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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 12715
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| Posted: 29 January 2014 at 7:08am | IP Logged | 1
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Mr. Stern is usually correct in his comicbook opinions, in my opinion, so...!
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133324
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| Posted: 29 January 2014 at 9:20am | IP Logged | 2
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In case any of you are wonder WHY Roger made this pronouncement, he based it on MTU being the first time Marvel could be seen to be shamelessly commercial, to the point of sacrificing character integrity. Spider-Man, the outsider, the eternal loner, is seen teaming up with a different character from the MU every month.(It's interesting to note that many folk up at Marvel didn't seem to think MTU "counted." When SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN was introduced, Len Wein slipped a line into Spider-Man's dialog, over in AMAZING, to have Our Hero note he felt like he was twice as busy as usual. As the artist on TEAM-UP at the time, I felt appropriately miffed.)
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Robert White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4560
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| Posted: 29 January 2014 at 10:08am | IP Logged | 3
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I never had at problem with MTU, or Brave and the Bold, because I'm a fan of the team-up as a way to give interesting characters that might not otherwise get much exposure a chance to shine. In that regard, I view it as a step in the right direction creatively. I simply don't agree that it was the "end" of the real Marvel. Remember, we still had JB's FF/X-Men, Miller's Daredevil, Walt's Thor and a ton of stuff just as good as anything in the 60's (if not as technically as original) still to come. If anything, I'd mark 1984 (Secret Wars) as the clear start of the rot that pretty much killed the tree sometime in the early 90's.
I think knocking titles like Marvel Team-Up and Two-In-One as being improbable is missing the point--first and foremost, mainstream superhero comics should be fun. I think Marvel-Team, at least for the time Claremont and JB were on the title, was the best Spider-Man book on the stands. (Retroactively of course. Didn't get to read them till MUCH later.)
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133324
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| Posted: 29 January 2014 at 10:16am | IP Logged | 4
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I think knocking titles like Marvel Team-Up and Two-In-One as being improbable…•• Who is knocking 2-in-1?
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Robert White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4560
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| Posted: 29 January 2014 at 10:27am | IP Logged | 5
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There are some who take a general stance that all the various team-up books are improbable. I've always been a fan and felt that they often captured the spirit of fun more than the regular titles.
Besides, where else would the likes of American Eagle or Man-Wolf get a chance to do...anything?
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Brian O'Neill
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 November 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 1964
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| Posted: 29 January 2014 at 11:04am | IP Logged | 6
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I hope JB won't be offended...but I always preferred MTIO to FANTASTIC FOUR...mainly because I preferred Ben (and Johnny) to Reed and Sue! So, having them as Ben's 'supporting cast' in MTIO was fine.
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Greg Kirkman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 May 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 15775
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| Posted: 29 January 2014 at 12:19pm | IP Logged | 7
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TWO-IN-ONE made sense, at least. The Thing is a celebrity and a
team player.
Spider-Man is a loner, and his stories should always function on a
much more intimate level. Of all Marvel's classic books, AMAZING
SPIDER-MAN was definitely the most soap-opera-ish.
Unfortunately, Spider-Man's massive success turned him into a
corporate mascot and a merchandising cash-cow. Spider-Man as a
member of the Avengers, Spider-Man revealing his identity to the
world--developments like these are directly opposed to what the
character is all about!
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 12715
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| Posted: 29 January 2014 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | 8
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For me, those Roy Thomas stories were among the worst featuring this great character and seriously threatened to ruin him had Thomas' tenure been longer than a few issues.
(Did Lee give Spider-Man six arms or was that Thomas' idea?)
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Greg Kirkman
Byrne Robotics Member
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| Posted: 29 January 2014 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | 9
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Lee ended his run with the six-arm cliffhanger.
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
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Location: United States
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| Posted: 29 January 2014 at 1:52pm | IP Logged | 10
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I know it was right at the tail-end of Lee's story, but it strikes me so much as akin to what Thomas was about, and so completely irrelevant to Stan's story, that I have continually wondered if was really a Thomas idea tacked onto Lee's landmark (temporary) farewell.
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Gene Best
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 24 October 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4598
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| Posted: 29 January 2014 at 4:16pm | IP Logged | 11
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JB - I love hearing this behind-the-scenes stuff. Thank you for that!
As a kid, I just took MTU at face value and either enjoyed the story or didn't. I think intuitively - though I probably wouldn't have articulated it as such - thought that there were 30 days a month and I was only seeing a couple of them here and there in the regular titles - and with so many superheroes running around NYC, it didn't strike me as odd that Spider-Man bumped into another one. (I never knew how frequently, but it didn't seem unreasonable.)
That said, I loved my comics and graded them on a generous curve - a book had to really suck for me not to like it.
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Brian O'Neill
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 November 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 1964
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| Posted: 29 January 2014 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | 12
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I recall that in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #163, halfway through the story, there's a gap of a day or more before we 'rejoin' for the second half...and both SPECTACULAR # 1, and MTU # 52 somehow fit into that 'gap'(the story in AMAZING directly refers to SPECTACULAR, although I forget how the MTU issue handled it),
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