Issue(s): Marvel Team-Up #82, Marvel Team-Up #83, Marvel Team-Up #84, Marvel Team-Up #85
Cover Date: Jun-Sep 79
Title: "No way to treat a lady" / "Slaughter on 10th Avenue!" / "Catch a falling hero" / "The woman who never was!"
Credits:
Chris Claremont - Writer
Sal Buscema - Penciler
Stephen Leialoha - Inker

Review/plot:
Viper has taken over the SHIELD Helicarrier with hypnosis technology (Mind you, this is around the same time that Claremont has Mystique infiltrating the Helicarrier as well - i wonder if she got hypnotized.). Anyway, most terrorists would be satisfied with just taking over the Helicarrier, but for Viper it's just a step in a master plan to kill the President and throw America into chaos.

The Black Widow caught wind of the plan, but she was captured and tortured, forcing her mind to retreat into the phony persona of an unassuming American school teacher, Nancy Rushman.

It's as Nancy that Spider-Man encounters her.

He spends some time trying to figure out if she's really the Widow or not, and dodging SHIELD agents.

Meanwhile, not sure who he can trust in SHIELD, Nick Fury contacts Denis Nayland Smith and asks him to send over Shang-Chi.

In addition to hypnotized SHIELD agents, the Viper's got Silver Samurai and Boomerang on her side.

Boomerang's claim to fame is "I've survived being hit by the Hulk." But Claremont manages to make him seem pretty dangerous.

It's a pretty complex four-parter with some good scenes between Spider-Man and "Nancy". They kind of fall for each other, but of course that's disrupted once the Widow gets her memories back.

The Black Widow makes references to being alive during World War II in this arc ("I saw children starve in the ruins of Stalingrad, and men freeze solid as ice overnight.").

We also get a lot of nice fight scenes.

Also interesting is the Sal Buscema / Stephen Leialoha combination. Sal's usual clean-but-not-spectacular pencils are given an extra layer of depth and mood with Leialoha's ambient inking.

Overall, a good arc.

Quality Rating: B

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: The current Daily Bugle has a headline of "Spider-Man Wrecks Museum" and depicts the Kulan Gath / Red Sonja encounter from Marvel Team-Up #79. This arc needs to be placed slightly after that and before Peter is fired from the Bugle and dumped by Mary Jane in Amazing Spider-Man #193. See my note on issue #79 for why i'm breaking from the MCP/Index on these issues, and why this is out of publication sequence for the Marvel Team-Up series.

References:

• The Viper was able to infiltrate the Helicarrier due to the Silver Samurai's ring of teleportation, which he acquired from John Belushi in Marvel Team-Up #74.
  
• The Viper seemingly died in Captain America #182. Instead we see she fell through the floorboards into the basement of the building she was in, and she lost the Serpent Crown.
  
• The Viper ordered the Silver Samurai to steal a cavourite crystal in Marvel Team-Up #57, but they foiled his theft, causing a delay in Viper's plans. She also first tested out her hypno-beam in that issue, making sure SHIELD's New York base would be deserted.
  
• Fighting Shang-Chi, Boomerang claims to have previously defeated Iron Fist, which wasn't the reality of what was shown in Iron Fist #13.
  
• Shang-Chi and Iron Fist met in Master of Kung Fu annual #1.
  
• Shang-Chi first appeared in Special Marvel Edition #15.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

I wonder why no other Spider-Man writer(Other than Chris Claremont) was interested in making the Black Widow as Spider-Man's crime fighting partner in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man during the 1970 to today? She was the first heroine to seek him out, which might have been a hint that she wanted to team up with him. But wanted to see if he was worthy. I always felt that she should have been his first crime fighting partner, in addition to the Black Cat. In fact, I think that Marvel should gave the Black Cat to Daredevil as his crime fighting partner in exchange for the Black Widow as Spider-Man's partner.

Recently, it was hinted that there are a few heroines(besides Black Cat) who are interested in Spider-Man as more than just a friend. And those that has expressed an interest are Ms. Marvel, Silver Sable, Spider-Woman, and Black Widow(secretly). It would be cool the see more team-up adventures between them in future Spider-Man stories.

Dan, you might be interested in the little monologue from Spider-Man about the Black Widow in Marvel Team-Up #140.

This story got praised in the Comics Journal as one of the better Marvel stories for the year.

According to FOOM#22, this story was supposed to end in the X-Men book.

I really loved this story arc when I found it nearly a decade later! That suggestion about Widow/ Spidey as partners is excellent; she's SO different, professional, confident, worldly in many contrasting ways to Spider-Man. Felicia and Matt would've made another fascinating contrast, as he is a lawyer making the system work best he can, and she's a burglar! I like having my paradigms shaken. But we often find ourselves dreaming of a better Marvel Universe than the one we often got, even if we're inspired by the best of the one that exists. Haven't you, dear reader, ever dreamed of looking through comics in your dreams that you couldn't believe, when you awoke, were just intense figments?

This is my favorite story from the original Marvel Team-Up -- tons of action and intrigue! It's a shame that Spidey and the Widow's relationship hasn't gotten much attention, and it'd be cool to see them looking back on this story someday, even if it's just in passing.

This of course makes me think of the great line Peter says about Black Widow in Ultimate Team-Up: "She's the hottest woman I've ever seen. And I have cable."

In Iron Man 2, Black Widow's alias is Natalie Rushman, which is close to Nancy Rushman.

That would be John Belushi, not Jim.

I, er, was taking the Sliding Timescale into account. ;-) Thanks.

Originating with a Richard Rodgers/George Balanchine ballet from the 1936 show ON YOUR TOES, the title of #83 had also been repurposed for a 1957 film noir.

This is probably the best run in marvel team up. It uses the format right. A slow burn and mystery from the first issue, each issue bringing in a logical new guest (but not dumping the previous ones due to the plot) with good villains and an over the top plot.

But it also shows why guest stars and the shared universe make this type of team-up format redundant. It easily could have been a run in ASM with guest stars.

Spidey and the Widow wouldn't make a bad couple (as far as I know, Pete's not been involved with and older woman and obviously likes redheads). If nothing else they are both spiders. But I guess this makes Spider-man one of the few heroes the Widow didnt have a tumble with.

I do find it interesting that the "redundant" titles in Marvel were probably at their creative peak at the same time, both with this and Gru's "Project Pegasus" arc in Two-in-One; the former due to Claremont's care when he works on characters (even when they weren't mutants); the latter due to Gru's playing around with the universe, both of which highlight their specialties in earlier works.

Both Claremont on this and the Grunwald/Macchio runs in the team up titles show what the titles should have been.

Personally, I felt Claremont should have done more if he can write other aspects of the MU so well (but thats me hating on the x-men mostly.)

Agreed, he could do it well, especially when he wasn't trapped by the X-titles. When I was reading "Marvel Tales," it reprinted the first fifty issues of "Spider-Man," then the 'drug issues,' then the 'Death of Gwen Stacy,' and then started on Claremont/Byrne's "Marvel Team-Up" run. At the time, I didn't care much for them, thinking they used a lot of characters I had no interest in and didn't do anything interesting anyway, but in hindsight, it's very well done how each story focused on the team-up characters (Hank Pym and the Wasp, Iron Fist, the Human Torch, Ms. Marvel) and each story naturally led to the next one.

I bought the collection fairly recently, and was impressed at how Spidey had almost no time to rest. It's like Marty McFly in the "Back to the Future" movies, if you watch all three in a row, you basically get the sense that Marty has had almost no real sleep for the week or so, just periods where he was knocked unconscious. Yeah, you can quibble with that interpretation, but this isn't a "Back to the Future" fansite, so let's move on.

The Claremont/Byrne arc was very good at pushing story after story without halt. I haven't read the issues without Byrne such as this one, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's much the same. Also, I like the art here. At first glance, I thought Gene Colan had found the time to draw a Spider-Man comic. And it turns out to be Sal Buscema and Steve Leialoha? "Forget it, it's 2016."