OK, Best Spider-Man Team-Ups of the Years brings you a quartet of comics this time out, so Face Front! First, the two-parter that won the spotlight: 1978’s Best, with the grand prize, Spider-Man with Mighty Thor versus The Living Monolith in Marvel Team Up #70! What epic spectacle, the great in power shaking the city while our point-of-view character, Spidey, at one point hitches a ride on Thor’s hammer, Mjonir! That scene’s homaged on the very cover of Marvel Team-Up #148, where I first caught that tactic with my young eyes. So, Marvel Team Up #68 set up the return of Havok, the X-Man whose origins share the source of power with the villain of our piece, the archeologist who also shares mutant solar-absorbing abilities. But should Havok fall…! Let’s say, Thor is just about the only cavalry who’d have a chance. The 1972 first pairing of the god and the graduate, Marvel Team-Up #7, was my choice of winner in that year! Here, it’s my 2nd favorite Spider-Man/ Thor story. ...

My well-documented love for the Marvel Comics Group of 1983 led me to collect all those issues I could find! I started collecting regularly at the end of that year, with Marvel Team-Up #138, then Marvel Tales #170, then Amazing Spider-Man #250 together opening my way into the Marvel Universe of that era! So: the Sandman goes straight, Roger Stern and John Romita, Jr. with Klaus Janson bring the Hobgoblin mystery to its fever pitch, and Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, from 1965, begin what some call their magnum opus on the title they created together, the Amazing Spider-Man #31---that month's Marvel Tales reprint. (for me: it had really come out in September and might have been the first of these comics I collected at Len's Kwik Shop, two blocks from home.) How cool! Marvel Tales reprinted all fifty of Spider-Man's first issues plus his origin and three annuals. No, the writing didn't feel modern, but I allowed for that: still was I young enough to enjoy the suspense...

Late that afternoon, Lewis felt sympathy for his new bride’s queasiness, and offered to pull off at a convenience store. He found it interesting, to ponder what encounters each one might hold, what kind of people worked at each one and frequented each one. When you are from out of town, after all, you never can tell what makes one better than the next. There is a self-contained feeling with long road trips, as one encounters places never seen again, passing through. This particular stop contained a real blast from the past. There, on the magazine rack, just as they were years ago when he mowed lawns and saved the pittance of grade incentive money from his parents. Comic books! He tried not to dawdle in getting a cold drink and snack back to the car. His choice was obvious: a big reprint volume of stories, starting with a triple-sized issue that came out a couple of years before he could earn money to buy issues of his own. He smelled the air floating down from the red...

This is such a sophisticated layout, I can't help sharing it with you aspiring artists. It's a reason to remember there's always more places to take it---just don't lose enthusiasm! http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_topics.asp?FID=3 is where, if you want, you can find this art work and talk with John Byrne himself.