Aryan, Shmaryan! - or Ben Grimm Hits Stuff pt.3

When we meet our hero in Marvel Two-In-One #20, he' s been thrown back in time by an unusually zaftig Watcher to find a lost vibranium cylinder. This being a Roy Thomas story, it's 1942 and there're lots of Nazis to fight.

Taking a break from freaking people out in Times Square, Ben decides to check out that extra-crazy, giant metal swastika that's flying around lopping off the tops of skyscrapers.

Who does he find piloting the craft? Only the most arrogant, disembodied Nazi scientist brain this side of Ultra-Humanite - Brain Drain!

Exactly how many evil brains in jars are there anyway? I can think of at least ten or eleven.

Ben does the sensible thing and begins pounding the craft into little metal bits. Brain Drain, of course, flips out and demands to know what the hell is going on.

Like any good hero, Ben just loves flashbacks and expository dialogue. So after a few pages, Brain Drain's entirely caught up. Just in time for him to land his craft and let some of his super-powered Nazi friends jump the Thing. Ben gets smacked around for a few panels before he decides to let loose and bust some Aryan heads.

Maybe they should've called it Marvel Three-In-One. Ha!

Hmmm...Yeah.

So anyway, Ben gets a couple of more good punches in-

before the Liberty Legion arrives to mop up. He retrieves the vibranium cylinder and heads back to good ole' 1976. All is well.

and for no good reason whatsoever-

A Sound Effect Tally
THRAKK!
SWRASH!
THLRAP
WHAM
RRIPPP
WHOMP!
PHOOM
THAM (twice)
FWAM
RAK!RAK! (twice)
SLAM! (twice)
THAKKAKOOM!
WOM!
PTING
KTING
KROK
PAKK!
SOK!
SPOK
THKOW!
POW
WAK
SKOK!
TWOP!
PHAM!
VRUM

Ben Grimm Hits Stuff pt.2

"Wow! Dr. Doom takes a right cross to the metallic kisser on the first page! Already, I'm wetting my pants in anticipation of the glorious, trash talk laden battle that is surley to follow. The succinct, to the point, dialogue. The boldly decisive heroes. This Chris Claremont fellow has a bright future at Marvel."

These were the thoughts running through my sleep-deprived brain as I turned the first page of Marvel Two-In-One # 9 only to witness one of my biggest comic book let downs of recent memory.

The whole thing was a friggin' puppet show.

Granted, it was an evil puppet show. Performed by the believed dead Puppet Master. But still a puppet show.

Denied an umpteenth, but always entertaining, FF/ Doom smackdown, I bravely continued on. I figured the Herb Trimpe art might, at least, be worth it. Besides, real or not, that punch still counts as far as I'm concerned.

Well, it turns out Ben Grimm just happens to be in the audience. And, like me, he's not too impressed with the show. I was just about ready to shift into skimming mode when I noticed who else was sitting next to our hero. Wundarr! I had totally forgotten about Wundarr. That explains why they're at a show for kids. I still don't know why Namorita and some other, regular chick are along, but I am reading these out of order.

I know this next panel doesn't show anyone getting pummeled by the Thing, but for some reason it made me burst out laughing. Probably for all the wrong reasons. I'm pretty sure Claremont meant for this to be charmingly amusing in the same way as those scenes from A Hard Days Night where the Beatles get swarmed by screaming teenaged girls.

I thought it came across as not only unintentionally creepy, but a little sad. Which, in my mind makes it ten times funnier. The dopey kid seems a little too proud of the fruits of his violence and it looks like the Thing could very well be getting kicked to death by a bunch of smiling kids. And Wundarr. Oh god. The helpless look of confusion on Wundarr's face and the implied trepidation in his voice. It almost makes you want to cry. This may very well be the most emotionally confusing panel I've ever read. I actually felt a little bad for laughing so hard.

For those of you who still can't see how totally wrong this scene is- just remember that Wundarr is a pretty much a child. Imagine the Robin Williams movie Jack, but more cosmic . Try to picture little Franklin Richards standing there and uttering the same dialogue. It's basically the same thing. Although, I have to say, that would actually be even funnier.

Anyway, it's no time at all until random guest star of the month, Thor, gets roped into the Puppet Master's nefarious plot. Unable to fight off the effects of that darn mind-controlling radioactive clay, he of the golden locks busts into FF headquarters to wupp some ass. In nearly no time at all, Thor proceeds to pound Reed, Sue and Johnny into so much blue-jumpsuited paste.

He comes to his senses of course, realizes that the clay puppet controlling him must have the shape of Thor, and reverts to mere mortal Donald Blake- thereby freeing himself from the Puppet Master's control. He runs off after administering some very shoddy looking first aid to the fallen FF and warning Ben about the villain. In a sequence that makes zero sense, Blake turns back into Thor right after leaving and once again is forced to return and kill the FF.

This is where it starts to get awesome. Thor gets the first few hits in. He puts Ben in some kind of Asgardian headlock, throws him several hundred feet down to the sidewalk and then lands on his chest. The Thing takes a dead center hit from Thor's frost giant-slaying uru hammer and just %#&*ing shrugs it off! All it does is piss him off enough to send pretty boy flying head first thru a nearby wall.





Verily, the Odinson doth have needst of corrective spinal surgery!


Thor soon comes to his senses and it's no time at all before the heroes combine their limited brain power to track down the Puppet Master and ruin all his hard work. But not before we get to see Wundarr the musclebound man-child lay down some hurt.


Flying elbow or bitch-slap? You decide. Either way, that scene is one hundred kinds of wrong.

Wyatt Wingfoot just didn't know when to shut up. . .

I can't wait until August when Marvel relaunches The Thing as a MAX title. . .






When it comes to head poppin', Black Adam ain't got nothin' on Ben Grimm.

Ben Grimm Hits Stuff pt.1

Every so often a man wants to see somebody or something get pummeled. I'm talking about a good 'ole walloping by someone who knows what they're doing. I thought long and hard about it, and I realized that when you want to see some expert punching you've got to look to Aunt Petunia's favorite nephew. I don't think there exists a substance in the Marvel universe that hasn't at one point felt the three-fingered fury of the FF's resident rock-man.

Where esle to start but in the hallowed pages of Marvel Two-In-One #33? I know some of you are thinking, "Brandon, why not look for examples from the Fantastic Four? . . . or even The Thing?" I'll probably find them there as well but I'm pretty sure Marvel Two-In-One existed purely as a showcase for The Thing to hit stuff. So why not start there?

In this issue Ben and Alicia have been on vacation for sometime now. After the suckiness of Alicia's recent (and thankfully brief) transformation into some kind of hideous spider-creature, the happy couple decide to give Stonehenge a try.

As it so frequently happens with vacationing super-heroes, they end up getting sucked into a hell-like dimension where they run into the Brothers Four, a group of elementals created by Merlin to capture a truant pupil of his known as Modred. Threatened with violence, our hero reacts with a hearty ". . .it's gonna be clobberin time. . . . . ."

Surely confused by the tense change of our ever lovin' blue-eyed hero's catchphrase, the earth demon cannot focus and becomes the victim of a classic right hook.

I love sound effects. More people should use them nowadays. It don't get much better than WHAMMO! folks. Maybe THRAKK-A-DOOOM!!, but not much else.

The earth creature quickly recovers though, and he doesn't really seem that impressed. I guess when you're an demon spawned earth elemental you run into all sorts of awe inspiring stuff. But c'mon, some puny mortal just knocked you across some giant hell cavern without even breaking a sweat! I mean, even Spider-Woman is rendered speechless having witnessed such a powerful fist-to-face connection, and she's a freakin' super-evolved spider who I'm pretty sure was raised by some kind of talking cow. Not even in Hell does The Thing get any respect.

Suprisingly light on the punches this issue, Ben dishes out one more heap a' hurtin- this time to the water elemental. He trys out what appears to be a left this time only to be denied the sweet sight of his opponent sailing across and out of the panel. A SPLOOSH might seem a bit anti-climactic, but how often do we get to see man-monster fist exploding into anthropomorphic water beings? Besides Hydro that is. . .Yeah , now that I think about it , Marvel prabably has its fair share of water beings.

Does anyone else think that SPLOOSH would also be the proper sound effect for if The Thing hit some regular dude in the head? Probably a little too gruesome for marvel though. If you just squint your eyes and imagine that splash of water to be a deep, crimson red. .

Needless to say, Modred comes along and sorts things out. Ben and Alicia are returned to the surface world, their horrific vacation memories magically erased, while the issue ends with creepy ass Modred putting the moves on Spider-Woman.

Pay attention DC - magically based memory wipes aren't all that bad after all.