I picked up "
The Thing: Project Pegasus" yesterday for the great Sal Buscema/John Byrne/George Perez artwork. Very surprised to find that it was a pretty cool story as well - in the hokum 1970s manner, that is.
Gru and Macchio were just starting out in their writing careers and this was a crap book that nobody cared about anyway - I remember old issues that you can find just lying around on the bench in the local barber shop. So the Gru-Macchio writing duo put their collective heads together and came up with an "epic" (by "epic", it meant any story that dragged on for more than an issue in the non-decompressed 1970s).
The two will forever be remembered for introducing an all-important BUILDING to the Marvel-U (i.e. the Project Pegasus HQ) and ... uh... professional female wrestling to the Marvel-U as well (i.e. Thundra and the Grapplers!!!).
I finished the book and found myself shouting - "Make Mine Marvel"!!!
Postscript: In the late 1970s, New Age spirituality was the flavour of the day. Time was, we didn't get New Agey books like the crappy "Eat, Pray, Love" (and the movie adaptation starring Julia Roberts). Time was, we got characters like wannabe New Age Messiah Aquarian aka Wundarr. Wundarr was this wimpy starry messiah that was an amalgam of Robert Heinlein's "Stranger In A Strange Land" and Superman. Mark Gruenwald and Ralph Macchio reworked him into this story as a wimpy kid that Ben Grimm cared for. In the end, he saved the day and declared that he wanted to spread spirituality and kinda spearhead the whole Age of Aquarius nonsense that 70s folks were all hot about. Like I said, 70s Marvel was really weird hokum. You never know what you're going to get - it all depends on what the writers were smoking at the time they came up with these ideas... Hahahahaha! :)
Check out Wundarr the Aquarian's own Wikipedia entry
here.
