Over the years comics have featured some pretty wacky team-ups with real world celebrities. Superman has met Pat Boone and Muhammad Ali. A bunch of the lamer Avengers stopped by the set of “Late night with David Letterman” in the 80’s. And one time the “Good Guy” Transformers stopped the “Bad Guy” Transformers from harvesting the sound energy from a Bruce Springsteen concert and using it to destroy the world. I was completely unaware of this Springsteen/Transformers tale until I sat down to write this, and now I cannot focus on anything else. But I’m going to do my best to forget about that epic encounter and focus on a different meeting of two titans: Spider-man and the 1978 cast of Saturday Night Live.
The original “Marvel Team Up” was a series that ran 150 issues and featured the best character in the history of comics, Spider-Man, teaming up with various characters in the Marvel Universe. Most of these are pretty standard collabos featuring Spidey teaming up with your usual heavy hitters like Thor, Hulk, Jack of Hearts and getting into situations that will wrap up within the confines of 20 or so pages. But “Marvel Team-Up” #74 is where the book broke away from this formula in grand fashion, and teamed the Webslinger up with the 1978 cast of Saturday Night Live.
In 1978, Saturday Night Live was in its fourth year and had grown into a cultural phenomenon. Recurring characters like the Coneheads, The Czech Brothers, and my personal favorite , Fred Garvin: Male Prostitute had all hit in the mainstream in a big way, helping the show reach its peak during the first five “classic years”. This is also the era of the show that featured the best backstage stories during the shows 30-plus year run. If you haven’t, go out of your way to read “Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live” by Tom Shales, as it features people that worked on the show talking about things like Bill Murray and Chevy Chase getting into a huge fist fight just minutes before the show started, and John Belushi doing John Belushi things. It’s a fascinating book, and you don’t even have to be a fan of the show to enjoy it. Also, I’m pretty sure 1978 John Belushi took plenty of his own Super-Soldier Serum that gave him powers beyond our puny human comprehension, so putting him in a Marvel comic is kind of a no-brainer if you ask me. Anyway, on to the issue at hand!
The issue starts with Peter Parker and Mary Jane on their way to attend an episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by none other than Stan Lee, which would be an absolute dream come true and ratings disaster if it ever happened. Stan starts things off humbly during the monologue by stating:
“Hiya true believers! I can’t tell you how pleased I am to be hosting ‘Saturday Night’. For those of you living in Siberia the last few years I’m the guy who runs Marvel comics. Now, a lot of people think that’s really neat, but have you ever tried getting through a story conference with The Thing? Aw but deep down Ben Grimms really a nice guy! I saw him on the street the other day, and I said, Ben how are ya? And he said, not too good, in fact I’m feeling a little rocky!”
This is magical stuff and the studio audience rightly eats it up. Unfortunately writer Chris Claremont does not trust his comedic skills enough, and cuts away from Stan’s monologue before things get really good. This bummed me out, so I wrote some classic jokes that Stan can use next time he hosts SNL:
“Man, the head of a comic book company hosting Saturday Night Live. Even Reed Richards thinks this is a bit of a stretch”
“The nice thing about being in charge of a bunch of superheroes is that if this starts to go south, I’ll just call up Lockjaw and he can teleport me out of here” (This joke will get no reaction from the crowd, and Nightcrawler is the obvious choice for this punchline, but I saw an opportunity for a Lockjaw joke and went for it)
“Ya know this hosting thing isn’t as tough as it seems, I was worried that I might bomb. That’s why I had Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko write all my jokes for me tonight, so it would be just like my other job”
Classic comedy that mass audiences will fall in love with.
Next we cut to the backstage area where we see the 1978 cast of Saturday Night Live preparing for the show. This is the cast made up of Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtain, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, and John Belushi. Unfortunately 1978 was the year after Chevy Chase left the show, so we are robbed of a scene or two where he makes everything awkward by saying racist things to The Falcon, or calling Thor a fairy or something. Apparently, John Belushi has received a ring in a piece of fan mail that is stuck on his finger after trying it on. The Silver Samurai (a villain that I think normally shows up in Wolverine stories. One of the other “Film Nerds” can correct me on this if I’m wrong, I was too lazy to wiki him.) is after this ring as well and he’s brought his henchman with him to get the ring back by any means necessary.
Backstage, Bill Murray is carrying around a rubber replica of Thor’s hammer and is about to take it to Garrett Morris for an upcoming sketch on the show. On his way he spots one of the henchman backstage and clobbers him with the rubber hammer and steals his clothes so he can follow the henchmen around and see what the deal is. Action Hero Bill Murray! Garrett Morris as Thor! Who cares about Spider-Man?!?!
Meanwhile, Jane Curtain and Gilda Radner are doing a Weekend Update bit when suddenly both fall through the stage and are kidnapped by the Silver Samurai’s henchmen. Luckily, Spider-man and Bill Murray are there to help free them from the clutches of the henchmen, return them to the stage, and take off in pursuit of the Silver Samurai.
Elsewhere, one of the forgotten “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” Laraine Newman, is dressed as Ms. Marvel and her costume is so convincing she distracts two of the goons long enough for Spidey to come in and take them out. This seems like a very bizarre episode of SNL btw. I forgot to mention that at some point in the book there is a scene of Stan Lee and Jane Curtain on stage doing some sort of dance routine. To recap: This is an episode that features a Stan Lee monologue; Weekend Update as the second sketch on the show; A Stan Lee/Jane Curtain dance routine; And a sketch that features Ms. Marvel and Garrett Morris as Thor. Netflix would probably trim this episode down to about 7 minutes is my guess.
Some other stuff happens before Dan Aykroyd comes up with the plan of dressing up in as many zany costumes as they can to throw off the henchman and defeat them. I guess this is a good plan because it works and leads to an amazing scene where John Belushi faces off with the Silver Samurai dressed as his Samurai character from Saturday Night Live. There’s a three-way scuffle between Spidey, Belushi and the Silver Samurai that leads to the ring finally being wrestled off of Belushi’s finger and revealed to be a teleportation ring that the Silver Samurai puts on and GTFO. The audience has seen all of this and because they’ve all come to the conclusion that the rest of the show has been some sort of fever dream, they totally buy that this was part of the show and burst into applause.
So that’s it. This is a pretty fun issue, and it features Garrett Morris saying “Varlets”, so I give it my highest recommendation. The original “Marvel Team Up” would run for a few more years, and Saturday Night Live is still on the air having to deal with people saying it sucks now and will never be as good as the glory days when Stan Lee hosted. Now go watch Amazing Spider-Man 2 and listen to our podcast.
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