Essential Super-Villain Team-Up

    (Marvel, 2004)
™ and © Marvel Entertainment Group

Super-Villain Team-Up was not a great series by any standard. It wasn’t as if one issue had The Blob with Doc Ock and the next had The Abomination with Super-Skrull. No, most of the series involved Doctor Doom and The Sub-Mariner, the two most pompous and arrogant characters ever, back-stabbing each other. (The last few issues featured The Red Skull and The Hate Monger, the third and fourth most pompous and arrogant characters ever, competing to see who the bigger Nazi was.)

This volume reprints the entire run (less a reprint issue), both giant-sized issues, crossovers into Avengers and Champions, and Doom’s series from Astonishing Tales. Some of those are not really necessary, and the volume is already plenty big without them, so it’s generous on Marvel’s part to include them.

Guest appearances include not only The Avengers and Champions, but The Fantastic Four, Henry Kissinger, and The Shroud. (Remember The Shroud, Marvel’s answer to Batman? No? Do you remember Kissinger?)

No, it wasn’t a great comic book, but Essentials are great bargains.

— Jack Abramowitz
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