Marvel Team-Up Annual #7: Spider-Man and Alpha Flight – The Collected Spider-Man / No Place To Run

The Collected Spider-Man:
Writer: Louise Simonson
Penciller: Paul Neary

No Place To Run:
Story: Bob De Natale
Pencils: David Mazzuchelli


Fig. 1: GREAT cover from John Byrne and Paul Neary, actually enhanced by the barcode-box!

It's been years since I last read of the adventures of Alpha Flight, and other than that they are based in Canada, I've retained very little of it. Which is a real shame, as this story is from the same era as those.

The villain here – the Collector - is an elder of the universe who freezes examples of species with which to repopulate existence should his vision of its doom ever come to pass. (that's what he claims, anyway)

Well, guess who he collects – Spider-Man, and Alpha Flight's Marrina.

When the latter's team-mates show-up to rescue her, what ensues is a huge long fight on board the Collector's spaceship, during which all manner of weird beasts get accidentally released into the fray.

It's therefore really one very long fight-scene, with a couple of more mundane pieces topping and tailing it. I found it a bit long-winded, but fighting is in the nature of team-ups.

There's also a five-page back-up strip about a couple watching super-news-events on TV. As I have no idea of the context of this, or whether it is a purely self-contained story, I was somewhat lost by it.