Marvel Team-Up in the 1990s
In the 1990s Marvel tried to revive Marvel Team-Up, nearly 10 years after the last series ended. At first the title was named Spider-Man Team-Up. The first and last two issues feature Peter Parker as Spider-Man as the series was published in the middle of the Clone Saga, as a result the issues 2 through 5 feature Ben Reilly as Spider-Man. The stories weren’t meant to be huge game changers, just fun one-off stories much like the original Marvel Team-Up series. It also featured different writers and artists each issue. The only notable story is the 2nd story of issue #5. It featured Spider-Man teaming up with Howard the Duck and it was written by Howard the Duck’s creator Steve Gerber.
Still feeling raw about Marvel owning the rights to the character he created (that’s a long story), Gerber used this story as an opportunity. At the time he was working on the Savage Dragon/Destroyer Duck one-shot for Image Comics .He wrote the two stories as an unofficial crossover. The characters in both stories meet in a dark warehouse (the best way for two different licenses to meet without any lawyers getting involved). In the Savage Dragon story, Gerber had the characters swap Howard the Duck with a clone. It was Gerber’s way of “taking back” his creation. In the Image Universe, Howard changed his name to Leonard the Duck. Unfortunately for Gerber, his triumphant finet did nothing more than upset his editor at Marvel, Tom Brevoort. Even then, Gerber didn’t go on to do much with Leonard the Duck. The whole thing seems pretty impotent in hindsight especially since Gerber went back to write another Howard the Duck series in the 2000s. Most people on the internet go on about how “brilliant” this is, but really it’s just a case of a kid taking his ball home because he wasn’t winning the game, but the other players don’t care since the game is funded by Disney and they have a huge ball budget. Nobody at Marvel cares and the “switcheroo” is basically ignored. (The irony of me comparing myself to Gerber when it comes to “taking back” my own work is not lost on me here)
After issue #7 Marvel rebooted the title, changing it to Marvel Team-Up and restarting the numbering. The only thing that really changed was that it went from being one-off stories to regular arcs. The first, which ran from issue #1 through 5. It featured Spider-Man being manipulated into going to various places to thwart various cataclysmic events foreseen by a character calling himself the Authority. This leads to all the team-ups. It’s not a very good arc.After two one off stories were Spider-Man teams up with the Sub-Mariner and Blade the Vampire respectively, someone thought the Sub-Mariner was a good replacement for Spider-Man on the title. Readers thought otherwise since the title was cancelled after only 11 issues. It was not a memorable run.
