THE CURE

Growing up, I was a Marvel kid.

No two ways around it. DC’s oeuvre just didn’t really appeal to me, not until I hit my mid-teens. It was the Marvel characters that captured my imagination and made me love the medium. I adored Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers. I read Rom. I have a full set of Dazzler. That was a universe that had a hold of me and wouldn’t let me go.

As of late, though, my interest in, and enjoyment of, comics has been on the wane a bit. Comics have gotten sort of dull as a whole; yes, there are some really great ones that I look forward to with anticipation, but for the most part… snooze city. I’ve been needing something, anything, to remind me of what it was that made me fall in love with comics. And finally, I found it.

ESSENTIAL MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE VOL.1
Written and Drawn by Various
Published by Marvel Comics

First, let me be brutally honest: out of the twenty-nine comics reprinted in this volume, I’d only be able to tell you that maybe one or two were actually anything resembling “good.” MTIO, which featured The Thing and a guest star paring up each issue, as MARVEL TEAM-UP did with Spider-Man, was primarily a breeding ground for fill-in issues. The book didn’t have anything resembling a “creative team” for the most part, instead relying on two or three issues at a time by certain creators before they returned their focus to other projects. But even without brilliant stories, so much of what is here is a total treat.

How about Gil Kane art? A crossover between the FF and MTIO annuals drawn by the Buscemas and scripted by Roy Thomas, which was set during World War Two? Work by Jim Starlin that had bearing on his first great Thanos saga? I read this stuff treasuring it, transported to a time when comics were far simpler in their aims and achievements.

Take issues four and five, for instance. The Thing, Captain America, and Sharon Carter travel to a far-flung future to save the Earth from the Badoon. In the process, they meet the Guardians Of The Galaxy. And in the span of forty-four pages, they have a huge fight and liberate the planet. Can you even imagine what that would be like in today’s comics world? Give that plot to Bendis or Millar and it’d not only take twelve issues to play out, but also probably have at least another dozen crossovers in other books.

The guest stars range from Cap and Spidey to low-enders like The Golem and The Scarecrow, which makes you believe that the powers that were at the time were hoping to see if they could fish for the next big character to get their own book if they proved popular enough. Of course, that didn’t exactly happen. So much for the best-laid plans. Still, even through the worst issues the collection has to offer, the book comes through with exactly what the creators intended: a few minutes of good, clean, fun entertainment. I know it sounds old-fashioned, and the trend towards making “fun” comics is lurking around the edges of the zeitgeist right now, but occasionally I like to smile. So sue me. Books like this are not only a reminder of a simpler era, but that there’s more to life than glowering.

Doesn’t it suck that we need that reminder?

/Mason