Issue(s): Marvel Team-Up #111, Marvel Team-Up #112
Cover Date: Nov-Dec 81
Title: "Of spiders and serpents!" / "A king comes riding"
Credits:
J.M. DeMatteis - Writer
Herb Trimpe - Penciler
Mike Esposito - Inker
Mark Gruenwald - Assistant Editor
Tom DeFalco - Editor

Review/plot:
This two-parter draws on mythos from the Pre-Cataclysm period of Marvel's history and culminates with a team-up with Kull.

The first issue is ostensibly a team-up with Devil-Slayer, but his behavior gets more suspicious as the story goes on...

...and he turns out to be a Serpent Man in disguise, tricking Spider-Man to steal a totem from the Spider-People, which he is able to do because of his own spider blood.

Spider-Man says that the Spider-People are four-armed beasties...

...but they do correctly have six arms, just like Peter did when he mutated circa ASM #100. You'd think Spider-Man would know how many limbs a spider is supposed to have.

It's only at the very end of the issue that Spider-Man figures out that Devil-Slayer is really a Serpent Man, but once the other Defenders are freed, they're able to stop the Serpent-People pretty quickly.

Unfortunately, Spider-Man got bit by one of the Serpents, and his spider-affinity makes him particularly vulnerable to their poison. Dr. Strange doesn't have a cure for the poison, but there was supposed to have been one back in the age of Kull, so Dr. Strange sends Spider-Man's astral projection back in time. This allows Spider-Man to possess the people around Kull so he can communicate with them, and he doesn't take it all very seriously (or we can chalk it up to the effects of the poison).

It turns out the cure is held by a witch-doctor type guy named Ju-Lak, and i guess he's not a friendly guy.

But after a quest and some fighting, Ju-Lak gives up the potion. Apparently it works on Spider-Man as long as he's possessing Kull while it's being drunk.

Dr. Strange decides that the trip would have been too much for Spider-Man's sanity, so he wipes his memory. I'll never understand why these sorts of stories always end this way. What is the fun in that?

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: The MCP places this between Amazing Spider-Man #222-223 and Defenders #101-102.

References:

• Some backstory on the Serpent Cult is given a footnote for King Kull #2.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Omm appeared in a few Conan the Barbarian stories in the 1970s, but there I think he was just a giant spider, not a spider/human hybrid.

The later revelations about Spider-Man's totemic nature make me wonder about possible connections to Omm and the spider-people. Spidey will meet up with another race of spider-people in the Knights of Pendragon series, and we see there that his costume resembles the symbol of their deity.