My Favorite Issue of Marvel Team-Up

Spidey-Pan-TeamUp

Okay, so maybe it’s not a real comic-book cover—ya got me! But with Spider-Man: Homecoming—the first Spidey film set firmly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe—opening in the U.S. today, and both Spidey and Pan hailing from the New York borough of Queens, it only makes sense that they’d get together, right? Especially since the new movie Spidey lives in Pan’s (and StarWarp Concepts’) neighborhood of Sunnyside!

Spider-Man art by Ross Andru and Dick Giordano, from the back cover of 1976’s Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man: The Battle of the Century, one of the greatest team-up stories ever. Pan art by Eliseu Gouveia from The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0, our free digital comic (download it today!).

And if you like this heroic meeting, then take a look at this post from June 2015, when Pan novel cover painter Bob Larkin teamed Pan up (at my suggestion) with one of the greatest pulp-era heroes of all time: Doc Savage, The Man of Bronze! Pan sure loves her crossovers!

So, When’s the Team-Up?

If, like me, you’re a fan of Marvel’s run of superhero movies—the most recent of which was the blockbuster Doctor Strange, starring Benedict Cumberbatch (a really good film, by the way)—then you’ve probably been waiting to see what was next for their version of the Amazing Spider-Man, who was introduced in Captain America: Civil War and is now played by actor Tom Holland. I certainly have—Spidey’s always been my favorite superhero; in fact, my writing credits include a short story starring him (“The Ballad of Fancy Dan,” cowritten with Ken Grobe for the anthology Untold Tales of Spider-Man) and a young adult novel (Spider-Man Super Thriller: Warrior’s Revenge, ghostwritten for author Neal Barrett Jr.).

Well, not too long ago, the trailer dropped for that next chapter, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and the biggest surprise—for me, at least—was that Spidey and his Aunt May (played this time by Marisa Tomei) have apparently moved from their decades-long comic home of Forest Hills to another Queens, NY neighborhood: Sunnyside—home to none other than a certain monster fighter named Pandora Zwieback!

spidey-homecoming

Yup, that’s Peter Parker in his Spidey costume, hanging out on his fire escape, with Manhattan in the distance, Queens Boulevard below him, and the No. 7 subway train passing by.

So the only question that comes to mind is, of course, when’s the team-up, movie folks? Marvel Presents: Queensborough Team-Up, perhaps? It’s box-office gold, I tells ya!  😀