As you can see, I've posted this a day past November 1 - All Soul's Day. A fitting time to pay our respects to the Marvel dead. Go with me to a time when Mar-Vell - the original Captain Marvel - was alive, amazing and front and center in the Marvel universe.
In this story with the Thing and Captain Marvel we have an interstellar-based localized suspense story with a Brooklyn mob flavor (just try getting something like that anywhere else). So somebody's going around New York and he/she/it looks like this.
But this isn't Benjamin J. Grimm, as you can see by the dialogue.
Now enough of that for the moment let's go see Captain Marvel. First a display of Cosmic Awareness.
Then a panel showing him in flight.
Wow. I miss this guy. Who else flies leaving a trail of sparklies? Love the sparklies. These days, Marvel stories can get so 'dark' that we could use somebody flying around sparkling things up. When the jokes start flying we can point to the fact that the Captain harnesses the uber-serious Power Cosmic. That's right 'uber-serious'.
So the Thing is having a dinner out with Alicia and he gets a mob-style threat over the restaurant phone.
Ha! This is so good. If I was the Thing you can threaten me all day mainly because of this:
That's right! Buy all the ordnance you can afford fool! I'm bulletproof! I mean, the Thing is bulletproof.
The Captain and Ben finally meet and after a few pages we get to see who this mystery villain is. He's a Skrull
Captain Marvel being a Kree this story suddenly became intergalactic.
Going back to this Skrull, his disguise of preference is mobsters from Earth. More than that, this Skrull figures largely in a previous otherwordly adventure of the Thing featuring the sentient robot Torgo.
Now for a gristly turn to the tale. The Skrull presents the Thing with this.
Torgo's decapitated head. Mobster indeed. As you can guess, the mighty-muscled Thing is NOT appreciative of this 'gift'.
Unfortunately this Skrull was prepared.
This being a Marvel Two-In-One and one of the two being caught - we all know we have a backup - and here he comes!
We had the flying and the cosmic awareness but no cosmic blasts from Mar-Vell the entire issue, we'll have to be contented with good old-fashioned muscle. Speaking of muscle.
Far be it for the Thing to need any assistance escaping in his own mag.
It is up to Torgo's head to deliver the coup-de-grace.
Mr. Skrull isn't dead though, only captured. Torgo will be sent back to his planet Mekka to be repaired (here's to the advantages of being a machine).
Interstellar suspense with a mob subtheme. All of us just got our recommended daily dose of 'crazy'. What more can we ask for?
