Marvel Team Up #149
Spider-Man and Cannonball star in the next to last issue of Marvel Team-Up! Based on the cover art you might think they battling the Wendigo or even Xemnu the Titan. Nope, just the poorly-rendered (and named) Incandescent Man. Louise Simonson writes and Bret Blevins, well before his later run on New Mutants, does the pencils with only a few hints of what his style will later evolve into.
This is still early days yet for Cannonball as a character. He has problems with his powers, especially turning and not smashing into stuff (hence the name). He worries a lot about Xavier flunking him, which vibes with the New Mutants still just being students, even if that seems like a fast track to making more new villains. The F-MEN! Xavier’s past failures are back! For summer school!
Anyway, the story is loosely tied to the Project: PEGASUS storyline from issues of the Thing’s own team-up title, Marvel Two-In-One. Incandescent Man’s twin sister is trying to save him. He doesn’t seem to get saved/cured, but she vows to eventually bring the secret project down. Did she ever succeed? If anyone knows, drop a comment.
As the two heroes part ways, Spidey says that if Xavier flunks Cannonball, the young mutant is welcome to work with him. This would have been an interesting angle to explore with some other young hero, if not Cannonball himself—Spider-Man as mentor hero to a sidekick. A friend told me that they did in fact use this premise for later stories, Spider-Man acting as mentor to forgotten hero Alpha and then later Milo Morales.
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