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. ...

Might I say, Frank Miller and Terry Austin knocked it out of the park on Machine Man's last cover. For a change, the creative team knows it's the end and try their best to wrap things up. I don't want to give away too many spoilers, but this issue marked a turning point for Machine Man's disguised civilian life at DelMar Insurance. There's a super-embassy, designed to withstand a terrorist attack by sealing the occupants within and relying on high technology security. A huge Halloween party is the chosen way to showcase the embassy for interested parties. Masks have reached a crisis point for Machine Man; his face has been ruined during his battle with Alpha Flight, but his facade of humanity both seems to be leading him into confusion with Pamela Quinn and repudiation in the form of violent blackouts, as began when fighting Madame Menace and the revolutionaries in #17. Machine Man has to get to the bottom of his behaviors while dealing with the debut of the Jac...