Marvel Two-in-One

[Shiryu]

I have never read this book but I happened to see some issues of it on Ebay a few days ago and as a fans of team-ups I'm wondering if it's worth a go. Did anyone use to read it and was it a good book? any issue particularly worthwhile in terms of continuity and/or creative team?

[owene]

Sept 22, 2010 7:34:51 GMT -5 Shiryu said:

I have never read this book but I happened to see some issues of it on Ebay a few days ago and as a fans of team-ups I'm wondering if it's worth a go. Did anyone use to read it and was it a good book? any issue particularly worthwhile in terms of continuity and/or creative team?

I'm at work so I can't check issue numbers

The gruenwald run is excellent and in many ways serves as a background for the 'classic' 80s Marvel universe that a lot of us grew up with, introducing or focusing on things like Roxxon, Project Pegasus, the serpent crown and so on. It does his thing of logically thinking about a super powered world and unearthing old continuity while working at the same time as dramatic stories a lot more than some of Gruenwald's later stuff. While it is a team up book it doesn't read like one in the bad sense, the Thing has a narrative and other people pop up as he encounters them, most of them aren't big name feature characters and most hang around for a few issues not just the one they headline.

Excellent art by Byrne and Perez as well.

There's a very early run of Gerber issues that tie into a lot of his other books as well. Not sure what else to recommend

[dlw66]

The Project Pegasus storyline is recently available in the premier hardcover format -- it's a great read in a nice format.

There were some Marvel Two-in-One annuals that intersected some other nice stories, notably the Avengers crossover with Avengers Annual #7; there was also a Liberty Legion crossover along the way if I recall.

[Shiryu]

Thanks guys!
I'lve also found a few issues online and read them, they seem good fun all in all. I'll give it a go and post a few comments as I read.

[starfoxxx]

I LOVE Marvel-2-in-1. It was cancelled before i ever even started reading comics, but back- issues were always easy to find for cheap.

the site Comic-per-day Reviews (one i regularly check out for reviews of new and old stuff) just did a review of Marvel 2-in-1 #51.....One of the greatest comics ever, IMO....Thing, Nick Fury, Ms. Marvel, Wonder Man, and Beast! I forgot how good some of these stories were.

And any of the Perez art is top-notch, esp. some of the covers. Definitely worth checking out #51, though.

[humanbelly]

I never bought it regularly, but somehow acquired a solid smattering of issues over its entire run-- and I always liked it. It was almost always a good, old-style, fun read. Really, it's Ben (of course)-- in some ways, I think he alone could be considered one of Stan's greatest creations. Stan found his voice very quickly (maybe by FF #3 or 4?), once saying in an interview that he had an inspiration to make him sort of a gruffer Jimmy Durante. And it just clicked. I daresay that writers that have used him successfully have found that he almost writes himself. An inadvertant test of this was that, while reading FF from the beginning to SonofHB when he was very little, Ben's dialog AND voice both came immediately to life. . . as opposed to, say, Reed- who was always dreadfully stilted and cliche'd.

Think of the old, old, old Hanna-Barbera FF cartoon from the 60's. Whose voice comes to mind? John Frees doing the Thing. "It's Clobberin' Tiiiime!" It's great--- Ben is just. . . automatic!

HB

[martyp]

Great series, just like Marvel Team Up.


I never understood why Marvel hasn't one of these sort of series now. They are a nice introduction to the entire Marvel Universe!

[humanbelly]

I guess to be fair, one has to admit that both MTU & MTIO were guilty on multiple occasions of being used to shamelessly promote new, hopefully "hot" characters, and get them smack into the limelight while their flower was blooming-- or to give fading 2nd & 3rd characters some much-needed exposure. But even that was kind of amusing, in its way. (Spidey teaming up with the Sons of the Tiger, or Brother Voodoo, or Werewolf by Night, f'rinstance. Ha-- or Woodgod. Or Ben teaming up with, say, Deathlok or Machine Man.) The majority of the time-- at least early on-- the creative teams were solid enough to make this work, though, and it was part of the fun aspect of these books.

And you could never take them too seriously, because you always knew that there would never be any major, lasting changes to the main characters in these pages--- that kind of thing would of course be reserved for their own main titles.

I believe MTU has been resurrected at least once in recent years, martyp-- but it may be tough to track down. It was- yeesh- never a subscription offering. . .

HB

[martyp]

Oh I know, but it well....sucked. It lacked the fun factor the original had.

[ultron69]

I have about a dozen issues, including a couple from Project Pegasus. It's been a long time since I've read them, so I honestly don't remember, but I think if you can get them cheap, they're worth a look, especially if you like Bronze Age stuff and if you like the Thing.

[starfoxxx]

I loved Marvel 2in1 and marvel Team-Up, and really miss the "fun" factor of those series.

Not to mention the great team-ups. Nevermind the stories weren't always great, the team-ups themselves were what made it fun, and I would LOOOOVE to see some of them revisited, especially the Thing and.....
Black widow
Spider-Woman
Black Panther
Nighthawk
Sasquatch
Stingray
Ant-man
Moondragon
Tigra
Angel
and esp. Machine Man/Jocasta/Ultron

And Marvel Team-Ups w/Spidey and....
Human Torch (duh)
Capt Marvel II
Kitty Pryde
Invisible Woman
Falcon
Nightcrawler
Vision (!please!)
the Hulk/Power Man/Iron Fist/Machine Man (a classic)
and of course the Torch and Iceman

[ultron69]

I liked the Thing and Thundra. I always loved that she kept chasing after him.

[badgermaniac]

MTU #59-#60 are two of my favorite stand-alone mini-runs.

[ultron69]

#60 looks very familiar, but I don't see it in my database. I could've sworn I had that. It must be one of my handful of comics that's gone MIA. :-(

[robert]

It depends on what issues of MTIO you read, really. The early stuff - say, the first two years - is really good, silly, 1970s fun and some later stories like the Project Pegasus stuff is also fine, mainly because of Byrne and Perez art. Perez did a fair number of very nice covers, most when he wasn't doing the internal art.

I have every issue from #9 and, to be honest, it is heavy going during the last two or three years that it ran. Mind you, it's still not as bad as Thing's own series that immediately followed...

[starfoxxx]

May 12, 2011 9:23:56 GMT -5 robert said:

Mind you, it's still not as bad as Thing's own series that immediately followed...

I loved the THING series when i was a kid.......but in hindsight it was pretty awful.

BUT..... that THING series did link two of my favorite 80s things....
Super-Heroes and Professional Wrestling!

[robert]

Stan and Jack could have got away with the wrestling thing back in the Silver Age but John Bryne is no Stan Lee and Ron Wilson is no Jack Kirby.

[starfoxxx]

May 15, 2011 15:20:40 GMT -5 robert said:

Stan and Jack could have got away with the wrestling thing back in the Silver Age but John Bryne is no Stan Lee and Ron Wilson is no Jack Kirby.

Actually, I believe it was Mike Carlin who wrote the wrestling stories (super-juiced-up wrestlers, kind of prophetic )

I loved Carlin's work on CRAZY magazine.

[robert]

My mistake.

I reread the Thing series in it's entirety for the first time about two years back. It was just as awful as I remembered when I was buying it every month. That's my excuse for not remembering who wrote what! I will probably never read those comics again.

And I really lik Ben Grimm as a character. He has saved more than a few mediocre FF adventures purely with his griping and random comments.