Marvel Team-Up #48
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeMarvel Team-Up #48 is the first appearance of Captain Jean DeWolff, the tough NYPD police captain who would become one of Spider-Man's most enduring law-enforcement allies across nearly a decade of stories — and whose 1985 murder in 'The Death of Jean DeWolff' became a landmark of darker Marvel storytelling. The issue simultaneously opens a four-part Wraith storyline that gave Marvel Team-Up a rare sense of serialized continuity at a time when the anthology series typically reset every issue. Beyond the main story, it also houses the Hasbro adventure-story advertisement formally introducing Bulletman into the G.I. Joe 'Super Adventure Team,' making this a fascinating snapshot of 1976 toy-marketing culture, when comic-book pages were Hasbro's primary channel for reaching young consumers.
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Writer Bill Mantlo and penciller Sal Buscema were the regular creative team on Marvel Team-Up throughout 1976, and they built the DeWolff/Wraith arc deliberately across four consecutive issues (#48–51) — an unusual structural ambition for a title that editorial typically kept self-contained. Mantlo conceived DeWolff as a recurring bridge character who could provide continuity within the series without being anchored to any single co-star, and critics later noted she functioned as a post-feminist riff on the hard-boiled detective archetype. Inker Mike Esposito, colorist Janice Cohen, and letterer Jean Simek completed the production team; a letterer's credit in the issue was later found to have been miscredited to Jean Hipp.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Captain Jean DeWolff (Earth-616), NYPD police captain and longtime Spider-Man ally, created by Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema.
- First appearance of the Wraith (Brian DeWolff) and Phillip DeWolff, Jean's corrupt father — both in shadow or implied form, setting up the four-part story resolved in issue #51.
- Features Spider-Man and Iron Man as the main team-up pairing; Iron Man's alter ego Tony Stark's fuel depot at Stark International is the opening bombing target.
- The story is titled 'A Fine Night for Dying!' and was released on May 25, 1976 (cover-dated August 1976).
- Full creative credits: writer Bill Mantlo, penciller Sal Buscema, inker Mike Esposito, colorist Janice Cohen, letterer Jean Simek (a letters-column credit in the issue was miscredited to Jean Hipp).
- Contains the Hasbro comic-book advertisement 'Bulletman, the Human Bullet Blasts Into the GI Joe Super Adventure Team,' promoting the 1976 Bulletman action figure and the newly formed G.I. Joe 'Super Adventure Team' alongside Eagle-Eye G.I. Joe and Mike Power, Atomic Man.
- Hasbro's Bulletman toy drew on the Golden Age Fawcett Comics character of the same name; DC Comics later claimed ownership of that character after acquiring Fawcett properties in 1972, but the rights situation in 1976 was unsettled enough that Hasbro marketed the figure without legal challenge.
- The issue (and the full Wraith arc through #51) was collected in the trade paperback Spider-Man/Iron Man: Marvel Team-Up (October 2018), which also includes Marvel Team-Up #9–11, #72, #110, and #145.
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Reprints
↩ Reprints [Marvel Hostess Ads] #8 (1976)
Reprinted in L'Uomo Ragno [Collana Super-Eroi] #210 (1978), Une Aventure de l'Araignée #3 (1978), Edderkoppen pocket [Edderkoppen superseriepocket] #4 (1980), Die Spinne Comic - Taschenbuch #7 (1980), Essential Marvel Team-Up #2 (2006), Spider-Man et les Héros Marvel #8 (2009), Spider-Man Team-Up : L'intégrale #1976-1977 (2014), Spider-Man / Iron Man: Marvel Team-Up #[nn] (2018), Marvel Masterworks: Marvel Team-Up #5 (2020), Die Spinne Extra #7, Spindelmannen superseriepocket #4
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