Issue(s): Giant-Size Spider-Man #1
Cover Date: Jul 74
Title: "Ship of fiends! / The masque of the Black Death!"
Credits:
Len Wein - Writer
Ross Andru - Penciler
Don Heck - Inker

Review/plot:
After a brief prologue involving Equinox that leads into Marvel Team-Up #23...

...Peter Parker finds that Aunt May is sick again and this time the only medicine that can cure her is on an ocean cruiser that won't arrive in time. As Spider-Man, he borrows a rocketship from the Human Torch.

He arrives at the cruiser and sets about looking for the doctor who has the medicine. Dracula is also on the ship (there's a costume party going on so he doesn't look out of place).

Spidey and the vampire sort of "team-up", although they never actually meet, except a brief bump-in...

...to stop a group of thugs who are also after the medicine.

Dracula wants to kill the doctor so that the medicine cannot one day interfere with his "well-laid plans". There's a bit of mistaken identity about who the doctor is, and Dracula returns home mistakenly thinking he's killed his target, but Spidey makes off with the right one at the end (turns out to be the girl in the viking costume that Dracula almost killed earlier).

It definitely reads like an issue of Marvel Team-Up because despite the title, that's really what this series is meant to be.

The teaming up of Spider-Man and Dracula was unusual enough that Roy Thomas felt the need to make a case for it in a text piece:

At that time, though then just a struggling Associate Editor, I decided that, if I had my way about it, Spidey and the Terror from Transylvania would indeed meet - and yet they wouldn't. ...because such a non-meeting would define the vague, uneasy relationship between our straight "superhero"" mags and our straight "mystery" mags. Such a story might answer, for once and for all, the question which your letters have asked (and often tried to answer, as well) over and over again: "Where does Dracula fit in the Marvel Universe? Is he in the same space/time continum {sic} as Spider-Man... Morbius... the Hulk... Conan, for that matter?

The answer to all questions is: yes.

If there is to be a Marvel Universe, the answer has to be yes, you see -- or else Marvel stumbles into the same kind of pitfalls and pratfalls as our Discombobulated Competition, with ten different kinds of Martians and an equal number of Universes. What Smilin' Stan Lee had in mind there, a little over a decade ago now, was a consistent Universe - where Spidey and Dr. Strange and the Hulk could develop side by side with yet-undreamed-of Marvel co-stars like Dracula, Conan, and even Killraven, Warrior of the Worlds.

Thus, the history of Sub-Mariner's Atlantis goes back in time, - to embrace Conan's Hyborian Age, Kull's Savage Atlantis, Lin Carter's Lemuria.

Thus H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds becomes a blooming branch on the tree of time - one of earth's possible, preventable (?) futures.

Thus Reed and Ben Grimm shake hands with Sgt. Nick Fury in the darkest days of World War II.

And thus - Spidey meets Dracula.

At least, almost.

I thought Dracula's existence in the Marvel Universe was confirmed in Avengers #118, but i certainly love Roy Thomas' affirmation of a strong and consistent continuity between Marvel's titles.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: MCP places this between Tomb of Dracula #22 and #23, and Amazing Spider-Man #133 & 134. Dracula has traveled to this ship from Europe and returns there at the end of this issue. Takes place concurrently with Marvel Team-Up #23 and between FF #149-150 for the Torch.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Spider-Man vs. Dracula #1

The titles are derived from "Ship of Fools"(a Doors song) and "Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe.

Len Wein wanted to use Shang-Chi in Marvel Team-Up, but instead that got converted into #2 of this title.

This title has a strange history. First off, there was Giant-Size Super-Stars, which had the Fantastic Four in the first issue. Spider-Man vs. Morbius & Man-Wolf was supposed to be in the 2nd, but Marvel changed its mind(s) and made that story Giant-Size Super-Heroes #1. Super-Stars became Giant-Size Fantastic Four with #2. Then, the Super-Heroes title became Giant-Size Spider-Man and restarted with #1. If that wasn't enough, Giant-Size Chillers was supposed to revolve Dracula, Werewolf By Night, and Man-Thing; then Marvel gave the last two their own Giant-Size books and Chillers became Giant-Size Dracula. Weirdest of all, a non-character anthology Giant-Size Chillers #1 came out a year later.

The Mighty Marvel Checklist for this month listed this as "Super-Giant Spider-Man".

"Ship of fools" is a concept/metaphor that's been around for centuries, do the title doesn't necessarily come from the Doors song.

Conan is in the mainstream Marvel Universe? Well, Roy’s missive at least answers the question of whether or not The Eternals was originally part of the Marvel Universe.

Sometimes, Roy Thomas wrote better text pieces than he wrote comics IMO. In this piece, he editorially self-congratulates for the unified nature of the Marvel universe at that time, yet it was he in a large part who laid the groundwork for the snowballing fragmentation of the Marvel universe, by writing 1968's Avengers Annual #2 which established the first Marvel alternate universe. His propensity for time travel stories, retcons, and especially time-travel-driven retcon stories had started the fragmentation process years before he wrote these words. Maybe he didn't really see it; maybe it hadn't really hit home yet.

Sheesh, that Torch is a real asshole.