all his creations, Rock, Cloud and Stuart sound and act exactly like themselves. And the surprise revelation of the true identity of Martin is made even better thanks to a “Spartacus”-inspired moment by the three battle stars themselves.

A blurb at the end of the story referred to the story as the “first mission of the Three Battle Stars,” so it seems that DC and Kanigher were wondering about the marketability of teaming up DC’s three ETO-based war heroes on a regular basis. That never happened in a formal way, but Kanigher apparently thought team-ups were great for business, and he teamed them up regularly in the months and years after the Three Battle Stars appeared. And although the premise would be quite different, I’d say that his “Losers” strip, which premiered in late 1969, owed a bit to this very first team-up.

If you’ve never read a Silver Age DC war comic, you could do far worse than B and B 52; it’s a masterful example of that genre at its best and of Kanigher and Kubert at the top of their game. I was and am a big fan of the DC war line-up, and for me, “this one had it all,” as Stan Lee might have said, and still does. Even when I reread “Suicide Mission” now, over 50 years later, I find that not only does it hold up as an excellent comic book, but that it would make a great movie, too.

No wonder that when Kurt announced this year’s topic "Suicide Mission" was one of the very first stories that I thought of.

10. Diana Prince, Wonder Woman, and Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser
Wonder Woman #202
By Samuel R. Delaney and Dick Giordano
DC Comics September-October 1972


When this comic came out, I was 10 months into my collecting days. I’d discovered the non-powered version of Wonder Woman a few months earlier, and I was intrigued, especially by the white “costume”, so unlike what the other superheroes were wearing in those days. I had never read a “sword and sorcery” story; although I had seen Conan on the stands, and had read the closely-related “sword and space” fantasy Gullivar Jones, in Marvel’s Creatures on the Loose.

So I really didn’t bat an eye when Wonder Woman, Catwoman, and I Ching were transported to the fantasy world of Nehwon at the end of the previous issue. I didn’t realize there was anything particularly remarkable about crossing over a superhero comic with Fritz Leiber’s barbarian short story characters. Heck, I didn’t even know Fritz Leiber, or Samuel R. Delaney were established sci-fi/fantasy writers. Just another comic book to me.

But somehow, it wowed me. Reading it over this year, it’s a fairly unremarkable story, with tired tropes from hundreds of S&S fantasies, but Fafhrd and the Mouser held a strange appeal, and when I got to the end of an issue, with its declaration that these two would be spinning off into their own comic, “Swords Against Sorcery” (“Sword of Sorcery”, by the time of publication), I was sold!

Looking back, I can see this issue prepared me for an important, painful lesson in the comic book world. There was no guarantee that the radical, exciting new ideas would last. This version of Wonder Woman, “Sword of Sorcery”, neither would stick around for much longer.

10. Spider-Man and The Thing
from Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2 (1977) by Jim Starlin

The final item on my list where the team-up itself truly has nothing to do with what makes this story special. The conclusion (or, rather, epilogue) to Starlin's first Thanos Saga finds Spider-Man feeling vastly under-prepared in a battle for the universe itself. I have practically no memory of Ben Grimm even being in this thing, let alone how he and Spidery interacted. Instead, I recall how staggeringly human Peter Parker was in this story, making the decidedly unheroic (but totally understandable) decision to run away before finally coming to his senses:

10. Marvel Team-Up #82-85



June, 1979

So, it's winter time (for a comic cover dated in the spring) and a red headed woman is walking in New York. She sees a picture of Spider-Man and feels she should know him. That's ridiculous, though; she is just a school teacher, named Nancy Rushman. A gang of men accosts her and slap her around, when Spidey shows up to save the day. He looks at her and says he recognizes her; she's the Black Widow! Why didn't she fight? She faints and Spidey gets her out of there. Later, when she wakes up, Spidey tries to restore her proper memory and even pulls her costume out of the bag she is carrying; but, she insists she doesn't know how it got there.



Spidey and Widow head out to try to figure things out and are attacked by SHIELD agents, led by Contessa Valentina de Allegro Fontaine (Val, to her friends) and Spidey fights, while Nancy cowers. However, numbers and training are wearing Spidey down and stress causes Nancy to react instinctively and enter the fight, taking down multiple agents. Then, Nick ury shows up and shoots her, then Spidey. What the heck?

It turns out that Fury shot them with tranguilizer darts from his needle pistol. he takes Nancy to SHIELD NY HQ, confirming that she is Black Widow. Something is going on within SHIELD. Spidey wakes up and uses the Bugles "morgue" to look up info on SHIELD and traces down their HQ and infiltrates it. He rescues Nancy just as a doctor is about to stab her with a hypodermic, after receiving a command, through a monitor. We eventually learn that someone is controlling SHIELD agents and the Helicarrier. The person sends Boomerang and Silver Samurai to get the Widow. Spidey escapes with Nancy and she has dreams of being strapped into some kind of device and tortured. Fury tracks them and arrests them, when Boomerang shows uip. A fight ensues, then Samurai teleports in, with a ring stolen from John Belushi a few issues before, and takes Boomerang out of there. Now Fury knows that the idea of Widow as a traitor is bogus and SHIELD has been infiltrated.

The next issue brings Shang Chi into the fight and we learn that the person controlling SHIELD and ordering Boomerang and Silver Samurai around is the former Madame Hydra, the Viper. We learn how she survived her previous battle with Nomad, aka Captain America, when she led the Serpent Squad. She is found by Ishiro Tagara, a former member of the Japanese Red Army Faction, who was allied with HYDRA. He gets her away and they have a romance, as she heals. She was behind Silver Samurai's previous battle with Spidey and Widow, in MTU #57. SS is an ally of Tagara. She eventually took over the SHIELD Helicarrier, through mind control methods and developed a teleportation ring, which was lost and ended up in John Belushi's hands, on the set of SNL. SS recovers it and we are where we are now. Fury investigates and runs into Boomerang, and gets aid from Shang Chi, who takes Boomerang down. Fury puts on his costume to infiltrate the Helicarrier. meanwhile, Spidey and Widow do the same, using hang gliders. Widow is racked with fear and Spidey has to go it alone, when they run into SHIELD agents.

In the final issue, we learn Viper's plan: to crash the Helicarrier into the Capitol Building, during the President's address to a joint session of Congress, taking out the entire government in one go! All the players are on board and it is a massive battle. Viper kills the rotors and the carrier is going into freefall, as Spidey and Fury try to reactivate them. Widow, who we learn was captured by Viper, tortured and brainwashed, has got her fighting spirit back and battle Viper on top of one of the rotor hubs



This is probably my favorite Spidey team-up storyline. Chris Claremont weaves a web of intrigue and mystery, dragging SHIELD into things, with excellent villains in Viper and Silver Samurai (plus Boomerang, as hired muscle). Black Widow has to endure a severe test of her will power to regain her identity and direction of her skills. Fury has to regain control of SHIELD and Chi is just caught up in things, so we get a new co-star in each installment.

Claremont was the regular writer on MTU and was doing more 2 and 3 issue storylines and this was one of his longest. It also ties together events in at least two previous issues, giving shades of what he was doing in X-Men, especially with yet another female character being put through a psychological ringer, only to emerge triumphant, at the end. Of course, physical torture is also involved, as are dominatrix figures. No wonder Jim Shooter once gave Ann Nocenti a whip. Claremont probably responded better.

Sal Buscema is on pencils; but, inker Steve Leialoha is doing the heavy lifting on the finishes and the result is very dynamic and makes Sal look way better than usual.

The SHIELD angle hooked me, plus it was the first time I ever saw the Helicarrier, after reading characters make reference to it. Once I got the whole story (I got the last issue on the stands, and the first in a Whitman 3-pack), it proved more than just a cool SHIELD piece.