For much of its run, Marvel Team-Up was a largely forgettable title. The stories generally took place out of continuity from what took place in Amazing Spider-Man and, later, Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man. With the best villains reserved for those books, MTU was left with third-tier bad guys and Spider-Man's great supporting cast rarely made appearances in the team-up tales. However, a few MTU stories rise above that level to become truly memorable. The Wraith/Jean DeWolff storyline told in Marvel Team-Up #48-51 is at the top of that list.

This first issue begins with a bang - literally. Spider-Man watches as a toy remote-control airplane drops a not-so-harmless bomb on a Stark International fuel tank. The blast knocks Spider-Man off his web line and destroys his web shooters. Thankfully, Iron Man is on the scene and catches Spidey before he lands in a nearby graveyard. "Calvary Cemetery is crowded enough without having new arrivals drop in from out of the sky!" Iron Man tells him. However, it doesn't take long before Iron Man and Spider-Man start arguing. Iron Man implies that Spider-Man may have been involved in the bombing, which doesn't sit well with the web-slinger: "I mean, of all the Avengers, it's you and Thor that get me most! The high and mighty founding fathers of a venerable old team preaching about respecting each other's privacy and then coming down on me because I like to hold on to mine!" Spider-Man would've been well-advised to remember this conversation before throwing in with Iron Man's side during Civil War!

Before anything gets settled, Police Captain Jean DeWolff makes her first Marvel Comics appearance, informing the heroes that the M. O. of the crime matches several other recent bombings. DeWolff, Spider-Man and Iron Man decide to pool their collective intelligence to solve the case. I have to talk a little about Jean DeWolff before continuing with the story. She simply was one of the best female characters ever introduced in Spider-Man lore. The tough-talking, chain-smoking, beret-wearing police captain never took any lip from anyone - particularly Spider-Man. However, she was Spidey's most loyal supporter in the New York City Police Department, even if she might not admit it to his face. Unlike virtually every other female supporting character, she was a friend of Spider-Man, not Peter Parker. Peter David is a great writer, but I always regretted him killing off Jean DeWolff in Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #107. It's a fantastic story, but it was a real shame to lose such a great character.

Anyway, back to our story. The heroes return to the precinct house, where a smart-mouthed desk sergeant makes some condescending comments to his female boss. DeWolff responds by demoting the man back to beat cop status. We get the sense her father - the retired police commissioner - is a sore subject. A lot more on that next issue. Captain DeWolff shows Spidey and Shell-Head some video clips of the recent bombings, which resulted in 17 deaths (it's surprising, and perhaps a bit hard to accept, that the heroes didn't know more about these crimes, given the death toll). One took place at the home of a New York slumlord, while the other happened at a local bank. A masked man can be seen in the shadows of both clips, but as Iron Man says, "The really odd part of all this is that no one recollects ever having seen a man with a mask at either place." Also strange is the fact that the letters send by the bomber are on official police stationary. Spider-Man wonders if corporate corruption might be the common thread tying the crimes together. But before he can explore that thought, a mystery man hurls another one of those toy planes at Captain DeWolff's office. Iron Man stops the plane, although the explosion causes his armor to malfunction. In the meantime, Spider-Man races to confront the assailant, but ends up being captured when his spider-sense fails to alert him to any danger. In the final panel of the issue, we see the villain - the mysterious Wraith - holding a helpless Spider-Man by the wrists high over the Manhattan streets. "I-I can't fight him! Something's stopping me!" Spider-Man says. "He's going to kill me and I can't fight him!" Sounds like a cliffhanger to me!

Next issue: Spider-Man versus the Wraith...and Iron Man?!? It's part 2 of this 4-part story.

Reviewed by Bruce Buchanan.

Scarce 30¢ Cover Price Variant.