Comic Book Questions Answered – where I answer whatever questions you folks might have about comic books (feel free to e-mail questions to me at brianc@cbr.com).

Reader morganedge17 tweeted to me, "Question: what two Marvel superheroes have appeared most often in each other’s books? MTU and MTIO don’t count. I don’t know the answer."

Okay, taking Morgan's "no team-up" book approach, I went further a bit, so I wouldn't count OTHER team-up books, like Spider-Man Team-Up and that brief period of time that Captain America became a team-up book. Similarly, I'm only counting team-ups that occurred with the main character (in other words, no Bucky Barnes as Cap comics or Ben Reilly as Spider-Man comics or Red Hulk as Hulk comics, although there, the Green Hulk was often in those issues, too) and no alternate reality comics (so no Ultimate Universe or Marvel Adventures). I'm also not counting shared titles, even if maaaaaaybe I should (so no Tales to Astonish or Tales of Suspense or Strange Tales, but Journey Into Mystery counts, of course). I DO count in-continuity miniseries, one-shots and Annuals.

This one is a bit easier to check than you might think, since only a handful of Marvel superheroes have maintained solo series since the 1960s.

5. HULK/SPIDER-MAN

Hulk is fascinating, since he has a relatively high base level of appearances of other heroes in his book due to those heroes having fought the Hulk, especially the period around #300-320, where the Hulk went mindless for a while and most Marvel heroes fought him at some point. Also, the Hulk had a period where Banner took control of his mind and almost every issue cameoed the other Marvel heroes reacting to the Hulk's change of pace after becoming Banner again. That said, it looks like Spider-Man just barely ekes out Iron Man (who was involved in the Illuminati-related issues of Hulk) for the top Hulk match-up. Thor/Hulk is the least common of them. Cap/Hulk is third of the four.

4. CAPTAIN AMERICA/THOR

What's odd here is that, for years, Thor and Iron Man were the two closest members of the Avengers. They left the team at the same time and when they would return, they would almost always return together. They were also the two first major Avengers who discovered each other's identities, so for a long time, they had that shared secret that the others didn't have (now EVERYone knows each other's identity. Iron Man and Cap haven't even HAD secret identities for years). That said, surprisingly, Captain America and Thor edged out Thor and Iron Man as the top Thor team-up of the various Marvel heroes. Part of this also came from Cap's constant referencing of the Avengers over the years (how many times was his origin re-told?).

3. SPIDER-MAN/IRON MAN

This one is interesting because it is probably the only one on the top five that is pretty much due to one specific storyline. Of course, over the years, Spider-Man and Iron Man have obviously had team-ups (in the pages of Marvel Team-Up, which doesn't count for this list, but just shows that they DO team-up a lot), but typically, when they met up it was just in the context of Spider-Man meeting the Avengers (like, as a for instance, the introduction of Captain Marvel in an Amazing Spider-Man Annual saw Spider-Man and Iron Man teaming up at the Avengers Mansion to help fix Captain Marvel's powers).

However, the big deal was when Spider-Man joined the Avengers and moved into Avengers Tower and then went to go work for Tony Stark. So then, for a period of a year or so, Iron Man was just flat out a supporting character in Spider-Man's comics. This led to Civil War sadly tearing their relationship apart, though.

2. SPIDER-MAN/DAREDEVIL

Generally speaking, this is probably what I would term the most NATURAL of all of the team-ups on this list. You know what I mean, their team-ups were just normal ones and not a case of, like, someone visiting the Avengers in a given issue or part of an event, but just two superheroes in New York City teaming up with each other.

Spider-Man famously appeared in an issue of Daredevil where Stan Lee was testing out then-Daredevil artist, John Romita, to see if he could draw Spider-Man if Steve Ditko left (remember, Ditko and Lee weren't even speaking at the time, so Ditko leaving was likely a very real possibility). Spidey then appeared in a sequence of issues where he recognized Daredevil as Matt Murdock, which led to the introduction of Matt Murdock's "twin," Mike Murdock!

Peter David used Daredevil really well in "Death of Jean DeWolff," where Daredevil revealed his secret identity to Spider-Man (after he learned who Spider-Man was in the same story due to his ability to identify his heartbeat) and then had to try to slow Spider-Man down when Spidey wanted to kill the Sin-Eater (who had murdered Spider-Man's friend, Jean DeWolff). When Daredevil tried to take over as the Kingpin of Hell's Kitchen during a breakdown that Daredevil had, Spider-Man was among the heroes who helped him figure his stuff out (Spider-Man was also a big part of the Shadowland event). Mark Waid wrote some excellent Spider-Man/Daredevil team-ups, as well. They're just a natural pairing.

1. CAPTAIN AMERICA/IRON MAN

What's hilarious is that these two (who once actually shared a comic book) famously shared their titles the most because of them FIGHTING each other a lot of the time! There were two major periods of time when Cap and Iron Man were at odds with each other. First, during Armor Wars, Iron Man gave Cap a new shield but then fought against Cap when Iron Man tried to deactivate all of the Guardsmen armors in the Vault. They were mad at each other for YEARS over that.

Later, then, obviously, Cap and Iron Man were the leaders of the Civil War storyline. So yeah, they appeared in each other's comic books a lot due to these conflicts. Beyond that, though, Iron Man showed up a lot in Cap's book because Cap had that period where the Avengers were basically his supporting cast (early on in his solo series).

Thanks for the suggestion, morganedge17!

If anyone else has a comic book related question, just drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!