On sale this week: the seventeenth issue of the British incarnation of MARVEL TEAM-UP from 1981.
MTU-UK was an odd attempt by the British Bullpen to get Brits to buy a second SPIDER-MAN weekly alongside the existing long-runner. Quite why they felt that this would be a success is something of a mystery, especially as the long-delayed live-action series wouldn't appear on British screens until much later in the year.
It wasn't even a case of double-dipping as Marvel UK were also publishing the monthly SPIDER-MAN POCKET BOOK (which had started out as a vehicle for Team-Up reprints but switched to sixties Amazing Spider-Man strips when this weekly launched) and the traditional seasonal annuals and specials. That's a lot of Spidey for a small nation.
Of course, Team-Up wasn't officially a Spider-man comic (although it did have the working title SPIDER-MAN AND THE SUPERHEROES) but he appeared in pretty much ever issue anyway. He appeared on eleven of the first sixteen covers.
The other strips included What If, Thor, the Fantastic Four, Morbius the Living Vampire, Ms Marvel and Doctor Strange.
MTU eventually clocked-up 25 issues before merging with - no shocker - SPIDER-MAN.
This cover first appeared on US MARVEL PREMIERE issue 48 from 1979, the second of two issues to feature the dimuative superhero.
Expect to see a lot more of him this year...
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