Issue(s): Marvel Team-Up #90
Cover Date: Feb 80
Title: "Death on the air"
Credits:
Steven Grant - Writer
Mike Vosburg - Penciler
Bob McLeod - Inker

Review/plot:
Spider-Man and the Beast team up to fight two losers from the Rampaging Hulk magazine called Modular Man and Killer Shrike.

They've stolen some science gizmo and intend to use the power generated when the local cable TV station starts sending out a stronger signal. Yeah. The truly awful cover from the Marvel Tales reprint has a blurb that says "Cable TV = Death".

There's a little bit of nice banter between Spidey and the Beast...

...but this is mostly pretty bad.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Per the note in MTU #88, this has to take place after Amazing Spider-Man #200. The gap between Avengers #191-192 works well enough for the Beast. A note indicates this takes place before the events of Marvel Team-Up annual #2, probably because Cissy Ironwood is here and there's no reference to the death of her father.

References:

• The Modular Man previously appeared in Rampaging Hulk #8.
  
• Killer Shrike previously appeared in Rampaging Hulk #1.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Marvel Tales #240

The Marvel Tales cover was by Marshall Rogers, who also did the first Daughters of the Dragon solo stories.

I understand the point that "The Rampaging Hulk" stories are considered out of scope for this project, because those adventures were revealed in Incredible Hulk #269 to have been fictional techno-art creations of Bereet. What I don't understand is, how did the Modular Man and Killer Shrike cross over from the metafictional world of "The Rampaging Hulk" and into this slightly more "real" Marvel universe world we have here in this issue of Marvel Team-up? Are there any future stories that explain how this might have been possible?

The Modular Man and Killer Shrike appeared in the Ulysses Bloodstone backup stories in Rampaging Hulk, which are still canon- Bereet was just responsible for the Hulk stories in Rampaging Hulk, not the Bloodstone backups.

Ah, thanks, now I get it. I wonder if eventually fnord12 might add those Bloodstone stories to the project. Not that I really care about them; I'm just curious. I personally liked the Bereet stories, although I haven't read them in years, and was sorry not to see them included here, but totally understand and appreciate the reasons for omitting them.

Icemaster from a Hostess ad showed up in the mainstream continuity too.