Entropy, Entropy...

MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE — Issue no. 42, May 1978

Book: Marvel Two-in-One

Issue No.: 42

Published: May 2, 1978

Title: “Entropy, Entropy...”

Cover Price: 35¢

This book opens with a good splash page and then immediately follows that up with an awesome double splash page, so I am, of course, immediately on board.

In the mighty Marvel manner, all these splash pages are showing a fight between two good guys, the Thing (Marvel Two-in-One was his regular team-up book in 1978) and Captain America.

One thing I’ve noticed while working on Marvel Time Warp — when you’re reading (almost) every 1978 Marvel comic book in publication order, you find out continuity was pretty loose in those days. For example, at the conclusion of the April 1978 issue of Fantastic Four, the Thing (along with the Human Torch and the Invisible Woman) had just been captured by Doctor Doom. And this issue of Two-in-One opens with the Thing very much not captured by Doctor Doom.

Anyway, Captain America is fighting the Thing because the Thing just broke into a government facility looking for Wundarr, an alien being who is a friend of the Things’s. The government is holding Wundarr against his will and using him to help them experiment on the Cosmic Cube (you might know it as the Tesseract from the modern Marvel movies). The Thing is understandably upset about this.

It turns out one of the government facility workers is actually the Entropic Man, who is apparently part of some weird cult that worships... entropy. He steals the Cube and teleports to the swamps of Florida. Conveniently, Captain America has access to a fancy jet plane with a Cube tracker built in, and the Thing is (also conveniently) an expert pilot, so the two heroes hightail it to Florida. They aren’t there long before the Entropic Man attacks them with the Cube. Uh oh. The book ends with yet another splash page, this one featuring the Entropic Man promising to kill the Thing and Cap and usher in the “era of entropy.” I’m not sure exactly what the “era of entropy” is, but it probably ain’t good.

The artwork here (by Sal Buscema, Alfredo Alcala, and Sam Grainger) is rock (no pun intended) solid. It’s archetypal Marvel Bronze Age artwork — if someone asked you what Marvel Comics looked like in 1978, this would be a perfect example to show them. The story is pretty archetypal 1978 Marvel, too. There’s even a Gene Simmons reference to really hammer home the 1978-ness of the whole affair.

Next time — I’ll be back on Tuesday with more Captain America!