Eternals I'll grant; but, his Captain America was pretty good, for a very long time.  The whole John Walker thing, Crossbones, bunch of great material and his Avengers stuff was decent.  Squadron Supreme I have covered elsewhere; but, I thought he had a lot of good elements, but not with the same kind of depth that Alan Moore brought to the same idea or others.  I also thought the art was a let down.

His run on Quasar was fun and he wrote the whole run of DP7, which is generally considered to be the top end of the whole New Universe; plus, he co-wrote The Pitt and The Draft, when they decided to shutter the thing.

Gru and Macchio, on Marvel two-in-One, is probably the best material of the series.

Marvel Two-in-One #42



Ben & Captain America!

Guess now we have to change the title from "Chaos is the Cosmic Cube," to "Trouble is the Tesseract."

You know, if you are going to call it a tesseract, you should be able to see the cube suspended inside the cube, in most shots, not just once in a while!

Just sayin'.....

"What is the sinister secret of Project Pegasus?"

Whoooooooooo boy!

Creative Team: Ralph Macchio-writer and karateka, Sal Buscema-pencils & katas, Alcala & Sam Grainger-inks & sparring, Joe Rosen-calligraphy, Nel Yomtov-colors and koans, Jim Shooter-John Kreese (What; you didn't expect him to be Miyagi, did you?)

Synopsis: One day, in upstate New York, Ben Grimm pays a friendly visit to a research facility, known as Project Pegasus. He is welcomed with open arms....



Kind of hard to tackle a rock monster with closed arms!

The security flunkies are unable to stop Ben (They never are able to stop anyone from entering these places, are they?); so, Captain America, who just happens to be there, jumps into the fray. Ben ain't playin' and Cap's shield saves him from having his ribs jammed up into his brain. He turns matador to goad Ben into overreaching, while Ben starts growling about where Wundar is.

Wundarr?

Oh, yeah, forgot about him! So did every writer since Steve Gerber started this thing! (the comic, not Ben...Jack Kirby & Stan Lee started that Thing!)

Cap recognizes what's crawled up Ben's backside and uses science (Science!) to whammy him with some kind of capture ray. He then scolds Ben for 20 minutes, then lets him out when he says "Sorry" and promises to play nice with the other superheroes. He shows Ben around, while ben pretends to play dumb rock monster, until Cap calls him out on having a better background in science (Science!) than Cap does.



We are told that Pegasus was set up by the (then) new Dept of Energy, as a research facility to study alternative sources of energy. That's a hell of a lot of funding, for a new department, during a recession. NASA only got to put up Skylab because the money had already been allocated when they cut the Apollo Program short.

As the look around, Ben recognizes Thomas Lightner, aka Blacksun, from issue #21. He remarks that Dr Don Blake cured his cellular decay and Cap says Lightner is a valuable lead researcher at the project. Ben still smells a rat (Cap is a bit of Pollyanna) and gives Lightner the stink eye and makes a note to watch him. He is then taken to where Wundarr will be and is horrified...



Wundarr us being used to test the energy of the Cosmic Cube, which fell into SHIELD hands, after the defeat of Thanos (ummm.....Captain Marvel karate chopped it in pieces...

)

Wundarr is brought in, all strapped up, but he bursts his bonds and runs away. Ben drops down from the theater balcony and reminds Wundarr of Uncle Benjy and the two embrace.



SNIFF....'scuse me a minute..........AHEM........HONK!......had to blow my nose and wipe something out of my eye.......

Ben calms Wundarr down and tells him he will be right there and that Wundarr will be okay and he'll get a lollipop afterward.

Liar! My parents said the same kind of thing to me, right before the nurse returned and tried to turn my butt into a pincushion! Don't believe it Wundy; run!!

Wundarr doesn't run and lets the bad men strap him into the machine and turn it on. Ben is feeling guilty and asks Cap for reassurances that he did the right thing. Cap, being a twit, says these men have Wundarr's safety at the top of their minds, and then some guy yanks a switch that causes a power surge into Wundarr. Ben flips him the bird as he runs to rescue Wundarr. Cap suspects sabotage and spots the culprit. he attacks and gets swatted away like he was Haley Mills physically, not just mentally (in character, not the real woman...she's pretty smart!)

Ben rips Wundarr free of the machine and the saboteur nabs the Cube and disappears, while ranting about reshaping the world.

While this goes on, some cultists are chanting, in the Everglades (probably Disney employees), in front of a vibrating skeleton. Into their midst appears a bright light, which coalesces into Victorius, leader of the Entropists, from Astonishing Tales and Giant Size Man Thing (BWA-HA-HA-HA....) #1. He was the dude who took the cube!

Wundarr is wheeled out on a stretcher and Ben is stewing with guilt and rage. Cap says the suit Reed made for Wundy helped, but he is in bad shape. Ben is looking for someone to punch and decides to find Victorius. cap provides him with a plane and a Stark Energy Signature Tracker (trademark Stark International). Ben heads for it, but Cap says the ground crew is still running through the checklist. Ben ain't got time for no checklist and calls out chocks away. Cap gives up and climbs in and tells a mouthy ground crewman to stow it and Ben fires up the VTOL and takes off. they zip down to Florida and land in the Everglades. They use a portable tracker (about the size of a boom box) to guide them, until Victorius zaps it with the Cube and reveals himself and the Entropic Man.



Thoughts: Geez, never thought I'd see Cap siding with guys wanting to run tests on a man-child! Lot of parallels to his origin, too, as a scientific test is sabotaged by an outside agent. Poor Ben has to watch as they stick it to Wundarr, after calming him down. Considering he came there to pull him out of there, Ben must be feeling lower than an ant reaching up to scratch a snake's belly! Cap ends up being a tool, as he was the one who was sure that Pegasus had Wundarr's best interests at heart. Cap is an old soldier, he should know better than anyone what it is like to be expendable in the eyes of higher authority.

This is the debut of Project Pegasus, which will return, in a classic epic that earned it's own trade collection, long before most storylines got collected (1988). This is also part of why I am a bit disappointed in the visuals, as Ron Wilson would have livened up Pegasus a bit. Sal does the usual grand machinery; but Ron had already demonstrated, with the Nick Fury team-up and subsequent HYDRA in London business that he's got a flair for this sort of thing. The later Pegasus stands out even more, with John Byrne and George Perez handling things, in their techno-epic ways. This Pegasus complex seems a little on the generic side. My suspicion is that they hadn't come up with the idea of making it into the Wildfire complex, from The Andromeda Strain.

Ralph is revisiting a lot of Gerber here, between Wundarr and the Entropists. Nice to see someone had an appreciation for what had come before (Ralph was a letterhack, before getting a writer gig). I haven't read GSMT (snicker) #1, so I have no idea if the skeleton in the Everglades is left over from that. It had me confused as to whether that was Victorius materializing, or if he was reduced to that, after touching the Cube, or if that was just the remains of someone waiting to ride Space Mountain (not in the Ric Flair sense, though).

The US Department of Energy was created in 1977, under the carter Administration, to consolidate and redirect Federal energy-related agencies towards the problem of dwindling fossil fuels and dependence on foreign oil, as highlighted by the OPEC Oil Embargo and subsequent Energy Crises. Under the Carter Administration, focus was given on renewable alternative energy sources and much funding was filtered into projects related to solar, wind, tidal and geothermal energy research, as well as continuing nuclear energy programs. However, the Three Mile Island disaster highlighted the dangers of nuclear power. The Carter Administration was able to use the new legal authority of the department to intervene in the Three Mile Island crisis (though the existing Nuclear Regulatory Commission oversaw the Nuclear Industry). Much talk was given to alternative energy during the Carter years. However, with Carter's defeat in the 1980 Presidential Election, much of that focus went away, under the Reagan Administration. With the influence of Vice President George HW Bush and other cabinet members with ties to Big Oil, the government focus switched to oil exploration and much Federal funding dried up for alternative energy programs. Skyrocketing gas prices, in the wake of 9/11 and the War on terror revived much of the focus.

The conceit here, and in subsequent Marvel comics, is that Pegasus is the Marvel energy research agency and it provides a handy super-villain prison, to contain energy-based bad guys, on the pretext of studying their abilities for potential breakthroughs. In other words, they are captive guinea pigs, which makes the superheroes the SS, rounding these guys up for concentration camps, if you think about it too hard. This isn't that fictional, given that medical experiments have been conducted on prisoners, both voluntary and involuntary, as well as members of the military. Like I say, the Holocaust connection isn't too far in the extreme, depending on how you write the story. Macchio has laid the seeds of the chaos that will consume Pegasus, about a year down the line. Pretty early foreshadowing, though I think that is more down to Macchio not being the permanent writer on the book. There will be a bit of musical chairs with the creative team, for a bit, until Macchio returns, working with Mark Gruenwald (after Macchio finishes this story, next issue).

Dammit!

Yeah; been going through the 4Winds graphic novels and mixed them up.

Well, for me, it made at least a modicum of sense. I mean, wasn't Spidey in the 70s just little more than a regular guy with sticky hands and web shooters? I mean, he got his ass regularly beat by common criminals and similar. 

Not that I need any more reasons to dislike Gruenwald's work, but I see he has nearly every single female character complaining about their ranking.

Also, no women in the top class - but that was probably Marvel's fault, not Gruenwald's. I assume this has been rememdied by now and there are a few female MU characters who would be ranked with Thor, Hulk, etc, whether they're new creations or long-standing ones that have been upgraded?

I mean, in the 1963 he was able to hold his own against the Fantastic Four.


And then 10 years later he is continually humiliated by this dude, a normal powerless person whose pointy shoes shouldn't even allow him to walk.