Papergreat: 1970s summer comics nostalgia with Thing and Vision, Episode XI

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

1970s summer comics nostalgia with Thing and Vision, Episode XI

All good things must end. So this will be the final installment of "1970s summer comics nostalgia with Thing and Vision." It's an appropriate time, too, because summer officially ended recently. This series has had everything from Twinkies to toy dolls to career guides to Star Wars. (You can see a complete list of all the posts at the bottom of this one.)

For the final post, I thought I would delve into the actual story content of this May 1978 issue of "Marvel Two-in-One." It's a 35-cent tale that was written by Roger Slifer (1954-2015) and illustrated by Ron Wilson and Pablos Marcos. Pete Iro was the letterer, George Roussos (1915-2000) was the colorist and the editor of the book was Archie Goodwin (1937-1988).

I'm going to take the fine work by those men and try to boil the story down to six panels (from the 130 in the issue). That's impossible, of course, but it was an interesting exercise. So here's a very broad look at the issue's story arc, which includes The Thing (Ben Grimm), Vision, Daredevil, Yellowjacket, some evil android Visions and main villain the Mad Thinker. There are also pop-culture references to NHL star Phil Esposito and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Left on the cutting-room floor in editing the issue down to six panels were a skateboarding city kid and a bad-guy robot named X-719.

So away we go...