Essential Marvel Two-In-One volume 1


By Jim Starlin, Roy Thomas, Steve Gerber, Gil Kane, Sal Buscema, Ron Wilson & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1729-2

Imagination isn’t everything. As Marvel slowly grew to a position of dominance in the wake of the losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators, they did so less by experimentation and more by expanding and exploiting proven concepts and properties.

The only real exception to this was the en masse creation of horror titles in response to the industry down-turn in super-hero sales – a move expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.

The concept of team-up books – an established star pairing, or battling – often both – with less well-selling company characters was not new when Marvel decided to award their most popular hero the lion’s share of this new title, but they wisely left their options open by allocating an occasional substitute lead in the Human Torch. In those long-lost days editors were acutely conscious of potential over-exposure – and since super-heroes were actually in a decline they may well have been right.

After the runaway success of Spider-Man’s Marvel Team-Up the House of Ideas carried on the trend with a series starring bashful, blue-eyed Ben Grimm – the Fantastic Four’s most iconic member – beginning with two test runs in Marvel Feature before graduating to its own somewhat over-elaborate title.

This economical, eclectic monochrome compendium gathers together the contents of Marvel Feature #11-12, Marvel Two-In-One #1-20, 22-25 and Annual #1, as well as Marvel Team-Up #47 and Fantastic Four Annual #11, covering the period September 1973 – March 1977.

It all kicked off with a perennial favourite pairing as the Thing once more clashed with the Hulk in ‘Cry: Monster! (by Len Wein, Jim Starlin and Joe Sinnott from Marvel Feature #11,  September 1973) wherein Kurrgo, Master of Planet X and the lethal Leader manipulated the blockbusting brutes into duking it out – ostensibly to settle a wager – but with both misshapen masterminds concealing hidden agendas…

That ever-inconclusive yet cataclysmic clash left Ben stranded in the Nevada desert where Mike Friedrich, Starlin & Sinnott promptly dropped him in the middle of the ongoing war against mad Titan Thanos as Iron Man helped the Thing crush monstrous alien invaders in ‘The Bite of the Blood Brothers!’ (#12, November 1973); another spectacular and painfully pretty all-action punch-up.

Still stuck in the desert when the dust settled Ben eventually trekked to an outpost of civilisation just in time to be diverted to Florida in Marvel Two-In-One #1 (January 1974) where Steve Gerber, Gil Kane & Sinnott magnificently revealed the ‘Vengeance of the Molecule Man!’ as Ben learned some horrifying home truths about what constituted being a monster battling with and beside the ghastly and grotesque anti-hero Man-Thing.

With the second issue Gerber cannily traded a superfluous supporting character from the Man-Thing series to add some much needed depth to the team-up title. ‘Manhunters from the Stars!’ pitted Ben, old enemy Sub-Mariner and the Aquatic Avenger’s powerful cousin Namorita against each other and aliens hunting the emotionally and intellectually retarded superboy Wundarr in another dynamically intoxicating tale illustrated by Kane & Sinnott. That case also left the Thing de facto guardian of the titanic teenaged tot…

Sal Buscema signed on as penciller with #3 as the Rocky Ranger joined the Man Without Fear ‘Inside Black Spectre!’, a crossover instalment of the extended epic then playing out in Daredevil #108-112 (this action-packed fight-fest occurring between the second and third chapters) after which ‘Doomsday 3014!’ (Gerber, Buscema & Frank Giacoia) found Ben and Captain America catapulted into the 31st century to save Earth from enslavement by the reptilian Brotherhood of Badoon, leaving Wundarr with Namorita for the foreseeable future…

The furious future-shocker concluded in MTIO #5 as the Guardians of the Galaxy climbed aboard the Freedom Rocket to help the time-lost heroes liberate New York before returning home. The overthrow of the aliens was completed by another set of ancient heroes in Defenders #26-29 (since collected in the superbly economical Essential Defenders volume 2).

Marvel Two-In-One #6 (November 1974) began a complex crossover tale with the aforementioned Defenders as Dr. Strange and the Thing encountered a cosmic event which began with a subway busker’s harmonica and led inexorably to a ‘Death-Song of Destiny!’ (Gerber, George Tuska & Mike Esposito) before Asgardian outcasts Enchantress and the Executioner attempted to seize control of unfolding events in #7’s ‘Name That Doom!’ (pencilled by Sal Buscema) only to be thwarted by Grimm and the valiant Valkyrie. There’s enough of an ending here for casual readers but fans and completists will want to hunt down Defenders #20 or the previously plugged Essential Defenders volume 2 for the full story…

Back here though issue #8 teamed the Thing and supernatural sensation Ghost Rider in a quirky and compelling Yuletide yarn for a ‘Silent Night… Deadly Night!’ (Gerber, Buscema & Esposito) as the audacious Miracle Man tried to usurp a very special birth in a stable…

Gerber moved on after plotting the Thor team-up ‘When a God goes Mad!’ for Chris Claremont to script and Herb Trimpe & Joe Giella to finish: a rather meagre effort with the Puppet Master and Radion the Atomic Man making a foredoomed power play, but issue #10 was a slice of inspired espionage action with Ben and the Black Widow battling suicidal terrorist Agamemnon who planned to detonate the planet’s biggest nuke in the blistering thriller ‘Is This the Way the World Ends?’ by Claremont, Bob Brown & Klaus Janson.

Marvel Two-In-One had quickly become a kind of clearing house for cancelled series and uncompleted storylines. Supernatural series The Golem had featured in Strange Tales #174, 176 and 177 (June-December 1974) before being summarily replaced mid-story by Adam Warlock and MTIO #11 provided plotter Roy Thomas, scripter Bill Mantlo and artists Brown & Jack Abel to offer some spectacular closure when ‘The Thing goes South’ resulted in stony bloke and animated statue finally crushing the insidious plot of demonic wizard Kaballa.

Young Ron Wilson began his lengthy association with the series and the Thing in #12 as Iron Man and Ben tackled out of control, mystically-empowered ancient Crusader Prester John in ‘The Stalker in the Sands!’; a blistering desert storm written by Mantlo and inked by Vince Colletta, after which Luke Cage, Power Man popped in to help stop a giant monster in ‘I Created Braggadoom!, the Mountain that Walked like a Man!’ – an old fashioned homage scripted by Roger Slifer & Len Wein, whilst Mantlo, Trimpe & John Tartaglione offered a spooky encounter with spectres and demons in #14’s ‘Ghost Town!’ a moody mission shared with The Son of Satan.

Mantlo, Arvell Jones & Dick Giordano brought on ‘The Return of the Living Eraser!’ a dimension-hopping invasion yarn which introduced Ben to Morbius, the Living Vampire after which a canny crossover epic began with the Thing and Ka-Zar plunging ‘Into the Savage Land!’ to dally with dinosaurs and defeat resource plunderers, after which the action switched to New York as Spider-Man joined the party in MTIO #17 to combat ‘This City… Afire!’ (Mantlo, Sal Buscema & Esposito) when mutated madman Basilisk transported an active volcano from Antarctica to the Hudson River with the cataclysmic conclusion following (from Marvel Team-Up #47) where Mantlo, Wilson & Dan Adkins finished off the epic and saved the day in fine style with ‘I Have to Fight the Basilisk!’

Another short-changed supernatural serial was finally sorted out in MTIO #18. ‘Dark, Dark Demon-Night!’ by Mantlo, Scott Edelman, Wilson, Jim Mooney & Adkins, found mystical watchdog The Scarecrow escape from its painted prison to foil a demonic invasion with the reluctant assistance of the Thing, after which Tigra the Were-Woman slinked into Ben’s life to vamp a favour and crush a sinister scheme by a rogue cat creature in ‘Claws of the Cougar!’ by Mantlo, Sal Buscema, & Don Heck.

That yarn segued directly into Fantastic Four Annual #11 which began a time-travelling sage with ‘And Now Then… the Invaders!’ by Roy Thomas, Big John Buscema & Sam Grainger, wherein Marvel’s First Family travelled back to 1942 to retrieve a cylinder of miracle-metal Vibranium which had begun to unwrite history after falling into Nazi hands.

En route they became embroiled in conflict with WWII super-team the Invaders which comprised early incarnations of Captain America, Sub-Mariner and the android Human Torch.

The time-busting task went well once the heroes finally united to assault the Nazi castle where the Vibranium was held, but after the quartet returned to their own repaired era, only Ben realised that the mission wasn’t completed yet…

The action continues in Marvel Two-In-One Annual #1 as, with the present unravelling around him, Ben returned to 1942 in ‘Their Name is Legion!’ by Thomas, Sal Buscema, Grainger, Tartaglione & George Roussos, to link up with Home Front Heroes The Liberty Legion (The Patriot, Thin Man, Red Raven, Jack Frost, Blue Diamond, Miss America and the Whizzer) and thwart Nazi raiders Skyshark and Master Man, Japanese agent Slicer and Atlantean traitor U-Man‘s invasion of America: a battle so big it spilled over and concluded in Marvel Two-In-One #20 (October 1976) in a shattering ‘Showdown at Sea!’ against diabolical Nazi scientist Brain Drain, courtesy of Thomas, Sal Buscema & Grainger.

MTIO #21 featured a team-up with Doc Savage but as Marvel no longer holds a license for that character, the story is excluded from this collection and the action resumes with #22’s two-part Thor pairing against the Egyptian God of Death in ‘Touch Not the Hand of Seth!’ (Mantlo, Wilson & Pablo Marcos); a fantastic cosmic extravaganza concluded with the assistance of Jim Shooter & Marie Severin in ‘Death on the Bridge to Heaven!’, after which Ben had a far more prosaic time with neophyte hero Black Goliath as a devastated downtown Los Angeles asked ‘Does Anyone Remember… the Hijacker?’ (by Mantlo, Shooter, Sal Buscema & Marcos).

This initial economical compendium ends on the cusp of a new era as the much delayed and postponed team-up with Iron Fist, the Living Weapon heralded the start of writer/editor Marv Wolfman’s impressive run on the title. ‘A Tale of Two Countries!’ illustrated by Wilson & Grainger, saw the Thing and the master martial artist shanghaied to the Far East as part of a Machiavellian plan to conquer the island kingdom of Kaiwann. Naturally they both strenuously objected…

These stories from Marvel’s Middle Period are of variable quality but nonetheless all are an honest attempt to entertain and exhibit a dedicated drive to please. Whilst artistically the work varies from adequate to quite superb, most fans of frantic Fights ‘n’ Tights genre would find little to complain about.

Although not really a book for casual or more maturely-oriented readers there’s lots of fun on hand and young readers will have a blast, so there’s no real reason not to add this tome to your straining superhero bookshelves…
© 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.