Sunday 22 May 2016

Marvel Team-Up (Marvel UK/1980)



Launched in September 1980 with Spider-Man headlining the line-up, Marvel Team-Up was to be a short-lived title lasting only 25 issues before merging with Spider-Man & Hulk weekly the following year.

This being the re-launched line of Marvel UK, gone were the nice glossy covers (there was one letter bemoaning this in one of the issues I picked up) and there were more strips containing less pages which was supposed to give these comics a more "British" feel. Missed the point really. These weren't "British" comics and everyone knew that so in my view the change of format was a mistake.

However that alone was not the reason for this comics failure.

 

Aside from Spider-Man in reprints from the US Marvel Team-Up the only major characters appearing were the Fantastic Four.

The rest of Team-Up was a bit of a hodge-podge of minor and even third rank heroes ranging from early Ms Marvel adventures, through Morbius the Living Vampire (one of the few Marvel heroes I am not that familiar with, didn't appeal then or now) through what must have been seen as confusing What-Ifs which could be fun, but were usually rather hit or miss to The Torpedo, "Marvel's latest hero". Nah me neither. Looked naff to be honest.

A pretty average effort really, though will appeal to some.

1 comment:

  1. Always had a liking for "team-ups"...'Marvel Team-Up', 'Marvel Two-in-One', 'DC Comics presents' and of course 'the Brave and the Bold'...sometimes drawing attention to lesser well-known superheroes and at other times doing fun team-ups plus the big-name team-ups. All in all good stuff usually...though there were the odd duds!

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