BHOC: MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #22

I had started to pick up the quarterly MARVEL TREASURY EDITIONS as a part of my comic book buying pattern. By this time, they had shifted from something that felt pretty special at the outset to just another regular publication, but they gave me a way in which to catch up on stories that I’d missed previously, so I liked them. This particular release collected a variety of stories from MARVEL TEAM-UP, seldom a great comic book, so they aren’t especially terrific tales. But they were entertaining enough in their own right, and with the Spider-Man television show airing intermittently (thus justifying the Marvel’s TV Sensation blurb on the cover) this may have been seen as a way to lure in viewers who might show up for the web-slinger into the broader Marvel Universe.

The opening story by Len Wein and Sal Buscema is a solid potboiler uniting Spidey and Doctor Strange against the mystic menace of Xandu, a character they’d previously encountered in their first meeting many years previously. Xandu mesmerizes Spidey into breaking into Strange’s Sanctum to steal the Wand of Watoomb that he needs to revive his love interest Melinda, who has fallen into an enchanted coma. There’s a clever running bit where we see events from Spidey’s twisted point of view in contrast to what’s actually happening. The pair inevitably beat the crap out of Xandu, doing the classic team-up move where they switch powers at one point. But then, an empathetic Strange attempt to revive Melinda. But it’s no use–she’s not merely in a coma, she’s genuinely dead. And the heroes leave while Xandu has a breakdown, not wanting to accept this revelation.

Next up was a two-part storyline that introduced Stegron, the Dinosaur Man, a somewhat redundant addition to the wall-crawler’s cast of villains given that he regularly mixed it up with the Lizard–who, as Curt Connors, sets this story into motion. This two-parter was also written by Len Wein, with artwork at least for the first chapter by Gil Kane. But the guest-star here was Ka-Zar, and I wasn’t all that into Ka-Zar–he wasn’t a super hero, he was simply a Tarzan knock-off hanging around in the Savage Land. Improbably, Spider-Man journeys to the Savage Land in a jet borrowed from Nick Fury somehow in pursuit of Victor Stegron, who had worked with Curt Conners and who was performing experiments similar to the ones that turned Connors into the Lizard. Spidey almost immediately buddies up with Ka-Zar in order to track the rogue scientist down before something awful can happen.

But the pair are too late: Stegron has already taken the formula that transforms him into a Dinosaur Man, and his ultimate objective is world conquest. To that end, he’s loading up a convenient flying ark with dinosaurs from the Savage Land intending to make them his army against humanity. The Dinosaur Man makes a couple of passing references to “They”, a covert group of some sort that Len was setting up as a running bit of background business throughout his TEAM-UP time. Spidey and Ka-Zar wind up fighting tribespeople (of course) as well as Stegron himself to prevent this from happening. But they blow it, and Ka-Zar is left behind as Spidey snags Stegron’s departing flying ark with a web-line, letting it carry him into the next part of this adventure.

The second half switches pencilers back to Sal Buscema and brings in additional guest-star the Black Panther, who comes in response to the Ark showing up on the Avengers’ early-warning detection screens. The two heroes along with Curt Connors work to create an antidote to Stegron’s dinosaur transformation while the villain stalks around Manhattan with his prehistoric minions causing havoc. Eventually, the battle is joined, and it all resolves with Stegron being knocked into the river and not being able to remain buoyant in his new monstrous form. So all of the efforts to cure him were wasted. But so it goes–though this doesn’t prevent the web-slinger from being sorrowful and feeling like a failure at story’s end. (Also, what a lousy splash page this second part has. )

The final full-length story reprinted in this issue was from slightly earlier in the TEAM-UP run, and it was one that I’d seen a page of floating around on the back of some of the Marvel-themed book covers and similar merchandise that were then available. It pairs Spidey and Captain America up against A.I.M. and the Grey Gargoyle, with a guest-appearance from Nick Fury–maybe here’s where Spidey earned himself the favor to be able to borrow that jet in the earlier tale. I had seen the Gargoyle in a THOR story before this, and this tale explains how he got into position for that adventure, this one ending with him being accidentally chained to a launching spacecraft that shoots him into the stratosphere. It’s a perfectly serviceable tale, but nothing great.

The final story contained in this TREASURY EDITION was a three-part story about how a Spidey story is put together by Stan Lee and Marie Severin and featuring John Romita, Larry Lieber and Roy Thomas. But it’s been modernized for the period, and now claims to be about how this team puts together the daily Spider-Man newspaper strip. Marie’s artwork has also been touched up to eliminate Stan’s beard and a few other things–rather than AVENGERS, Roy Thomas, who shows up for the story’s final gag, instead claims to have come in with the next story for the Conan newspaper strip. It’s probably the most memorable story in the entire collection, to be honest, and Marie’s caricatures of her three co-workers are spot-on.