Essentially Mine: Marvel Feature #11
I love comics, I really do. You can read them anywhere: on the bus, in bed, while eating, on the toilet—they’re just perfect quick reads, and when they’re done well, they’re also very enjoyable indeed. They become equally enjoyable when they’re done just badly enough, at that.
I’m particularly fond of corny, cheesy comics from days of yore. As such, I am a very big fan of Marvel’s line of Essentials, the phonebook-sized black and white reproductions of their back issue library. They started out with all the classic 60s stuff, which is great for someone like me who didn’t start properly collecting until 1996-1997 (after having read European/Belgian strips since I was like 3 years old). But by now they’re also concentrating on a whole bunch of 70s era comics, which I consider to be my “missing decade”.
Being born at the tail end of the 70s, it’s the decade I know the least of. I remember the 80s vividly, having grown up in them, and the 60s I came to know thanks to my parents having grown up in them. The 70s always have been fairly enigmatic to me (in the sense that I never really bothered to find out more, mind you), and that also includes knowing very little about their funky superhero comics. Comics are a nice window into a general mindset of any given era, even with the natural lag between conception and publication.
You can probably imagine that 70s comics are often kooky as all heck. My favourite aspect would be the lack of pretentiousness. I don’t get a “Look at me! Look at how deep my work is! Look at all the linework!” vibe from them. I haven’t come across too many that were just plain moronic (like I often do nowadays) either. So I consider myself a recent fan of 70s comics, making me very grateful that Marvel will be publishing more and more Essentials from that timeframe in the near future.
All that, simply to lead up to this: I just read the first issue collected in Essential Marvel Two-In-One, and it was neat. MTIO was the Thing’s team-up title, just like Spider-Man had Marvel Team-Up and Superman had DC Presents. I guess the Thing must have been quite popular back then to warrant a 100-issue series plus annuals. Of course the real fun is found in all the guest-stars and the potential for a variety of writers and artists. Before MTIO started, the Thing first got two stories in Marvel Feature #11-12, both of which are included in the trade.
Marvel Feature #11 starts out with the Thing feeling sorry for himself (big surprise there, it’s one of his favourite pastimes). He’s being monitored by an old foe—a very old foe, as it turns out, because he hadn’t been seen since all the way back in Fantastic Four #7: the not-so-dreaded Kurrgo, Master of Planet X! Shunned by his miniaturized fellow X’ians, he wants to wreak vengeance on them with the unsolicited help of the strongest one there is—the Hulk! Because this is a team-up story, writer Len Wein duly brings out a Hulk-villain as well, one of the classic ones, the Leader, who is somehow in stasis but still able to communicate telepathically. The two baddies will use their respective foes as champions to fight and whoever wins, will get control over both of the big brawlers plus all the scientific knowledge of their adversary.
Why Kurrgo doesn’t just throw the Leader out of his spaceship is beyond me. He’s in stasis, you dolt! He can’t do anything!
I don’t know what it is about old comics, but in back issue form, things like that read as charming contrivancies. When someone like Loeb or Bendis does it in a modern-day comic, I get all huffy. Go figure.
The Thing and the Hulk get zapped to an abandoned desert town and pound on each other because the script requires them to. I don’t mind though, because Jim Starlin was on top of his game back then and draws a very pleasant knock-down drag-out fight. This issue is entirely plot-driven and said plot is rather flimsy, but dynamic art goes a long way in making it enjoyable nonetheless. So does dialogue like this:
“Hulk does not like this ‘clobbering time’, Thing! Hulk thinks it is dumb! Hulk thinks Thing is dumb, too!” and then Ben gets all pissed because of a “palooka” insulting his intelligence (despite not knowing the difference between a projection and an injection a few pages earlier).
It all wraps up rather quickly: Hulk and Thing are zapped to the ship, where Thing somehow straight away figures out that Kurrgo was cheating by making him stronger than usual, prompting the STILL-STUCK-IN-A-TUBE (!!!) Leader to proclaim himself as winner by default (some winner), which in turn greatly upsets Kurrgo, who sets his silly robot after the two monstrous heroes, who of course bash the tin man with great ease and trash the ship in the process, causing it to blow after the title characters have jumped out (but naturally, Kurrgo and the Leader didn’t escape on panel. Odds on them being dead are infinitesimal though). How’s that for a run-on sentence, eh? :)
It’s just a stupid issue, but I would give it to kids to read in a heartbeat, because it’s sheer, unbridled fun. Good guys, bad guys, slam-dunk action, a really great artist coupled with an equally great inker (Joe Sinnott). There should be more comics like this (of course then I'd be buying even more than I already do. Hmmm, there's a bad side to everything, isn't there? :p).
Comics shouldn’t be like this across the board, but they’re great entryways for kids into the medium, or even simply into reading, without being condescending. Marvel Feature #12 features Starlin’s Blood Brothers and Iron Man, so I’m already looking forward to the next mindless but true-to-form comic-booky fight! (I’m also keeping my fingers crossed for more MTIO collections as well as future MTU ones—team-up stories just boogie! ;))
I’m particularly fond of corny, cheesy comics from days of yore. As such, I am a very big fan of Marvel’s line of Essentials, the phonebook-sized black and white reproductions of their back issue library. They started out with all the classic 60s stuff, which is great for someone like me who didn’t start properly collecting until 1996-1997 (after having read European/Belgian strips since I was like 3 years old). But by now they’re also concentrating on a whole bunch of 70s era comics, which I consider to be my “missing decade”.
Being born at the tail end of the 70s, it’s the decade I know the least of. I remember the 80s vividly, having grown up in them, and the 60s I came to know thanks to my parents having grown up in them. The 70s always have been fairly enigmatic to me (in the sense that I never really bothered to find out more, mind you), and that also includes knowing very little about their funky superhero comics. Comics are a nice window into a general mindset of any given era, even with the natural lag between conception and publication.
You can probably imagine that 70s comics are often kooky as all heck. My favourite aspect would be the lack of pretentiousness. I don’t get a “Look at me! Look at how deep my work is! Look at all the linework!” vibe from them. I haven’t come across too many that were just plain moronic (like I often do nowadays) either. So I consider myself a recent fan of 70s comics, making me very grateful that Marvel will be publishing more and more Essentials from that timeframe in the near future.
All that, simply to lead up to this: I just read the first issue collected in Essential Marvel Two-In-One, and it was neat. MTIO was the Thing’s team-up title, just like Spider-Man had Marvel Team-Up and Superman had DC Presents. I guess the Thing must have been quite popular back then to warrant a 100-issue series plus annuals. Of course the real fun is found in all the guest-stars and the potential for a variety of writers and artists. Before MTIO started, the Thing first got two stories in Marvel Feature #11-12, both of which are included in the trade.
Marvel Feature #11 starts out with the Thing feeling sorry for himself (big surprise there, it’s one of his favourite pastimes). He’s being monitored by an old foe—a very old foe, as it turns out, because he hadn’t been seen since all the way back in Fantastic Four #7: the not-so-dreaded Kurrgo, Master of Planet X! Shunned by his miniaturized fellow X’ians, he wants to wreak vengeance on them with the unsolicited help of the strongest one there is—the Hulk! Because this is a team-up story, writer Len Wein duly brings out a Hulk-villain as well, one of the classic ones, the Leader, who is somehow in stasis but still able to communicate telepathically. The two baddies will use their respective foes as champions to fight and whoever wins, will get control over both of the big brawlers plus all the scientific knowledge of their adversary.
Why Kurrgo doesn’t just throw the Leader out of his spaceship is beyond me. He’s in stasis, you dolt! He can’t do anything!
I don’t know what it is about old comics, but in back issue form, things like that read as charming contrivancies. When someone like Loeb or Bendis does it in a modern-day comic, I get all huffy. Go figure.
The Thing and the Hulk get zapped to an abandoned desert town and pound on each other because the script requires them to. I don’t mind though, because Jim Starlin was on top of his game back then and draws a very pleasant knock-down drag-out fight. This issue is entirely plot-driven and said plot is rather flimsy, but dynamic art goes a long way in making it enjoyable nonetheless. So does dialogue like this:
“Hulk does not like this ‘clobbering time’, Thing! Hulk thinks it is dumb! Hulk thinks Thing is dumb, too!” and then Ben gets all pissed because of a “palooka” insulting his intelligence (despite not knowing the difference between a projection and an injection a few pages earlier).
It all wraps up rather quickly: Hulk and Thing are zapped to the ship, where Thing somehow straight away figures out that Kurrgo was cheating by making him stronger than usual, prompting the STILL-STUCK-IN-A-TUBE (!!!) Leader to proclaim himself as winner by default (some winner), which in turn greatly upsets Kurrgo, who sets his silly robot after the two monstrous heroes, who of course bash the tin man with great ease and trash the ship in the process, causing it to blow after the title characters have jumped out (but naturally, Kurrgo and the Leader didn’t escape on panel. Odds on them being dead are infinitesimal though). How’s that for a run-on sentence, eh? :)
It’s just a stupid issue, but I would give it to kids to read in a heartbeat, because it’s sheer, unbridled fun. Good guys, bad guys, slam-dunk action, a really great artist coupled with an equally great inker (Joe Sinnott). There should be more comics like this (of course then I'd be buying even more than I already do. Hmmm, there's a bad side to everything, isn't there? :p).
Comics shouldn’t be like this across the board, but they’re great entryways for kids into the medium, or even simply into reading, without being condescending. Marvel Feature #12 features Starlin’s Blood Brothers and Iron Man, so I’m already looking forward to the next mindless but true-to-form comic-booky fight! (I’m also keeping my fingers crossed for more MTIO collections as well as future MTU ones—team-up stories just boogie! ;))
posted by Peter @ 9:32 AM
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