Issue(s): Marvel Team-Up #31
Cover Date: Mar 75
Title: "For a few fists more!"
Credits:
Gerry Conway - Writer
Jim Mooney - Penciler
Vincent Colletta - Inker

Review/plot:
Peter Parker is eating in a diner when Iron Fist punts a thug through the glass door. Deciding he can get some pictures for the Bugle, Peter follows as Spider-Man, but it turns out that Fist is being stalked by a backwards speaking guy in a Flash Gordon outfit...

...and he instigates a fight between Spidey and Fist. Drom, the Backwards Man drains power from the energy of the fight.

Spidey tries to talk Fist out of fighting, but Fist is obligated to continue the fight for a few pages until the Misunderstanding Fight quota for the issue is met...

...and then they settle down and try to figure out what's going on. But then Spider-Man is kidnapped by a four armed sandman.

Spidey is brought to Drom's hideout, where he learns his origin. He was a guy that was born old and has been living his life backwards (actually, he was born normal and then became old shortly after, answering the question of how he got out of the birth canal.

He does have to use a special machine to make food edible to his reversed metabolism, which brings to mind some pretty awful imagery around how he might have to eat without the machine.

Anyway, absorbing energy from fighting slows his backwards flow, but he's also got a machine to drain energy from Spider-Man directly, and when Iron Fist shows up to rescue him, he starts begging them to touch him, so i guess he can also absorb energy that way.

Eventually Iron Fist smashes a special mirror that accelerates the Backwards Man's de-aging, and he reaches the point of infancy and then goes out of existence entirely (a re-hash of Amazing Spider-Man #75). Iron Fist suggests that soon even the memory of Drom will disappear, so Peter decides to record his adventure onto a tape recorder, but by the end of it, he forgets why he was even doing that.

Not sure if he even forgets Iron Fist (seems like it was headed that way), but hopefully he thinks to listen to the tape.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: The MCP has this between Amazing Spider-Man #142-143 and Marvel Premiere #19-20.

References:

• Spider-Man compares Iron Fist's moves to Shang-Chi, who he met in Giant-Size Spider-Man #2.
  
• Spider-Man's fists are sore in this story from punching a wall in Amazing Spider-Man #141.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Iron man? ;)

Fixed it. Thanks!

The fact that Peter and Danny remember each other when they next meet in Marvel Team-Up 63-64 would suggest that their memories weren't completely erased.

The title refers to the Clint Eastwood western "For a Few Dollars More".

Aging in reverse was a decades-old SF story plot at this point; usually the person was born elderly-looking but infant sized.

MTU #64 does indeed tell us that Peter remembers having met Iron Fist due to the recording. It is in a caption box during the final fight against Steel Serpent.

Thanks, Luis. It's actually in #63, but i found it and added a note in the References for those issues.

The isea of a person aging in reverse begins with F. Scott Fitzgerald's story "The Strange Case of Benjamin Button."

Love your chronology. I read it daily.

Thanks Matt.