FW Team-Up: The Thing and the Guardians of the Galaxy

Siskoid and Ryan Daly’s coverage of Marvel Two-in-One brings them to issue #5 (September 1974) as Ben Grimm, Captain American and Sharon Carter find themselves a thousand years in the future, fighting the Badoon with the original Guardians of the Galaxy!

Listen to the Team-Up below, or subscribe to FW Team-Up on iTunes!

Relevant images and further credits at: FW Team-Up Supplemental

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9 responses to “FW Team-Up: The Thing and the Guardians of the Galaxy

  1. I first encountered the Guardians of the Galaxy in the Avengers during the Korvac Saga and really liked the characters. So, I thoroughly enjoyed this episode! Poor Ryan sounded terrible, I hope he feels better soon!!!

    I’ve read very few Blackhawk comic books. But, my understanding is that each pilot is from a different a country and that each of these countries had been taken over during World War II. Each member of the Guardian of the Galaxy is from a different planet that had been taken over or destroyed by the Badoon. I really wonder if when Arnold Drake & Gene Colan created the Guardians they were intentionally making a science fiction twist on the Blackhawks.

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  2. Alright here’s my team up for the guardians.
    All need to say Is on phrase it’s morphin time !!
    Plot : when the guardians ship gets hit by strange force . They are teleported to the command center or what’s left of it . After finding several historic documents written by young man named billy they find out about their power rangers and their last stand . Using the morphing grid they able to travel back in time teaming with the rangers to stop an unknown foe . After the adventure zordan creates a new suit a Vance becomes the alternate time line white tiger ranger .

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  3. Until today, the extent of my knowledge of the Guardians of the Galaxy (excluding the movies) was limited to the Amalgam Universe’s mashup with the Legion of Super Heroes. I would never have guessed any of these four members were meant to be main characters. The point mentioned where there needs to be at least one present day human character whose face we can see for the readers to identify with is a great observation.

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  4. First off…”1974: Earth’s Distant Past.” I was born in 1974! Go screw yourself Rodgers!!!

    I enjoyed hearing the GotG publication history because I think I assumed that this version of the team had a decent run for Marvel in the late 60s and was surprised how limited their appearances seems to be.

    The book itself is fun in that way 70s comics are. Like you both noted, all action and exposition. Some vague platitudes about freedom and liberty and some wild Buscema art. There are so many characters crammed into these panels and it awesome to look at.

    Love the one panel wrap up at the end where one swcond it’sa fight and the next theyre on the way home. This one ended so abruptly I thought maybe I was missing a page somewhere.

    I also enjoyed the music tie-in and I’m looking forward to checking out the Fire & Water records pod in the future.

  5. Great episode as usual. I never got into GotG as a kid and while I have enjoyed the movies as a kid, I don’t really feel much of a connection to any of the characters (new or old). But I happened to re-read the early MTIO issues a couple years ago, and really got a kick out of all the Gerber issues – just wacky fights followed by tons of exposition as you pointed out.

  6. Great show, as usual. However, I am disappointed that you fell so easily into the “DC vs. Marvel” comparison. First, because it’s almost always an inaccurate comparison (in that there was no “DC style” across the company’s titles, and Marvel’s were all edited by Stan for a very long time), and secondly because the point you agreed on, the optimistic future at DC, was also inaccurate. This comic was contemporaneous with OMAC being released. Kamandi, Last Boy on Earth had been on the stands for almost two years. During which time the Legion of Super-Heroes was barely surviving. Hercules, another DC title about a dystopian future, would soon be on the stands as well. What you were attributing to Marvel as a whole should more accurately be attributed to Steve Gerber. His writing in the mid-70s was quite misanthropic. His pessimism about the future, and present, of mankind seemed to be an extrapolation of the worst parts of contemporary American culture and seeing no hope. He didn’t seem to acknowledge what any other nations or cultures on Earth. He was misanthropic and myopic.
    Gerber was a true original writer in comics, and I believe that he was probably single-handedly responsible for the Guardians appearance in this title. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he may have had a hand in their re-design as well. Ryan was quite accurate that in their initial appearance they were each mono-chromatic.
    When you mentioned that Vance Astro stated his birth date as 1962, it made perfect sense that he would be our “guide character.” Many readers picking this book up in 1974 would have also been born in 1962!
    The Guardians appeared in one of the first comics I read. An issue of The Defenders, written by Gerber. It was nigh-incomprehensible to this 11 year old. However, the appearance of Yondu, and to a lesser extent Martinex, was captivating!
    One more thing(!), the discussion of titles. Yes, there were a lot of non-descriptive titles then. For a long time in the 60s, Marvel was strictly limited as to how many titles they were allowed to publish. I expect that as the editors got permission to publish more, they needed to get copyrights and mailing regulations sorted very quickly. If that was the case then a lot of catch-all titles could be secured and the contents created later. I believe that this book was not intended as a Thing team-up book initially, it just happened. Spotlight, Double Feature, Two-In-One, Team Up, Triple Action, Super Action, etc. One character, two characters, two stories, three stories; whatever you got, we’ve got the title all ready to go!
    It’s Clobbering Time only indicates that it’s a Thing book, if a reader is already familiar with The Thing.
    A friendly farewell from me!

    1. The Great Disaster was contemporaneous with, say, Marvel 2099. But 1000 years in the future? That’s a Legion riff, and so, contrasting with a utopia.

      But Gerber’s misanthropy aside, are there any sustained Marvel futures that are utopian? 2099 is dark Cyberpunk. Days of Future Past. Universe X. Maestro… Like Star Trek, we hit the bottom before coming up again, but not in the Marvel timeline.

  7. you gotta feel bad for the guardians their world was taken over by aliens the silver sufer thumped in one issuse.
    They fight for five years.
    The thing and cap show up the war’s over!

  8. Fun show, gents. I had no idea this was their second appearance! Looks like Sal Buscema came up with their “classic” looks. I enjoyed the Jim Valentino series at the time, and bought the first year or so of the series, but I barely recall anything about it!

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