Marvel Team-Up #142: Spider-Man and Captain Marvel – Foiled! / #143: Spider-Man and Starfox – Shifts and Planes

Plot / Script: David Michelinie
Pencils / Breakdowns: Greg LaRocque

As megalomaniac baddies with a personal agenda for solving the world's problems go, the abominable Dr Paulson's in a league of his own.

Dr Paulson: "I created P.R.I.D.E. -- Population Reduction by Inter-Dimensional Expulsion – A system utilizing a new form of energy my researchers discovered –

-- An energy that breaches dimensions, and was used both to bring forth a creature to combat Captain Marvel, and to transport my field crews to where they could obtain Technafoil and the Windstone, needed to conduct and focus the energy for my P.R.I.D.E. generator!

That generator will be used to open space-time gaps around all world capitols, causing them to be instantly drawn into other habitable dimensions!

World population will be cut drastically in a matter of seconds!"

Whew – thanks for saving me the trouble of explaining all that plot, Dr Paulson.

Spider-Man and Captain Marvel succeed in disabling the P.R.I.D.E. machine, by turning it on itself, thereby transporting it into another dimension. Unfortunately the resulting interdimensional interference from the machine prevents the Captain from accessing the plane where her human body is stored whenever she becomes her energy-form. As a result, she cannot transform back into her physical body ever again.

Spider-Man and Starfox hop over into the other dimension to turn the machine off, but discover that many weeks have passed local-time since its arrival, and its use has become essential in a tribal war. Consequently, they have to finish the war so that they can destroy the machine, and go back home.

I can't recall ever having read a Starfox story before, but, for me, he makes for a more entertaining team with Spider-Man than Captain Marvel does. His clipped way of speaking had me reading his part in a British public-school accent, and his politeness lends itself to obvious comedy.