Review by Win Wiacek

Fantastic Four #6 featured the first Super-Villain Team-Up of the Marvel Age as Doctor Doom and Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner joined forces. It’s regrettably omitted from this collection of their 1970s teamings. The Master of Latveria inevitably betrayed and tried to kill the Prince of Atlantis in that tale: an event that colours the relationship of the characters to this day.

Events here begin with the Sub-Mariner afflicted by a nerve-gas dumping accident perpetrated by surface dwellers. It catastrophically alters his hybrid body, forcing him to wear a hydrating-suit to breathe. The same toxin plunges the entire subsea nation of Atlantis into a perpetual coma. Namor rescues Doom from a deadly plunge to Earth after the Iron Dictator’s latest defeat, and promised scientific wizardry to cure his somnolent race he’s prepared to offer an alliance against all mankind to get it.

As a result of blistering battle and extensive carnage-wreaking, Namor and Doom triumph together and part as uneasy allies, only to regroup in the pages of a chaotic ongoing series cursed with a revolving-door creative team crisis: nobody seemed able to stay with the series for more than a couple of issues. With no long-term planning the plots and characterisation jump all over the place. Things even reach the stage where Jim Shooter draws a story!

Steve Englehart introduces some stability, writing four issues beginning with the Lord of Latveria artificially exacerbating Namor’s breathing affliction and threatening to annihilate dormant Atlantis. Despite all the efforts of the Fantastic Four, Sub-Mariner is forced to swear fealty to Doom or see his people and himself perish forever. This tumultuous issue also introduced mystic Batman knock-off the Shroud whose avowed mission is to free the world from the curse of Doom at any and all costs. Among Englehart’s more interesting ideas is the FF stymied by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger signing a non-aggression pact with Doom.

An international crisis escalates as it segues into an ongoing Avengers storyline, involving undersea villain Attuma and aging WWII speedster the Whizzer. That introduces the longest run by an individual creator, Bill Mantlo writing seven issues. After the Avengers crossover, his contribution is a serial involving Captain America as the Red Skull invades Doom’s homeland.

For all its flaws Super-Villain Team-Up was a bold experiment and a genuinely enjoyable dalliance with the different during the 1970s – as long as the reader had a solid knowledge of the company’s complex continuity. However, it’s unlikely any new reader could cope with the terrifying torrent of unexplained backstory.

This material is also found in black and white as Essential Super-Villain Team-Up, additionally including Doom’s early 1970s solo series.