Marvel Two-in-One was never a book that I made it a point to read regularly. Not that it wasn't good. It was. I was just not a real big fan of the Thing at the time. I liked his character of course but he didn't excite me to follow his adventures a lot. Perhaps I would have read it more if the star was the Human Torch. He was my favorite in the FF and Ben Grimm was second. Sorry Ben but that was true at the time.
Now somethings I found out while researching this was this Marvel Two-in-One fan site and that MTO really started out when the Thing was to turn Marvel Feature in to the team up magazine after he took over from Ant-Man. It started out like the others we mentioned here. Readers had always loved seeing Superman and Flash race and Flash was his first guest star in both of his team up books. Readers loved the interplay between Spider-Man and the Human Torch and they teamed up for the first three issues of Marvel Team Up. Fans of the Thing and the Hulk loved to see them fight and so his first team up in Marvel Feature #11 was the Hulk. Sales must have been through the roof as Marvel Feature was canceled and Marvel Two-In-One was released a month later. 100 issues later it seems that it was the right decision.
In reality Marvel Two-in-One barely qualifies as a team up book. From time to time he was teamed up with members of the Fantasitc Four. So it was really an FF book some months. Ben might be be teamed with Mr. Fantastic but since Sue and Johnny would make a cameo in the issue it was really like reading the FF. Then there were the rare times when the Thing was not teamed up with anyone. Yes the story was probably good but this is a team up book not a solo book.
Most of the time I read the book because of whoever he was teamed up with. My favorite was the Marvel Two-in-One annual #1. I was a big fan of the Invaders and in the Fantastic Four Annual that year the FF went back to WWII and teamed up with them. Then I saw something I never saw before or since. The story was continued. The book was only published once a year and it had a continued story!! It was really continued into Marvel Two-in-One annual #1 that was published next month but till I read that I was surprised. Ben teamed up with the Liberty Legion to finally finish the story. I also loved annual #3 when he teamed up with Nova. The story was just ok and I don't remember specifics about it but I bought it because I was a big fan of Nova.
While the book ended with issue #100, getting more respect from Marvel then DC gave to DC Presents did when it ended with #97, to me it should have ended with the story in #86. It shows that the Thing teamed up with Sandman but it wasn't really a team up. Ben was helping Reed with some heavy lifting and wanting to get out of it. Meanwhile the now assumed dead Sandman, after a battle with Hydroman, seperates himself and Hydro and they go their seperate ways. Ben gets a call that Sandman is seen having a beer in a bar. He leaves Reed and arrives at the bar to arrest Sandy. To his surprise he doesn't put up a fight. But before taking him away he and Ben have a drink and talk about life. This was what put Sandman on the road to being reformed for awhile. This is how a series should end. Sure it isn't a big bang but it is a nice neat story to end things on. So this is how I will end the last posting of Team up week.
1 comment:
What I loved about the series was the rather unusual team-ups. Spidey had the more mainstream guests. Ben's were mostly fringe characters. It was great!
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