BHOC: MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE ANNUAL #4

One of the immediate benefits of having switched my shopping for new comics to the recently-opened Stationery store was that I once again had access to Marvel’s upsized titles and Annuals. The 7-11 that I had been getting most of my comics from had long since stopped carrying any non-regulation formatted comic books, and so I missed a ton of Annuals as well as entire titles such as WHAT IF. Now that problem had been eliminated. And here’s an example; MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE ANNUAL #4, which showed up the next week. I was still a huge Fantastic Four fan, so buying this unexpected book was a simple decision.

Based on the credits, where this story had been plotted by Allyn Brodsky and laid out by Jim Craig and thereafter finished up by David Michelinie and Bob Budiansky, as well as the fact that the story is broken into two equal chapters of 17 pages each, my guess is that it started life as a two-part fill-in story that laid in inventory for a while. combining it into a single release got the story off the books. By this point, neither Brodsky nor Craig was doing much of anything for Marvel, so it makes sense that editor Roger Stern would turn to other hands to carry this Annual across the finish line. That said, the story couldn’t have been too old, considering that the villain, graviton, had only been introduced in AVENGERS a short time before.

The story opens with Black Bold, Medusa and Lockjaw arriving unexpectedly at the Baxter Building headquarters of the Fantastic Four, only to find it deserted. They’ve come seeking help to figure out the source of some air quakes that threaten to devastate their home city of Attilan. Black Bolt sends Medusa and Lockjaw back home so as to not overcrowd the story while he ventures out into Manhattan in search of the Thing at Alicia Masters’ sculpting studio. For his part, Ben is getting into some shenanigans down at the D.M V. as he needs to renew his driver’s license. Also in the area are the Avengers’ butler Jarvis and Judy Parks, a former co-worker of Graviton’s whom Jarvis had helped to rescue in the aforementioned AVENGERS storyline. There’s a quick scuffle between the Thing and Black Bolt as Ben misunderstands why and how the King of Attilan is pulling Alicia along, during which a figure in a hat and overcoat spirits Judy away, leaving Jarvis’ feet pinned to the pavement.

This figure, of course, is graviton himself, somehow returned to Earth after his defeat by the Avengers. But Graviton isn’t well, he’s suffering from partial amnesia and he can’t quite control his gravitic powers. He was drawn to Judy instinctively knowing he shared a connection to her. The Thing and Black Bolt follow graviton’s trail to an alleyway and rescue Judy, but Graviton’s powers continue to run wild, and he begins to draw the entire mass of the island that he was on when both were shot into a black hole into himself, turning him into a huge stonelike monster. This transformation brings back a bit of Graviton’s sanity, and realizing that he has no place in society in his current monstrous state, he petitions Black Bolt for asylum in Attilan. When the monarch refuses, graviton spitefully uses his powers to channel a massive solar flare aimed directly at Attilan.

The middle of the book carried the latest edition of the monthly Bullpen Bulletins column. This was the one in which, having promoted it for several months, publisher Stan Lee had to pivot and reveal that the company had run into a legal snafu with the name ODYSSEY. So instead, their new slick fantasy magazine would be titled EPIC. The page also promoted the Alice Cooper issue of MARVEL PREMIERE, an odd choice perhaps inspired by the success of the company’s two KISS magazines.

We segue into the next chapter with the Thing and Black Bolt dividing their forces. While Ben continues to attempt to corral Graviton, Black Bolt soars spaceward and uses his powers to set up a counter-explosion that prevents the solar flare from reaching the Earth or Attilan. With his attempt to destroy Attilan defeated, Graviton grows frustrated, and decides to vent his wrath on Manhattan instead. Despite their best efforts, neither the Thing nor Black Bolt can really slow Graviton down, and the giant marches away from them. The suddenly, a convenient scientist in the crowd comes forward and shares with the two heroes the theory that forcing Graviton back into the dimension where he came from would likely undo him. And the way to do that would be to hit him with a large enough chunk of anti-matter. Sounds dangerous to me, but hey, this random pedestrian is a scientist, right?

So Black Bolt gets to work, first transforming a massive chunk of rubble into anti-matter and sealing with within a magnetic “bottle” to prevent it from coming into contact with anything from our positive-matter universe until it strikes Graviton. Benjy hefts up the massive bit of anti-matter stone and the heroes continue their pursuit of Graviton. Graviton, for his part, has decided that he’s going to trash the United Nations building, so our heroes find him in the area of that structure. At the key moment, Ben hurls the anti-matter at Graviton, who just stands there and doesn’t attempt to dodge or deflect it. Seeing this, though, Black Bolt steps in to knock the anti-matter away, having doped out that what Graviton is really looking to do is kill himself.

It turns out that in a lucid moment, Graviton became disgusted with all of the carnage he’d been causing and wished to die. And so, saved by Black Bolt, he chooses to let go and allow himself to be drawn back into the dimension that he’d broken free from. And that’s how the story ends. There isn’t another word about those fierce Air Quakes that brought Black Bolt to the area in the first place. But I’m sure that the FF took care of them eventually, right? This is kind of a mess of a story, with characters passing into and out of it haphazardly, the characterizations and the stakes shaky, and the eventual wrap-up perfunctory. This may have been another reason why it lingered in an unfinished condition for a while–that it just wasn’t all that good.

There’s another clue that this story may have been hanging around for a while in inventory, and that’s this letters page on which editor Roger Stern attempts to untangle the continuity given that the last time we saw Medusa she was the captive of the evil Enclave. Roger promises that the Enclave story will be wrapped up in the pages of FANTASTIC FOUR, but it kind of never is–John Byrne eventually hand-waves the entire thing away in a few panels once he gets onto the series. Roger also makes a comment about those lingering Air Quakes without directly addressing them–he knows how shoddy that bit of plotting is, so he at least hangs a lantern on it.