Marvel Team-Up (Vol. 3) #2

Background

'Twas an ordinary day for Peter Parker (had doughnuts with pidgeons, stopped a robbery, and was late for school) until he met a chubby kid named Paul Patterson. Paul had a mutant power that made gold "lasers" shoot out of his fists.

Wolverine, sent by Cyclops, was in charge of apprehending chubby Paul for X-men business. The apprehension failed when Spider-man webbed Logan up in an alley.

Peter's just discovered the dead body of Paul's father, apparantly killed by a sinister looking Paul Patterson and Wolverine has just freed himself and is looking for a peice of revenge.

Story Details

The story opens with Nova of the New Warriors flying by a bus that Wolverine is riding. Who are the New Warriors? Who's Nova? If you don't know, I envy you.

Spider-man is a bit shaken up at finding Paul's dead dad in a closet. Paul admits that he killed his dad, though it was an accident. Any pity that may have been felt for the killed is yanked away when he looks at Spidey, golden glow in his eye and says, "I've never killed a super hero before..."

Wolerine gets off the bus to an ASTONISHED looking crowd. He grumbles, "You can't buy a bagel without bumping into Speedball or Darkhawk." After further grumbling about his costume, he pokes fun at something Cyclops said over in Astonishing X-men #1. "We have to astonish them." Logan barely has time to sigh and grumble some more before Spider-man is blasted out of the front door by one of Paul's gold beams.

After a couple short apologies, Wolvie and Spidey are in search of the chubby kid...who blew up his own house and stands amoung the smoking rubble naked. Wolverine points out, "He's right over there." Spider-man comments on his observation abilities, adding, "No wonder you're on so many teams."

Paul decides that he's vastly powerful and wants our heroes to jump around so that he can have some "target practice." There is about a page and a half of gold beams and dodging. Wolerine explains that according to Emma Frost and cerebra, Paul is in fact extremely powerful.

At the exact same moment in a pasture on the edge of Latveria, Dr. Doom appears out of blue energy and says, "Richards!"

We return to the battle at hand with more gold beams and less dodging, as Wolerine is struck with a beam. Doesn't do much damage though. Paul comments, "So is this what we're left with after the Avengers disbanded?" Shortly after that comment, Wolverine pokes the chubby boy in the forearm and the chubby boy disappears in a "FA-FAASH" of gold light.

Wolverine calls S.H.I.E.L.D. to come in and clean-up while a floating, silver, baseball-looking thing with a red eye watches them. The baseball thing flies "Elsewhere"to deliver it's information to Titannus, a mysterous person with a comatose girlfriend.

General Comments

This issue was pretty mediocre for me. It seems to be a trend for heroes to bring up second string super heroes like Speedball and Darkhawk as comedic references. Those jokes are starting to get tired. I also disapprove of the chubby kid emerging from his house naked after blasting it to bits with his gold energy. If Paul's beams can disintegrate clothes, why didn't Spidey's or Wolverine's costume get burned in the fight?

I'm also ready for this story to answers some questions. There seems to be too much mystery involved with this story arc. Why did Dr. Doom appear at the very moment that the Paul/Spidey/Wolvie battle was taking place? Who is Titannus (besides being a Mighty Morphin' Power Ranger zord)? What does Titannus want? Why did the chubby kid disappear when Wolverine stabbed him? There's just too many questions.

On the plus side, this seems to be a good prologue for Wolverine and Spider-man having to team-up on the Avengers. Their team-ups are getting better and better as Wolverine is warming up to Spider-man. Perhaps their loner natures give them a bit of camaraderie to each other.

Overall Rating

The cover of this book was great. I'm a sucker for eye-piece reflection drawings.

I didn't really care for the battle scene against Paul. It seemed as though Spider-man and Wolverine were pulling their punches too much thereby making the fight longer than it should have been.

This book opens up a lot of questions but doesn't offer enough answers for me. Though is seems the task at hand was accomplished by putting down the threat of Paul, it left me desiring something more. Two and a half webs.