The well-remembered Project Pegasus Saga was continuing to run through the pages of MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE, breathing new life into a series that had been moribund for the better part of a year. Newly installed writers Mark Gruenwald and Ralph Macchio were determined to do something worthwhile with the title and to make it better than the contemporaneous FANTASTIC FOUR series, of which they weren’t huge fans. They did this by moving away from the book’s typical single-issue story structure to create longer more involved epics. They also had the advantage in this particular storyline of being supported by excellent artwork. That said, the Thing figure on this cover is a bit weird and strange. It’s odd to be seeing Ben completely from the back, and the way in which his right arm is positioned suggests some evidence of tampering with what had initially been drawn. It’s not one of the book’s best, but it does showcase the newly-debuting new Giant-Man relatively well.
Macchio and Gruenwald had set up Ben Grimm for an extended stay at Project: P.E.G.A.S.U.S., the alternative energy research facility that Macchio had created a year earlier. Ben is there looking after the welfare of his adoptive nephew Wundarr, a Superman figure who possessed the intellect of a child. While there, the Thing got drawn into a web of intrigue, often alongside the Project’s chief of security, Quasar, who became something of a pet character for Gruenwald. Artwork was provided by the team of John Byrne and Joe Sinnott, who delivered sharp visuals very much in the house style of the period.
As the issue opens, another alert blares out throughout the Project, interrupting the nightly poker game that Ben is playing in. Quasar and the security team race to the location of the alert, leaving Ben and scientist Bill Foster to head down to the floor where the body of Atom-Smasher, a villain defeated by Black Goliath, has been brought in for examination. However, their elevator platform is attacked by Nuklo, the radioactive man-child first introduced in AVENGERS. Ben is still nursing a wounded arm from his battle with Deathlok last month, and one-handed he can’t seem to prevent the pair from being crushed against the ceiling. It’s at this moment that Bill Foster chooses to reveal his other identity as Black Goliath, expanding his frame so that he can assist the Thing in saving their lives.
As the duo works their way to freedom, Foster gives Ben, and by extension the audience ,a brief rundown of his history and super hero career up to this point. He reveals that he redesigned his costume in an attempt to make a bigger splash, and the Thing suggests he takes things even further by changing his code-name from Black Goliath to Giant-Man. Foster seems uncertain about making this change, but agrees to do so. The two heroes eventually reach their floor, following the security team that’s scrambling in response to Nuklo’s escape. Meanwhile, Quasar has discovered that the safeties on the Project’s nuclear reactor have been deliberately disabled, but he’s able to use his Quantum Bands to safely absorb and redirect the reaction, preventing a meltdown.
Elsewhere, in what seems at the moment to be an unrelated subplot, Thundra the Femizon has become a competitor in a ladies wresting operation. Tonight, her opponent is Titania, and while the match is scripted to go to Thundra, her opponent opts to cheat, stabbing Thundra with a drugged needle during the bout. So Thundra goes down, Titania is crowned the winner and Thundra’s manager worries about this deviation from the agreed-upon outcome and what it’ll mean to those who wagered on the outcome. Meanwhile, back at the Project, the Thing and Giant-Man have caught up with Nuklo. Ben wraps Bill Foster’s hands in lead so as to protect him from Nuklo’s dangerous radioactivity before the fight begins in earnest.
But Foster throws caution to the wind, opting to tackle Nuklo physically despite the dangerous levels of radiation he’s giving out. Giant-Man rationalizes this to himself, saying that he’s never been able to score a decisive win, so his self-respect requires that he put himself in harm’s way. As this action would lead to Giant-Man later developing a fatal illness as a result of this exposure, it’s even more of a critical miscalculation in hindsight. Anyway, despite getting in a few licks at the start, Giant-Man proves to be no match for Nuklo, and it’s the Thing who is able to eventually knock him back into a containment field, ending the jeopardy. But the two heroes are admonished by Nuklo’s guardian, Dr. Henri Sorel, who insists that Nuklo has the mind of a child and is intrinsically non-violent, so being attacked was what triggered him to greater destructiveness. So everybody feels bad even with the win.
Finally, as the issue wraps up, we cut away to Wundarr, who has been virtually catatonic for the past couple of issues. As with Giant-Man earlier, we’re given a fast rundown of the character’s history for readers who haven’t been following his exploits since his debut in MAN-THING some years before. Like Nuklo, Wundarr also has the mind of a child, and he doesn’t truly understand a lot of what has happened to him. And as the issue closes, a mysterious voice whispers to Wundarr, telling him that he absorbed the power of the cosmic Cube that he’d been hooked up to in a previous adventure, and this power is what has been causing electronics systems to fail in his proximity. The voice indicates that once Wundarr awakens again, nothing will be able to stop him. And on that note, the story is To Be Continued!
The Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Letters Page this issue includes a bit of correspondence from Dennis Mallonee, who would go on to found Heroic Publishing and produce a long-running series of comics based upon the super hero role-playing game Champions, among other things. The answer to his question represents one of the earliest instances where “Marvel Time” was discussed with the readership, and likely the first time that I had come across the concept. In essence, it says that while a whole bunch of time passes in the real world, for the denizens of the Marvel Universe, a much shorter period of time has transpired. At the time this page was written, the operating conceit was that it had been around seven years in-world time since the origin of the Fantastic Four. Today, that number has doubled, but it’s still much smaller than the 65 years the characters have been in continuous publication.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
I’ve always loved that Giant-Man costume. I’m not as keen on the name as Ben Grimm strangely seems to be, though it’s definitely an improvement on Black Goliath…
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The elevator platform is 12-inch thick floor panels of Omnium steel ( page 2 panel 6 ): Back when Tom did Marvel Two-in-One#53 I mentioned the other books I saw Omnium steel in but forgot about Ms. Marvel#17 ( May 1978 –Geoffrey Ballard & Raven Darkholme as Nick Fury ) and the hole the Code Name: Centurion gun blasted in the SHIELD Helicarrier’s impenetrable Omnium-Steel bulkheads (5 of them ). As for Black Goliath’s name change to Giant-Man, the bible’s Goliath was a bad guy to the Israelites not to the Philistines whom he was a champion warrior to, so as a former assistant to Dr. Henry Pym either of his former hero names ( Giant-Man or Goliath — just Goliath not black in front of it ) works — still wish Hank had showed up to hook Bill up with the serum Clint used when he was Goliath.
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Yeah, but – you know – it’s the Bible, so Goliath is a bad guy.
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It wouldn’t be the only hero with a bad guy name: Medusa & Gorgon. Modred is just another spelling of Mordred from Arthurian legend.
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This issue came out about three months before I resumed collecting comics. When I did return, this title would have been over-looked based on Tom’s assessment that it hadn’t been very good when I stopped collecting a few years earlier. But based on this review, it’s clearly past time to devote some quality time on Marvel.com to checking out this run.
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There it is! “Seven years” — it is stated. Maybe it was stated before this, but clearly either Roger Stern or Jim Salicrup are saying it. John Byrne usually invokes it, those “seven years” when he talks about Marvel continuity. I wonder if it is more of something that Stern-Byrne worked out.
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I could be wrong, but I believe around that time Byrne and Stern were at least unofficially operating under the “7-Year” rule. The absurdity of it all came up a few years later with someone pointing out that Ronald Reagan had been President during Capt. America’s entire revival. And that was forty years ago!
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It’s interesting to note that this was the September 1979 issue. About a month earlier, in the August 1979 X-Men, I believe there was a note in the letters page saying something like “it’s been four or five years since Xavier founded the X-Men, if that”. So even if not everyone agreed on the exact length of time, this was the year Marvel stated explicitly that time in their universe passed more slowly than in the real world.
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I’ve never been a big fan of the “meaty figure” art style. With a few exceptions. Byrne’s drawing’s too vague, the figures too thick. Elbows never seemed to be a strength for Byrne. Very pronounced. Forearms, either. Very exaggerated.
But it was likely a “deadline style. This could’ve been years before royalties were implemented. And the less pages you drew, the less $ you received. So I get that, too.
Quasar looks as big as a late 1970’s Schwarzenegger here. Joe Sinnott’s a hall o’famer, but I wasn’t crazy about his collaborations with Byrne.
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I’m a huge fan of Byrne’s art, but admit that during these years with tight deadlines, there was a “house style” to his work. It became much more distinct a few years later. And of course, his X-Men with Terry Austin was “knock it out of the park” amazing.
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I don’t think the cover’s been tampered with — I think that’s just George, being true to the continuity, showing Ben in a sling, so he’s limited in his movements and can only swing one arm back a little awkwardly, as he charges forward to biff the bad guy.
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Kurt, Keith Pollard drew the cover not George. Joe Sinnott inked it. Looks like Keith may have modeled that Thing figure after John Buscema’s Thing. I remember buying the Project Pegasus comics when they came out. I liked that story a lot but wasn’t a fan of Wundarr becoming Aquarius. This story has been reprinted a few times too for anyone interested in reading it if you haven’t already.
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I liked this run of issues very much… art and story both. Gruenwald and Macchio do a very good job of keeping Ben as the clear headliner despite a fairly large cast, and I always dug that elevator sequence.
The new Giant-man costume is an upgrade even if the white buccaneer boots aren’t very practical.
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This may have been the single best arc MTIO ever had, marred only by Wundarr being changed into a completely useless character.
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The Project Pegasus storyline kept things interesting, along with decent art, several super-characters thrown into the mix, and the humorous subplot of the continually interrupted poker game!
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Kurt, Keith Pollard drew that cover. Not George.
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Giant-Man is just another excuse for hyphenation. Marvel Two-In-One, it’s a wonder that Thing didn’t Th-ing…
Finally something enjoyable in these third rate series. If it had been me and perhaps someone already did it, I would have featured less popular characters and also tied up some loose ends as needed with series that were canceled.
Just imagine Captain Marvel and Spider-Woman together at last. Maybe they were I don’t know. In a few panels they could talk about how they wished they could team up and take on someone. Just imagine the Galactus joke as they talk NSFW — nope not going to happen. We are absolutely not going to purple that.
Exit Scorpion from prison and he’s on a tear for Captain Marvel. Alas he can’t find her, but he ends up with Spider-Woman who whomps him in the way that WHOMP!!! can only whomp. As he returns to prison, the ground will be laid for the next villain to appear in the following issue.
There will be a sort of continuity then and plots that even Jim Shooter can understand.
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Anybody else catch the detail that Ben Grimm went to Sunday school? (This was before he was established to be Jewish. Maybe he was raised by Christian relatives or something?)
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