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| MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE No. 4, July 1974 |
Sporting an incredibly dynamic and pulse-pounding cover of
The Thing and ‘Sentinel of Liberty’ battling a horde of futuristic Zoms by Gil
Kane and Joe Sinnott, “Doomsday 3014!” is sadly not “the most titanic team-up
ever… in this, the Marvel Age of comics!” But Steve Gerber’s eighteen-page long
narrative isn’t an especially bad one either. It’s simply a storyline which
comes in two parts and disappointingly the first half is a rather lack-lustre
low-brow affair as a particularly grim-faced “Unca Ben-Jee” takes the
child-like super-powered Wundarr for an ill-conceived stroll through “Central
Park Zoo on a sunny day in New York.”
Admittedly this sojourn into the domestic life of
Benjamin Grimm provides plenty of humour and surreal comic book moments, such
as the long-haired refugee from Dakkam innocently trying to show an escaped
Lion his pretty pink balloon, or The Thing’s rocky hide being harmlessly “gnawed
on” by the self-same king of the jungle. However there is little sense of peril
to any of these shenanigans and even Captain America is inauspiciously utilised
to accomplish nothing more than deal with a handful of “Hoods--taking advantage
of the confusion… Looting the deserted concession stands!”
Fortunately the Eagle Award-winner’s writing
significantly picks up pace once the mysterious Tarin is inadvertently
transported back to ‘our time’ thanks to Ben accidentally activating Dr.Doom’s
Time Machine; “Captured after F.F. #5 – Guess Who!” Such clunky lazy story-telling
is undeniably a somewhat unsatisfactory way for Gerber to introduce a
personality who would go on to become ‘President of Earth’ in the Nineties
“Guardians Of The Galaxy” series. Yet the human mutate’s innocuous ‘bump’ into
Victor’s time-travelling device does at least set up the motivation behind why
the founding member of the Fantastic Four would accompany the “frail girl in a
flashy future-suit” back to her time and “lend them Guardians a hand!”
In fact the subsequent four pages of almost non-stop
action are the highlight of the magazine, and genuinely live up to the high
expectations set by Kane’s aforementioned cover illustration. Possibly the
red-suited blank-eyed Zoms aren’t the most impressive of villainous minions
ever created by “Marvel Comics Group” during the Bronze Age of Comics,
especially with their delicate looking horned headbands. But the quite
ludicrously named “Monster of Badoon” proves a suitably impressive adversary
for the ‘ever lovin’ blue-eyed Thing’, even if the green-skinned three-fingered
behemoth does look as bad as its name sounds.
In addition this comic contains some wonderfully
characterful artwork by Silvio “Sal” Buscema, an artist who is clearly capable
of bestowing upon Ben Grimm’s typically stony unreadable face all manner of
emotions. Indeed the inkwell Award-winner’s drawings of The Thing sending the Zoms
flying with a swipe of a broken lamp-post or the super-strong hero’s battle
with a giant gorilla are as energetic and ‘full of life’ as you could want a
penciller to sketch.
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| Writer: Steve Gerber, Artist: Sal Buscema and Inker: Frank Giacoia |
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