When Even the Gods Give Up

 

cover art by Ron Wilson

The credits for Marvel Two-In-One #23 (January 1977) include Bill Mantlo as writer for the first 6 pages and Jim Shooter finishing it up from there. Ron Wilson is the artist, but with Marie Severin listed as giving an assist. But, despite having several hands the in the pot, the end result is a fun and satisfying story full of great art (including a couple of epic splash pages), great action and a defining character moment for Ben Grimm.

The last issue ended with Seth, the Egyptian god of death, sending an army of undead against Thor and Ben while in the operating room of a New York hospital. Seth is using the army to weaken his opponents while bringing them a bridge between dimensions. It's not the rainbow bridge to Asgard, but it seems to serve a similar purpose. There's a fun implication that each pantheon has its own bridge leading to its own kingdom.

Seth has his brother Horus hanging from chains, while their parents (Isis and Osiris) are held prisoner. This is the start of Seth's conquest of the universe. And it looks as if he might pull it off, as he is able to hold off attacks from both Ben and Thor.

Set summons up an all-powerful monster called the Devourer. But this works against him, as the Devourer plans to destroy everything, including Seth. In desperation, Seth releases Horus, who had once traped the Devourer. But Horus is too weak to do anying, while Osiris and Isis are fatalistically accepting their doom.

In the meantime, Thor is stunned by the Devourer, leaving Ben standing against the monster on his own.

And, by golly, if you want to get on Ben Grimm's nerves, then you can't do a better job than just giving up when the chips are down. Annoyed by the fatalism of the gods and realizing that the monster wants to kill Horus first, Ben grabs Horus and jumps off the bridge into endless interdimensional space.

The Devourer unthinkingly jumps after them. Thor, who has regained consciousness, throws his hammer near Ben, who is able to grab it and be brought back to the bridge. This leaves the Devourer falling into space forever.

From there, the two heroes return to Earth, where Dr. Donald Blake "arrives" in time to care for the patient that Ben and Johnny had brought to the hospital.

As I already said, it's a great issue. The art is fantastic, the action plays out in a logical (well, according to Comic Book Logic) manner, the pacing is lightning-fast and Ben's willingness to sacrifice himself if necessary by jumping off the bridge is typical of his inate heroism and one of the reasons he is one of the hearts of the Marvel Universe.

Next week, we jump back over to the DC Universe to continue our look at Green Lantern.

Visiting Hours at the Hospital are Hectic!

 

cover art by Ron Wilson

Marvel Two-in-One #21 ended with the villain Black Sun either dead or near-dead. The next issue (December 1976) begins by telling us that maybe there's a chance to save him, with Johnny technobabbling a way to use his heat to freeze Black Sun's body until they can rush him to the best doctor they know. That doctor happens to be Donald Blake.

Writer Bill Mantlo is stuck with a lot of exposition in this issue, but he still moves the story along relatively quickly, while Ron Wilson's art looks (as always) great. While Ben and Johnny are bringing Black Sun to the hospital, Donald Blake receives another visitor. This visitor really, really, really wants to see Blake (who is currently performing surgery) and if he has to kill a bunch of people to get to the doctor, well, by golly. that's just fine with him.

The guy reaching the operating room, but fortunately Blake has finished the surgery. He sends the rest of the OR team out of the room along with the patient, then transforms into Thor. A fight begins, with dialogue that tells us the bad guy is the Egyptian god of death Seth and that he's looking for vengeance because Thor had previously beaten him. (Since the title of this issue is "Touch Not the Hand of Seth," his identity isn't that much of a surprise.)

When Ben and Johnny arrives, Ben joins Thor in his fight. Seth responds by calling up an army of the dead.

That's the cliffhanger ending this issue. It's a pretty straightforward issue, so there's not a lot to add to what I mentioned above: The pacing is fast despite a fair amount of exposition and the art is great. It's a fun issue, entertaining in its own right while setting up the story for the next issue.

We'll look at that issue in two weeks. Next week, we'll return to the Green Lantern and see where he's at in his search for Sinestro.

Cross-Time Team-Up

 

cover art by Ron Wilson

In 1975, Marvel Comics was publishing a black-and-white magazine featuring the adventures of 1930s pulp hero Doc Savage. Marvel used this opportunity to bring the good Doc into the Marvel universe. He appeared in Giant-Size Spider Man #3, which I review HERE. 

That story, though entertaining, did not include Doc actually MEETING Spidey. It was essentially a two-part adventure, with half taking place in the 1930s and Spidey cleaning up loose ends in 1975. A year or so later, Marvel actually managed to get Doc and a couple of modern Marvel heroes into the same place and time. This is what transpires in Marvel Two-in-One #21 (November 1976), written by Bill Mantlo and with superb art by Ron Wilson.

As the story opens, Doc Savage and Ben Grimm are seperated by four decades. But each is experiencing parallel events. In 1976, Ben and Johnny are visited by Janice Lightner, who has concerns about her twin brother Tom. In 1936, Doc and his crew are visited by Janice's mom, who has concerns about her husband Raymond. 

I love the way the book handles the exposition. For several pages, the events of 1976 are shows in a right-hand column, while the near-parallel events of '36 are shown on the left.

Both ladies have pretty much the same problem. Raymond evented a device that can collect stellar energy, which he plans to infuse into his own body. In '76, Tom Lightner wants to continue his father's experiment and do the same thing.

When the heroes "simultaneously" arrive over the Lightner mansion in their own respective vehicles, both those vehicles are disintegrated and the timelines warp together. Ben, Johnny, Doc and Doc's crew are all suddenly in the same place.

Raymond and Tom have been drawn together across space and time, becoming a villain named Black Sun. There's a fight scene, in which the good guys are not doing well.

But Black Sun can't handle the amount of stellar energy being drawn into him and he falls unconscious. Time resets itself and Doc fades out to return to 1936, leaving behind an aggrevated Ben, who never got a chance to get his autograph.

I'm torn about this issue. The exposition is done in such a clever way that it's fun to read, but it takes up a huge chunk of the story. So the ensuing fight scene is very short and the good guys win by default without really doing anything effective, leaving us with an anti-climactic ending. This is a case where Mantlo and editor Archie Goodwin might have wanted to stretch the action out into another issue.

But this does lead into a story arc of sorts. Ben and Johnny promise to take Tom Lightner to the best doctor in the city--Don Blake. That leads to a two-part story guest-starring Thor. We'll begin a look at those issues in two weeks. Next week, we'll return to the Green Lantern and his search for Sinestro.

Ben Has An Annoying Day.

 

cover art by Jim Starlin

Marvel Feature #12 (November 1973. Writer: Mike Friedrich. Pencils: Jim Starlin) picks up right where the previous issue left off, with Ben drudging through the desert after his fight with the Hulk. Ben is complaining about his lack of transportation when Iron Man suddenly flies by. Ben is momentarily happy, but though the Armored Avenger clearly sees his fellow hero, he doesn't stop to help. 

There's actually a good reason for this. Iron Man and other heroes have been getting pummelled by Thanos and Thanos' minions over in the pages of Captain Marvel. Iron Man is heading back to a secret base in the desert that Thanos once used, looking for useful clues to defeating the villain. He simply doesn't have time to stop.

But Ben is still ticked off, following Iron Man has quickly as he can with plans to do some clobberin' 

At the base, Iron Man soon encounters the Blood Brothers--super-strong alien vampires that Tony has fought before. They out-muscle him, but Iron Man manages to use some clever tactics to get some distance from them. Unfortunately, that distance takes him on a head-on collision with Ben.

The two heroes are stunned. Ben recovers in time to defend himself against the Blood Brothers. When Iron Man wakes up, they double-team the bad guys. This, along with a landslide started by the fight, help them win.

Thanos, who is monitoring the fight, dislikes failure. The Blood Brothers disappear, though Ben and Tony don't know if they were destroyed or teleported away. In either case, the good guys have won.

And Ben has a ride home now!

Or does he? Sadly, Iron Man doesn't have enough power left in his suit to carry his rather heavy ally. Ben is still stuck with walking out of the desert.

I like a number of things about this story. First, though it ties in closely with the events in Captain Marvel, it is an independent story that can be read on its own. Obviously, the story exists in part to advertise C.M., but you don't have to buy it if you don't want to do so. 

Second, Starlin's art is fantastic and the fight scene that is the meat of the story is more fun than a barrel of alien vampires.

Third, the framing gag about Ben NOT getting a ride from Iron Man and the middle-of-the-story gag about Iron Man colliding with Ben are funny. The humor fits Ben's personality to a T and the colliding gag is made an organic part of the overall fight.

These two issues of Marvel Feature were the last two of this anthology series. They demonstrate that Ben is indeed a character able to support a team-up book, so Marvel Two-in-One would soon be appearing on the newstands.

Next week, we'll jump over the DC Universe and visit with the Justice League of America.

Hulk, Thing, a Ghost Town and a Bomb

 

cover art by John Romita or Jim Starlin (credit uncertain), with inks by Romita

In 1973, Marvel Team-Up was selling well. So, according to Roy Thomas' introduction to the first Marvel Two-in-One Masterworks, Stan Lee wanted to try out another team-up book, this one featuring Ben Grimm.

The concept was tried out in two successive issues of Marvel Feature and proved to be viable. When written well, Ben might very well rival Peter Parker as the emotional heart of the Marvel Universe and his tendency to banter makes him a strong candidate to team up with other heroes.

Today, we'll look at Marvel Feature #11 (Sept. 1973), written by Len Wein and pencilled by Jim Starlin. Next week, we'll look at the next issue.

One element to this story that immediately makes it fun is bringing back a relatively obscure character who had one appearance a decade earlier. Kurrgo was the despotic ruler of Planet X and had a run in with the FF back in FF #7. He hadn't been seen since.

Now he's making a deal with the Leader. They each pick a champion and have them fight. The winner gets control of both champions and the scientific knowledge of the loser.

Kurrgo picks the Thing while the Leader--not surprisingly--picks the Hulk. Kurrgo claims that the Thing's intelligence and experience will give him an advantage over the stronger Hulk, but hedges his bets by secretly transmitting cosmic radiation to Ben, increasing the hero's strength.

Ben is teleported to an Old West ghost town and the situation is explained to him. To force him to fight, Ben is told he has to get past Hulk in time to deactivate a world-destroying bomb. 

Hulk is teleported in and he fights pretty much because he's annoyed and doesn't know what's going on. He even insults Ben's catch phrase, which I think is pretty low.

What follows is a fun battle, with Starlin's art capturing the power of the superstrength punches being thrown. Ben does try to explain about the bomb, but an angry Hulk is not known for his listening skills.

Ben does get to the bomb, only to find out its a fake. When the villains try to tractor-beam Hulk into their ship, Ben tags along. Leader finds out Kurrgo was cheating. The heroes make quick work of Kurrgo's robot, then jump to the ground before the ship explodes. Hulk jumps away and Ben is stuck alone in the desert. 

The story breaks no new ground--it's pretty much consists of establishing a reason for Hulk and Thing to fight, then showing us that fight. But it's succeeds in being a fun fight AND it does show us that Ben is a viable character to host a team-up book.

Next week, we'll confirm this conclusion by looking at the next issue of Marvel Feature.

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. 

Project Pegasus, Part 7

 

cover art by George Perez

Marvel Two-in-One #57 (November 1979) is a fun issue, with a well-constructed story (script by Mark Gruenwald and Ralph Macchio) supported by great art (George Perez breakdowns with finished art by Gene Day). 

I was critical of a few of the early issues for getting bogged down by lots of exposition. But here, though there is again lots of exposition, the story flows along nicely, gives us a great action sequence and moves the overall story arc along. 

We begin with a security meeting that catches us up with the current situation. Deathlok, Nuklo and Thundra's team of female wrestlers have all caused trouble, the good guys aren't clear on why. The conclusion is that there's an traitor in the complex helping the various villains gain access to the place.

Ben questions Thundra again, hoping to play on their past friendship to get her to talk, but she won't talk.

From here, the story begins to jump back and forth between several different plot threads, but handles these transitions smoothly as the various elements needed for next issue's conclusion are lined up. Wundarr, despite being shown on the cover as Ben's main guest star for this issue, doesn't encounter him. Instead, he wakes up out of his coma and walks off to find the cosmic cube. No one can stop him because he is absorbing all energy--including kinetic energy--that comes near him. Along the way, he inadvertently turns off the power to the cell holding the villain Solarr. 

The security staff, in the meantime, have used tapes from the secuity cameras to show that Dr. Lightner (formally a supervillain known as Blacksun) was nearby every time there was trouble. It's really about time the security staff at the Project accomplished something, though this should be too much of a surprise. "Hey, the former supervillain we hired is still a bad guy! Who would have thunk it?"

Lightner, in the meantime, finally has all the parts he needs to build a Nth Projector, using the parts smuggled in by Deathlok and Thundra. His mysterious backers want him to use it to send the Project into another dimension, but he begins to use it to reactivate his old superpowers (he had essentially been a living black hole). 

While all that is going on, Solarr looks for a partner with whom to escape. There are a number of energy-based villains being held at the Project, but (in an entertaining sequence) he has trouble finding someone to help him out. Electro is in traction when his last battle with Spider Man ended badly. Nuklo is too dumb. He finds Klaw's sonic emitter and, in frustration, tosses this against a wall. Klaw, who had been trapped in the emitter after a battle with Black Panther, is re-integrated by this. He and Solarr have teamed up before, so they opt to do so again.

Ahh, Comic Book Science at its best.

The sequence in which they try to escape via a rail car to the surface, while being chased by Ben, Quasar and Giant-Man, is a fun action sequence with some great use of perspective in several of the panels. The sequence also shows us just how clever a tactician Ben Grimm can be, as he uses clever and unusual tactics to stop the fleeing villains and then penetrate a sound barrier raised by Klaw.

But even smart good guys can get careless. They had thought they were chasing Lightner, only later realizing that Solarr and Klaw had unintentionally distracted them from a bigger threat. And, while discussing this, they don't realize that the sound of their voices is restoring Klaw's sound-based powers. Klaw gets the drop on them and the issue ends with Ben about to get his brains scrambled.

As I said, it's a fun and well-constructed story, nicely interweaving the various plot lines without ever bogging down. It's interesting to note how each issue of this story arc has moved the overarching plot forward in baby steps. It takes several issues for the various parts of the Nth Projector to get smuggled in and only now is Dr. Lightner beginning to use it. But after the too-slow first issue, there's been lots of action, the pacing has been fast and the story arc has been satisfying. Those baby steps have finally brought us to the conclusion that we'll see in the next issue, with all the various plot elements in place.

We'll take a look at that conclusion in a few weeks. Next week, we'll watch not one--not two--but THREE Flashes deal with an alien threat.

Project Pegasus, Part 6

 

cover art by John Byrne

Marvel Two-in-One #56 (October 1979) is a fun chapter in the Project Pegasus saga, in which we finally find out what Thundra's professional wrestler subplot has to do with the main story arc.

Ralph Macchio and Mark Gruenwald continue to write the story, with George Perez providing breakdowns and finished art by Gene Day.

The issue begins with a bang, with Thundra leading a team of female wrestlers (whose suits include equipment giving the superpowers) inside the Project, where they knock out a few technicians and plant a piece of equipment in a specific place.

One might wonder why Thundra has agreed to this, but we don't find that out quite yet. We do learn that she was deliberately lured into the wrestling gig so she could be offered the job, but merely mentions that she was offered a reward she couldn't turn down. She later refuses to say more to Ben.

Anyway, there's more going on than Thundra knows, because her team runs out on her after the equipment is planted to raise havoc around the Project. This leads to several well-choreographed and entertaining action scenes, as Quasar, Giant Man and Ben all encounteer trouble. 

The various fights are brief, but each has a different feel from the other and allows each of the heroes their moment in the sun.
                        

Though Quasar and Giant Man have clear wins, Ben's fight is interrupted at an embarassing moment just as Thundra gets a scissor lock with her legs around his neck. She is forced to surrender at this point, though, so the good guys have won, though they still have no idea what the point of this raid was. Or, for that matter, what was the point of the respective rampages by Deathlok and Nuklo?

Well, we readers don't know yet either, but we know at least a little bit more. Dr. Lightner, the bad guys' mole in the Project, finally has all the stuff he needs to make an Nth Projector. We'll find out what that is next issue.

After an awkward start with an exposition-heavy story a few issues back, the Project Pegasus story arc has been moving along nicely, with each issue advancing the plot a little by slowly getting Lightner the equipment he needs, while giving us plenty of entertaining action.

That's it for now. Next week, we'll pay a visit to Roy Rogers.