During the 60s and 70s, Amazing Spider-Man featured the Wall-Crawler meeting a lot of super-heroes from the early days of the Fantastic Four and especially the Human Torch, the Hulk and Daredevil to Romita era Iceman, Quicksilver, Ka-Zar, Medusa and the Black Widow to the Bronze Age Power Man, Nightcrawler and the Man Called Nova. The success and adaptibility of Spidey probably led to Marvel Team-Up. Though it lasted 150 issues plus some Annuals, some heroes were passed by:
- Black Goliath--even though his book lasted a scant five issues, Bill Foster met Power Man, The Thing and the Champions. As Giant-Man II, he became the co-star for awhile of Marvel Two-In-One. The closest he got was a guest shot in Peter Parker #41.
- Any Solo X-Man--except for the Beast, Nightcrawler, Wolverine and Kitty Pryde, the X-men are woefully underrepresented. Where was Cyclops? Storm? Phoenix? It's just plain odd!
- The Son of Satan--he teamed with the Torch and Power Man but never with Spidey! But his sister, Satana did! What the hell!
- The Swordsman & Mantis--they were heavily featured in The Avengers but that book was crowded. This would have been the closest to a solo tale for them.
- Morbius the Living Vampire--Yes he debuted in Amazing but Werewolf by Night, Frankenstein's Monster, the Man-Wolf, Man-Thing, Ghost Rider and again Satana all did. And Pug-Nose was the "hero" of Fear and Vampire Tales.
- Spider-Woman-- really? Really? Really? Beyond odd!
- The Silver Surfer--perhaps the biggest omission. I know about Stan Lee not wanting the Surfer used but it's still a shame!
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Especially considerring Claremont/Byrne were having hugely successful runs on X-Men and Team-up at the same time. Maybe they used Team-up to get away from the X-Men? Still most writers working on such a team of several well-defined heroes would have found 22 pages a month to be less than they needed and would have grasped the chance to expand their storylines into another title they were doing. Especially one where guest-stars were what it was all about.
Usually, it's stated that there were licensing reasons for the Micronauts and Rom not appearing in Team-Up, but I've just realised that Rom appeared once in Marvel Two-in-One with the Thing...
The Silver Surfer would just have been a downer anyway... He always is.
Speaking about Marvel Two-In-One, most of my list did appear there except for the Swordsman, Mantis and the Silver Surfer. And while the Thing never teamed with the X-Men spotlighted in MTU (he was never paired with the Beast solo), he did meet the Angel and Iceman.
Yes poor Norrin Rand was never the life of the party but in the 70s he did appear in Fantastic Four, The Defenders, The Avengers, Incredible Hulk and even Tomb of Dracula! So why never in MTU or MTIO?
I forgot to mention MTU's big brother, Giant-Size Spider-Man #1-6 that had the Web-Spinner meet a most eclectic bunch, in order, Dracula, Master of Kung Fu, Doc Savage (!), Man-Thing, the Punisher and the Human Torch (reprint).