BHOC: MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #55

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.