Marvel Team-Up #8
Marvel Team-Up #8 is the debut issue of Man-Killer (Katrina Luisa Van Horn), a cybernetically enhanced villain whose origin and ideology were designed to engage — however clumsily — with the social currents of second-wave feminism that were roiling popular culture in the early 1970s. The issue also marks one of the earliest significant solo outings for the Cat (Greer Nelson), who would later transform into the fan-favorite Tigra, making this a double character-history landmark within Marvel's Bronze Age. As part of Gerry Conway's uninterrupted nine-issue opening run on Marvel Team-Up, it contributed to establishing the rotating-co-star format that made the series one of the most durable Spider-Man anthology concepts of the decade. Man-Killer went on to a decades-long publishing history, eventually joining the Thunderbolts and the Masters of Evil, rooting her firmly in the ongoing fabric of the Marvel Universe.
In "The Man-Killer Moves at Midnight!", Spider-Man teams up with The Cat to stop a cyborg assassin driven by a militant feminist cause—only to uncover a shocking twist that ties her actions to A.I.M.'s hidden agenda. Written by Gerry Conway and illustrated by Jim Mooney, this 1973 Marvel Team-Up issue blends sci-fi intrigue with social commentary, all brought to life with Mooney’s dynamic art and Stan Goldberg’s vibrant colors.
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The issue was scripted by Gerry Conway, who had taken the helm of the flagship Amazing Spider-Man title at just nineteen years old and was simultaneously shaping Marvel Team-Up's early identity with a string of consecutive issues. Conway was part of a new generation of writers — alongside Len Wein and Marv Wolfman — who brought emotional and socially conscious storytelling to superhero comics in the early Bronze Age. The book was edited by Roy Thomas, Marvel's then-editor-in-chief, who had shepherded the MTU concept from its debut. The story was placed by the Marvel Chronology Project between issues #3 and #4 of The Cat's own short-lived solo series, tightly integrating it into the continuity Marvel was building around its female characters at the time.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: April 1973; on-sale date: January 23, 1973 (per Grand Comics Database, citing The Comic Reader #92).
- Story title: 'The Man-Killer Moves at Midnight!' — 20 pages of story content.
- First appearance of Man-Killer (Katrina Luisa Van Horn), created by writer Gerry Conway and artist Jim Mooney.
- Man-Killer is depicted as a former Olympic skier crippled in a sabotaged race who is fitted with a superhuman exoskeleton secretly funded by A.I.M., a male-dominated criminal-science organization.
- Co-starring the Cat (Greer Nelson), who appears here between issues #3 and #4 of her own 1972 solo title; the Cat later becomes Tigra in Giant-Size Creatures #1 (1974).
- Art by Jim Mooney (pencils and inks); cover by Jim Mooney; colored by Stan Goldberg; lettered by Gaspar Saladino and Charlotte Jetter; edited by Roy Thomas.
- Man-Killer subsequently appeared in Daredevil #121 and #123 (1975), Iron Man #126–127 (1979), and later joined the Thunderbolts' orbit and the Masters of Evil across the 1990s–2010s, also briefly operating under the alias Amazon.
- Reprinted in: Essential Marvel Team-Up Vol. 1 (Marvel, April 2002, black and white); Women of Marvel: Celebrating Seven Decades Omnibus (2010); Marvel Masterworks: Marvel Team-Up Vol. 1 (December 2010); Tigra: The Complete Collection (2019); and several international editions including Italian (Editoriale Corno #124) and Spanish (Editorial OEPISA #53).
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Reprints
Reprinted in O Homem-Aranha (Edição especial em cores) #4 (1974), Spécial Strange #7 (1977), De spectaculaire Spider-Man #2 (1979), Spindelmannen superseriealbum #3 (1979), Edderkoppen Superseriealbum #3 (1980), Essential Marvel Team-Up #1 (2002), Marvel Monster Edition #2 (2003), Women of Marvel: Celebrating Seven Decades Omnibus #[nn] (2010), Marvel Masterworks: Marvel Team-Up #1 (2010), Spider-Man Team-Up : L'intégrale #1972-1973 (2011), Tigra: The Complete Collection #[nn] (2019), Marvel Team-Up Omnibus #1 (2025), Die Spinne Comic - Album #3, El Sorprendente Hombre Araña #53, L'Uomo Ragno [Collana Super-Eroi] #124
Key issues in Marvel Team-Up
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