Marvel Team-Up #1: Wasn’t it All Simpler When We Were Younger?

The latest incarnation of Marvel’s classic Team-Up series focuses on Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man as they attend an award ceremony for a particularly brilliant scientist.  Despite being there for totally separate reasons, a random attack forces them to join forces and save the day once again.

Although the story is a bit predictable and the dialogue is painfully cringeworthy at times, the sheer likeability of these characters makes for an interesting reading experience. Both Peter Parker and Kamala Khan are written to be instantly enjoyable characters and it suits their nature well. The primary fault of the story though is in its reliance on heavily used tropes, especially regarding the twist that finds the two heroes swapped into one another’s body. The “Freaky Friday” catastrophe is one that is meant to delve into a mind-bending trip that explores each of the characters in new ways, but it unfortunately just comes off as stale.

It’s a business as usual plot with a semi-known villain and easily understood stakes, but it does provide some uniquely entertaining artwork thanks to Joey Vazquez and Felipe Sobreiro. The action scenes are handled very well and help to increase the pace of the issue. Along with some incredible lettering from an industry juggernaut Clayton Cowles, the artistic direction manages to impress despite a lackluster story.

My hopes were high for this story as it offered a great chance to explore the duality between a classic Marvel character like Spider-Man and their new emerging talent like Ms. Marvel. Instead, we are given a more typical narrative framed around the exuberance of youth  and the possibilities it yields.  At the end of the day, this concept simply doesn’t carry the narrative weight that the series could have delivered. Hopefully the story will rely on less generic tropes and begin to add emotional depth as it continues in the future!