Issue(s): Marvel Team-Up #8
Cover Date: Apr 73
Title: "The Man-Killer moves at midnight!"
Credits:
Gerry Conway - Writer
Jim Mooney - Penciler
Jim Mooney - Inker

Review/plot:
The Cat comes to New York on the heels of the Man-Killer, who killed an anti-feminist politician in Chicago. The Man-Killer is a former Olympic skiier who was injured in a competition with an arrogant man, and now she wears an exo-skeleton that gives her great strength.

She hates all men. Hates them. She wears the female symbol over her crotch. When she sees her henchmen hanging out with a male body guard she shouts "He's a man, baby!" and punches the crap out of him.

The Cat attacks Spider-Man out of nowhere because she knows that a man wouldn't believe that she has super-powers.

Spidey agrees it was the right thing to do, and then they go off and fight the Man-Killer.

They defeat her by pointing out that her exo-skeleton was made by the scientists at AIM, who are men, so women can't do anything for themselves after all.

Spider-Man is a bit of an ass around women again, this time slamming the Man-Killer's female goons into a wall with his webbing and then saying essentially "Oops, i used too much force. It was the right amount of force for a male goon, but you chicks are too light."

Interesting more because it shows what the male writers thought the women's liberation movement was about than because the story is any good.

A letter on the letters page notes a continuity problem between Marvel Team-Up #5 and Avengers #105, where each issue referred to an event in the other issue as occurring in the past. The reader surmises that it was due to a directive in each to plug the other book without the writers knowing exactly what would happen and that the other writer would do the same. The response is basically "Yeah now that we've got so many books it's hard to keep track of the continuity. We've got to get better with that."

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first Man-Killer

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Spider-Man says he's had his share of crazy politicians - "As readers of the current Spider-Man are well aware! - Roy". Reference is to Amazing Spider-Man #116-118.
  
• The Cat got her powers in Cat #1.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Man-Killer later showed up as a Hydra lieutenant in Daredevil, so I guess she got over her rigid ideology a bit.

I remember reading this a few years ago and going 'what a stupid comic.' Along with 'what a stupid villain defeat.'

BUNT!

A reactionary tales of its time and place. And, by that measure - not bad, not bad at all, Mr. Conway.

Man-killer appears to have three sets of breasts.

Enjoyed this story. It transport me to a particular time and place. Conway was and is a great storyteller.

Looking this story over, I sort of am reminded that if I were to write for a character at Marvel, I actually would go with Greer over a lot of the big names. Somehow I actually would like to see her used as an embodiment of the three different levels of feminism with her character as well as the embodiment of her abilities: human Greer as the police officer/detective and "compassionate feminism", the Cat as more her "public superhero" side and a face for "militant feminism" (the major Women's Lib stuff of the late 60s/early 70s; maybe less extreme than Mankiller here), and Tigra as her powerful and "liberated feminism" side (more playful and such) which she only really releases for the big stuff or in conjunction with the Cat People. I'd think it would be cool.

I liked this story at the time but no, the "Aargh! My suit was made by men! I'm going to crack up and just slump here." ending never made much sense.

Just come here to say, under Fabian Nicieza, Amazon (formerly Man-Killer) becomes a really interesting character - Thunderbolts really salvages this one. I think probably prior to her appearances in that book, Man-Killer was an awful embarrassment of a villain.

Completely agree. And he didn't really have to change the character, just give her some dignity. Sort of reminds me of the transformation of the somewhat ridiculous Briana in the Game of Thrones books to the awesome character she became in the television show.

Looking at the backstory for Mankiller, I'm thinking her conflict with Lubbings parallels our world's comment by Karl Schranz ("Anyone who out-skis me cannot be a woman!") about Erika Schinegger. This was prior to the X Olympics Winter Games in Grenoble. It may have been at the qualifying rounds in Portillo in Aug 1966. Ms. Cartright makes a remark that they've been retraining Luisa since the accident two years ago.