MARVEL TEAM-UP #136

Cover shows strong gloss and bright, unfaded colors with sharp corners and clean edges visible in this photo. There is minor spine stress with a couple of faint ticks near the top, and slight surface wear is visible along the top edge of the cover. No creases, tears, or color breaks are apparent, though the book is in a protective sleeve which may obscure minor defects; interior and back cover were not assessed.

Marvel Team-Up #136 is a late installment in Marvel's long-running Spider-Man team-up anthology title, cover-dated December 1983 and written by David Michelinie with pencils by a young Ron Frenz, inked by Mike Esposito. The issue continues a story involving the villain Mauler and brings in an unusually crowded guest roster for the format, with Beast, Captain America, Iron Man, Vision, and the Wasp appearing alongside the featured guest star Wonder Man, plus a cameo appearance by then-President Ronald Reagan. By this point in the series' run, Marvel Team-Up had settled into a formula of rotating guest heroes each issue, and #136 is representative of that late-period approach rather than a storyline of lasting importance to any single character's history.

The book carries no designation as a fair-market key and sits comfortably in the bulk-stock tier that characterizes the bulk of Marvel Team-Up's back half. Demand is driven almost entirely by incidental interest in the guest stars, particularly Spider-Man completists and Avengers-adjacent collectors chasing Ron Frenz's early Marvel pencil work, since Frenz would go on to notable runs on Amazing Spider-Man and Thor shortly after this period. There is no first appearance, death, or origin story attached to the issue, and the Reagan cameo is a novelty rather than a value driver.

Copies of this issue trade as reader-grade filler in dollar bins and bulk lots, with raw examples changing hands cheaply regardless of condition nuance. Slabbed 9.8 copies occasionally surface and command a modest premium purely on the basis of census scarcity at the top grade, appealing to Frenz or Spider-Man-guest-star specialists rounding out a run rather than to speculative buyers. This is a book for series completists and dollar-bin browsers rather than investment-driven acquisition.