These cards were the very first comics anything I ever encountered. It was kind of mind-blowing to have these little samples of artifacts, characters and events over 50+ years of fictional history. This card, Spidey’s Web-Shooters and Darkhawk were personal favorites. I wish I still had them all.
The Ur-plot of all time travel stories. Will it make things better or worse? Did you just usher in an era of Soviet dominance, or un-fettered American excess? Will there be another madman waiting in the wings, without the bumbling generals or ethnic pre-occupations to stop him from conquering Europe?
Time will tell.
REED RICHARDS: SUPER GENIUS.
Ladies and gentlemen, the smartest human in the Marvel universe.
For most of his existence, Ben Grimm has been a joke. He’s the brute with a big mouth, playing second fiddle to Mr. Fantastic. Two developments have given him character besides being comic relief. The first is his long-time relationship with Alicia Masters, a blind woman who saw past his rocky exterior to the gentle man inside.
The second took place in 1982. The Thing, along with the strongest heroes in the Marvel universe, was abducted to provide challenge against The Champion. He travelled the cosmos, searching for a worthy opponent to stand against him in single combat.
Ben Grimm knows from the start he hasn’t got a prayer against one of the Elders of the Universe. But as Thor, Namor, Colossus, Sasquatch, The Hulk, and Wonder Man all fail, he learns that if The Champion doesn’t find satisfaction with Earth’s heroes, the planet will be destroyed to spare it the humiliation.
That’s all The Thing needs to know in order to drag his shattered body through 3 rounds of punishment, goading The Champion on with a few attacks of his own. Ben Grimm rises to the occasion and his spirit proves to be unbeatable.
“Any world that could spawn one such as you—is truly the worthiest of all!”
If the story sounds familiar, it was also given an almost panel for panel homage in the Dexter’s Lab / Dial M For Monkey episode with Rasslor, The Eternal Champion.
Marvel Two-In-One #7 (1982).
Sue Storm. Repressing super-villain tendencies since 1985. From Fantastic Four #381.
In which Mr. Fantastic slaps the villainy out of the Invisible Woman.
Goddamn it, John Byrne.
When veteran comic book colorist Matt Webb asked me if he could take a crack at coloring my Thing Collage, I was excited. Matt was colorist on John Byrne’s NEXT MEN in the 1990s, and is the regular colorist on the Monsterverse graphic novel series, FLESH AND BLOOD!
Matt told me he’d like to do simple colors using the sort of color palette and k-tones that would have been available on the 1960s FANTASTIC FOUR comic covers, so I told him to go for it!
Beautiful retro coloring.
