Reading it in 2024, and immediately after reading its predecessor, I think it suffers somewhat in comparison with the original. Certainly, some of that may be due to the fact that this is the second go-round, and it therefore doesn't feel as special as the first, but that can't entirely account for what seems like an overall dip in quality.
As previously mentioned, the second Superman/Spider-Man crossover wasn't as painfully, painstakingly produced as the first, with the two publishers negotiating over every decision and every panel. Instead, by the time of its publication in 1981 (and one does wonder why it took them five years for a follow-up), DC and Marvel decided to take turns producing their crossovers, with each publishing a crossover in-house (Marvel would handle this one, while DC would be responsible for the Batman/Hulk crossover published later that same year).
Thus the story was published in what was technically Marvel Treasury Edition #28, although the painted John Romita Sr. and Bob Larkin cover simply blares "Superman and Spider-Man". Marvel Treasury Edition, which launched in 1971 and ended with this very issue, consisted of Marvel comics printed in the "Treasury" format, meaning they were over-sized 10-inch-by-14-inch tabloids...so, as with the original crossover, this one would have been in a bigger format than those of most comics at the time.
This time the creative team would consist of writer Jim Shooter, who had previously written plenty of Superman comics for DC at the start of his career and was, at the time, the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel, and pencil artist John Buscema. The artist would be inked by a whole cadre of inkers; the credit box gives Joe Sinnnott a "figures inked by" credit, while nine different inkers are listed under "Backgrounds inked by" (These are all name artists that most modern readers would recognize and include the likes of Walt Simonson and Klaus Janson).
The villains our heroes would be facing off against this time are both rather odd choices, at least compared to the original crossover, which featured their respective archenemies Lex Luthor and Doctor Octopus.
Here the Marvel villain is Dr. Doom, who had, of course, crossed paths with Spider-Man (as well as most Marvel heroes) over the years, but is nevertheless more of a Fantastic Four villain or a Marvel Universe-in-general villain, rather than a Spidey-specific one (Although I do recall him being prominently featured in the opening sequence of 1981 Saturday morning cartoon Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, one of my first introductions to Spider-Man). Of course, putting Superman and Doctor Doom in the same comic was probably a great temptation, so I don't suppose one can blame Shooter for taking this extremely rare opportunity to do so.
As for the Superman villain, it's The Parasite, who is such a relatively minor member of the Man of Steel's rogues' gallery that he seems rather out of place here, especially considering that the previous crossover featured Luthor. Using Parasite in such a high-profile Superman story seems somewhat random, like using, I don't know, Terra-Man. In Marv Wolfman's introduction, which originally ran in 1991 collection Crossover Classics and is collected in the omnibus, he points out that Shooter had created The Parasite, which may explain the villain's presence here.
Also somewhat odd for a Superman/Spider-Man crossover? The book has guest-stars. Both Marvel's The Incredible Hulk and DC's Wonder Woman appear rather prominently in the book, particularly the former, who is rather central to the plot (As for the latter, she seems almost shoehorned in, present mainly to offer a DC counterweight to the Hulk's appearance). Referring to Wolfman's introduction again, the reason for the pair's appearances in this book was apparently simply because both were on TV at the time, and so the publishers had requested they appear in the story as well.
As for that story, it is driven by Doom's latest ambitious plan to conquer the world. This, which isn't thoroughly explained until fairly late into the 62-page story, involves controlling The Hulk with a sonic device, freeing Parasite from his special underground prison, a series of underground bases hidden under construction sites all over the world, destroying all of the world's fossil fuels, plunging the world into chaos and, finally, swooping in to reveal his new energy source, which he claims in equivalent to a small star, after which point he will be declared king of the world.
As for Parasite's role, it seems mainly manufactured to include him in the proceedings; Doom needs his powers to ultimately operate his new fuel source, but he strings Parasite along, promising to feed him the captured superheroes Doom collects throughout the story.
The book opens with two parallel columns on the inside cover just as the previous crossover did, although here instead of introductions by that project's editors Stan Lee and Carmine Infantino, they are short prose pieces with seven tiny inset illustrations, dedicated to recapping the two heroes' origins.
After we're briefly introduced to the Spider-Man on the title page—the tale is officially called "The Heroes and the Holocaust!", although the holocaust in question refers to the dictionary definition of the word, not the historical one that immediately comes to mid—and a brief action sequence, we get two rather interminable pages of Doom talking to himself in his underground lair. It's so overdone as to almost be funny. Certainly, the point where Doom commands a lackey to make sure he's recording his "every utterance" and to produce a transcript he can review later on, is genuinely funny, but man, it just goes on and on.
I should here pause to note that I've never actually read anything Shooter has written before (at least, not to my knowledge, anyway), his time at DC and Marvel preceding my interest in comics by a decade or more, and I was rather surprised to find out just how wordy he is. Panels that could use a word balloon or two might get seven, and some panels where words aren't even necessary will get four paragraphs.
I've always associated this sort of over-writing with early Marvel, and its founding writer/editor Stan Lee's efforts to contribute something of his own to the clear storytelling of his collaborators like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, so I'm not sure how much of this is Shooter, and how much of it is simply Marvel's house style at the time, but there is a ton of verbiage in this comic, far more than in the crossover that preceded it.
Anyway, in the tenth straight panel of Doom's monologuing, he reveals "Operation H!", which is to send The Hulk to Metropolis. Also on the way to Metropolis? Down on his luck Daily Bugle photog Peter Parker, who needs to make money to take girls to Elvis Costello concerts and pay his aunt's hospital bills; his editor, J. Jonah Jameson, points to a poster of Superman on his office wall (Funny we never see that in any other Marvel comics!) and tells Parker he would certainly pay for photos of a Hulk/Superman fight, which seems to be brewing.
The fight does indeed take place, in an eight-page sequence in which the Man of Steel tries to talk the Hulk down to no effect, and blows are traded. Somewhat surprisingly, though the Hulk tackles Superman and gets in a devastating sucker punch, he's really no match for Superman, the fight ending with Superman planting his feet and letting Hulk strike him repeatedly, to no visible effect.
Superman: "Not this time, Hulk! You caught me by surprise--once! This time, I'm ready! And when I'm ready...and I don't want to be moved, no power on Earth-- --can move me!"
Hulk: "RRRRAH!"
Having read other Superman/Hulk fights (in the pages of 1996's DC Versus Marvel, which will be collected in the upcoming DC Versus Marvel: The Amalgam Age Omnibus, and in Roger Stern and Steve Rude's 1999 The Incredible Hulk Vs. Superman #1, collected in this very volume), and having seen Superman beaten to death by the Hulk-like Doomsday in 1993, the one-sidedness of the fight seemed off, especially given the fact that this was a Marvel produced book, but then I suppose this is the pre-Crisis Superman, whose power levels were of the planet-juggling variety, and not even the strongest one there is can knock him on his heels.
After several panels of the Hulk trying to do just that, Superman's vision powers diagnose the problem: "A micro-miniature drone...emitting an ultrasonic screech at a frequency that drives the Hulk wild!" With that destroyed, Hulk loses interest in the fight—"Cape-Man talks stupid! Cape-Man is stupid! Hulk should smash anyway-- --but Hulk is tired!"—and reverts to a shirtless Bruce Banner and is taken away to S.T.A.R. Labs. (Peter Parker, who was there to take pictures of the fight, briefly suits up as Spider-Man, but Superman waves him off.)
What was the point of all that, other than to get the Hulk in the comic? Well, apparently Doom planned it so that at one point the Hulk would strike the ground in a specific spot with a powerful enough blow to free the Parasite from his prison.
While in town, Parker runs into Jimmy Olsen, who recognizes him and buys him a cup of coffee. They get to talking, and ultimately Parker sells his photos to the much-more-generous-than-Jameson Perry White, and he decides to stick around Metropolis for a while, freelancing for the Daily Planet. (And asking out Lana Lang and falling prey to one of Steve Lombard's practical jokes; at this point in his history, Parker was apparently single).
Meanwhile, Clark Kent relocates to New York City and goes to the Daily Bugle to look for some work while he's there. He suspects Doom is behind the Hulk rampage/Parasite prison escape business ("Only two men alive could have engineered something like that...and I happen to know that one of them, Lex Luthor, is safely locked away!"), so he wants to keep an eye on him, as well as maintain a high profile as Clark Kent in NYC, in an attempt to "draw fire" away from his friends in Metropolis.
But mainly it's just fun to see the two trade cities and supporting casts for a while.
Eventually, Spider-Man infiltrates one of Doom's underground bases, where he finds Wonder Woman rather randomly in the process of fighting off a horde of the villain's soldiers. She's eventually captured, and put into a stasis tube alongside the Hulk, who Doom had captured off-panel.
After hearing Doom's master plan as laid out to Parasite—a 12-panel sequence—Spidey goes for help and finds Superman. Together, the pair storm the base, battle the villains and, at the climax, team-up to stop Doom's malfunctioning experimental star-like power source, which threatens to destroy the entire world. To do this, Superman rushes into the reactor and hugs it, apparently keeping it from exploding with his bare hands, while he tells Spider-Man to figure out how to shut the thing off (Doom has long since retreated to a pre-readied rocket ship, having assumed the Earth was toast and planning to escape the planet.)
As impossible as their tasks may seem, the two heroes manage to save the day and, afterwards, return to their respective cities, jobs and supporting casts.
Having already met one another once and gotten along, there is no need for the fight-then-team-up ritual here, and so the most exciting action sequences involve Superman vs. The Hulk and Spidey vs. The Parasite, who borrows his spider-powers from him (Though she initially tries to lasso him, Wonder Woman and Spider-Man never actually fight one another).
So that aspect of a crossover is out, but, somewhat oddly, Superman and Spider-Man aren't really together throughout most of the book.
During the Hulk battle, for example, when Spider-Man is about to confront the Hulk, taking over for the punched-out-of-the-panel Superman, the Man of Steel suddenly returns and shoos Spidey away: "Step aside, son! This is a job for Superman!" (Spidey responds with, "Hey! Hold on, big shot! What am I--? The water boy?" and then, after Superman has crushed the drone driving Hulk and solved the problem, the wall-crawler slinks back into an alley, saying "Now I know what a fifth wheel feels like!")
It's only at the climax that the two really work together, and even then, they don't share all that many panels with one another, as they divide up their world-saving duties.
As with Shooter, I'm not terribly familiar with the work of artist John Buscema, although consulting his list of credits on Wikipedia, I see that I definitely read at least one book he drew (2001's Just Imagine Stan Lee and John Buscema Creating Superman), although given the number of comics he's drawn over the years for Marvel, I'm sure I've encountered his work at least a few times, likely in the pages of Conan collections or those phonebook-like Essential volumes.
He does a fine job on the art here, although it's notable that at no point does he seem to be given the sorts of showcases afforded Ross Andru in the first Superman/Spider-Man team-up, which featured multiple splashes and double-page splashes. The closest he gets is a single splash page, the title page, wherein most of the visual real estate is eaten up by the title and credits and the figure of Spider-Man swinging into action that appears is relatively small and seen from behind.
Later, when Superman first appears, he gets something of a splash page, although two inset panels also eat into it.
The rest of the pages are fairly panel-packed, which, when coupled-with all of Shooter's dialogue bubbles and narration boxes, gives the book a cramped, crowded feel. I do wonder how it would have read in the bigger size it was originally published in, but Marvel doesn't seem to have taken special advantage of that size to really show off its heroes, their crossing paths or Buscema's art.
The real pleasure of the book—aside from seeing the two heroes' secret identities working at one another's newspapers, which is obviously a lot of fun—is probably Shooter and Buscema pitting the world's greatest hero (That would be Superman, obviously) against the comic books' greatest villain (Doctor Doom). It's little surprise, then, that the strongest scene is that in which Superman visits the Latverian embassy and the two characters trade dialogue and worldviews before Doom tries to kill Superman, fails and then simply crosses his arms and says "Bah!" when Superman foils him, as his diplomatic immunity spares him of facing any real consequences.
Overall though, this isn't a particularly strong comic, which is quite disappointing given the relative rarity of DC and Marvel characters sharing space and, of course, that the previous effort was so much stronger. But, as mentioned earlier, this wasn't 1981's only DC/Marvel crossover and, thankfully, the other one turned out pretty great.
Next: 1981's DC Special Series #27, featuring Batman and The Hulk
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