Project Pegasus, Part 8

 

 

cover art by George Perez

When we left off last issue, an unconcious Ben Grimm was about to get drilled through the skull by Klaw.

When Marvel Two-in-One #58 (December 1978) picks up at the same moment, Ben is saved by Wundarr.

Except Wundarr isn't Wundarr anymore. After exposure to the Cosmic Cube and a brief time in a coma, he wakes up with adult intelligence and a desire to bring peace to the world, renaming himself Aquarian.

In the meantime, the main villain of the story finally has all his eggs in the same basket. Over the past several issues, the components for making an Nth Projector have been smuggled into the Project, where former supervillain Dr. Lightner is supposed to use this devise to zap the Project into another universe. Instead, he uses the projector on himself to regain his former powers. This works even better than he expected. Now he's Nth Man, with the power to suck all reality into himself.

The script by Mark Gruenwald and Ralph Macchio, is quite good. Pretty much everything that happens in the story needs verbal exposition to clarify the what we are seeing, but both dialogue and narration flow naturally into the story and never slow down the pacing.

And the art, with George Perez layouts and finished art by Gene Day, is excellent, making superb use of several splash pages and non-traditional panel layouts to bring across the bizarreness of the situation while still telling the story smoothly.

Aquarian tries expanding his null-field, which cancels out all energy, to stop Lightner. But this blacks out the entire installation, including the ventilation system.

I do have a small criticism here. The Project is large enough so that everyone shouldn't have been gasping for air the second the ventilators go on the fritz. 

But they do indeed gasp for air, forcing Aquarian to retract his null-field. That plan is out.

Ben has already tried tossing large pieces of debris into Nth Man to plug him up and Quasar tries blasting him with energy beams, but none of these tactics work. Giant-Man, who figures that since he's dying of radiation poisoning anyways, jumps INTO Nth Man with the plan of enlarging himself and perhaps plugging up the villain that way. But this doesn't work either.

To save Giant-Man and stop the villain, the remaining heroes (including Thundra, who joins them after the black out allows her to get out of her cell) hae to form a chain, holding on to Aquarian while he too enters the Nth Man. This allows him to save Foster and use his null-field to destroy Lightner. (Though Quasar mentions the possibility that Lightner was thrown into another universe.)

The day is saved. Thundra is granted her freedom and vows to help find whomever hired her. Aquarian tells his "Uncle Ben" that he loves him and then goes out into the world--a scene that really does manage to be touching. 

Aquarian did pop up in other stories from time to time in later years, but never made much of a splash in the Marvel Universe. 

Now that the villain has finally been disposed of, Ben leaves the Project, though he will come back from time to time. The Project Pegasus saga ends with the revelation that the organization behind Lightner is Roxxon Oil, Marvel's go-to corporate bad guys. Ben will be tangling with them again soon in a story arc involving the Serpent Crown and the Nth Command division of Roxxon will be destroyed by Ben and Thundra in Marvel Two-in-One #67, which will also see Thundra say goodbye to Earth 616 and zap herself off to another dimension.

As for the Project Pegasus story arc: Though it started slowly with an issue that had little action and far too much exposition, it quickly found its feet and became a prime example of the sort of entertaining superhero storytelling that Marvel Comics would often excel at during the 1960s and 1970s. 

That's it for now. I think its been awhile since we've visited with the Gold Key Star Trek universe, so next week, we'll jump forward in time to hitch a ride on the Enterprise.