Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man #123
The Black Cat calls Spidey for help when she’s targeted by the Blaze, except he was more of a scam from #103. This new guy’s more dangerous and trying to impress the Foreigner. He takes a hostage, but when she’s killed, Spider-Man is rather upset. This leads him to jump back into a relationship with the Black Cat, although he gets framed for murder by an unusual suspect.
Part of the fun here is seeing the Black Cat interacting with Peter’s life. I like how she handles the frequent of Peter’s attractive neighbors suntanning on his roof, keeping him from being able to enter through the ceiling. She also gets an official introduction to Mary Jane, who is motivated to call fling Alfredo. We also gets hints of the things she’s keeping secret from Peter, like strange new abilities (the claws are kinda similar to what Miguel O’Hara would later have) and he’s able to pick up that she knows more about the Foreigner than she’s willing to admit (a reader of #119 is going to also pick up on that.)
I’m not familiar with Dwayne Turner. His style fits what I’ve seen in the series. It might seem more traditional superhero comics than crime story, but it’s fine.
One of the features of the Spider-Man comics of the time was that Peter would develop relationships with precinct captains over the city. We all know Dewolff’s story. Keating was one of the other cops and this story’s setting up something big.
B+

And that’s it for Peter David as a consistent Spider-Man writer, at least in the bronze/ early modern age. He comes back in a few months for a two-parter with the Foreigner- to resolve the Black Cat and Keating stories, a rather consequential double-sized Amazing Spider-Man fill-in, and then a three part Sin-Eater sequel. He does occasional Web of Spider-Man stories (which I won't cover here), and then his main work on Spider-Man in the 90s is either in prose or Spider-Man 2099.
There were some behind the scenes problems with some of the people at the Spider-Man offices angry that he was hired to do creative work when he was initially in advertising. It’s a shame that they made these decisions decades ago out of pique that compromised the quality of the Spider-Man comics.

We got some good stuff out of it, but it could have been better. It had to be annoying for regular readers to have so many fill-ins, although Peter David’s able to make it work, with a sense that Spider-Man’s adventures in other titles count, and that Peter’s been mulling over things while there.

I’ll also review two of David Michelinie’s other issues of Marvel Team-Up.



Marvel Team Up #142
It’s set shortly after Secret Wars, so Spider-Man is back with a brand new costume and making cryptic messages about what he was up to in outer space to convince kids to buy a toy line tie-in. David Michelinie may end up being the most significant writer of the alien costume, although that’s not necessarily apparent at this point.
Spider-Man and Captain Marvel face the same opponents: thieves with the ability to vanish into thin air, who were trying to get special equipment that would help a philanthropist with his plan to reduce overpopulation: make a billion people vanish.
The story’s fine. The main highlight is Paulson’s confidence that he’s right, which does make him different from the usual supervillain, and gets to something I like about Michelinie: the bad guys don't see themselves as bad guys, even when they're doing something absurd. And I like a scene where Peter commiserates with a Daily Bugle veteran.
B



Marvel Team Up #143
In the aftermath of the previous issue, Captain Marvel has been transformed into a being of pure light. Fellow Avenger Starfox figures out a way to help her, volunteering to go with Spider-Man to another dimension where women do all the fighting and the evil Willkiller has taken control of a device that can help Captain Marvel, but it may have consequences in their world.
I’ve seen Greg Larocque’s work before, and I’m getting a sense that he’s in a similar school of artists as Jerry Ordway, Alan Davis and Bryan Bolland, detailed but expressive. He handles a fantasy-style conflict pretty well. I like how Spidey is humbled on a planet where men aren’t as respected (although Starfox certainly makes do) and his sense that he’s getting volunteered for stuff he didn’t quite agree to.
B

Peter David and David Michelinie have similar sensibilities, and I hadn’t really considered whether Michelinie was one of PAD’s influences. I’ve always figured Peter David was an earlier Spider-man writer, but Michelinie tackled the character first- even if mainly as a guest writer also incidentally several years into his acclaimed Iron Man run, which was probably Marvel’s best-reviewed solo title at the time. It could also just be that they just have similar influences. It seems appropriate that they’re connected by working on the character at the same time, and by the Death of Jean Dewolff tying into Venom’s origin.

A comment about Hill Street Blues in Marvel Team-Up was telling, since that was a big part of Peter David’s vibe for his later run on Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man.

I’ll also tackle some work by Jim Owsley, who was the editor of the line, since he suddenly tackles some major comics, and I wouldn’t otherwise find an excuse to cover it (maybe a DeFalco reread.) It also lets me cover the Honeymoon annual in this thread.

So next up is Gang War.