It's Round 7, 3-3 is the score. It's all tied up. Again. And now...In the orange corner... The Thing and The Guardians of the Galaxy (with the kind participation of Captain America), written by Steve Gerber and drawn by Sal Buscema and Mike Esposito, Marvel Two-in-One #5, Seven Against the Empire!
And in the black corner... it's Batman and Green Arrow, written by Bob Haney and drawn by George Pap, Brave and the Bold #71, Wrath of the Thunderbird!
So here we go again... DING DING DING!
The Stars
So continuing on directly from Two-in-One #4, Ben and Cap are stuck in the year 3014, captured by evil aliens. But not for long. After some useful alien exposition, our boy orange escapes, breaks a few more bones and throws a frickin' car at the bad guys.
After a couple of issues' worth of babysitting Wundarr, throwing vehicles around is a welcome change fer sure. Extra points for consistently calling the aliens Baboons, and when master tactician Captain America starts talking about plans, his answer is "Plan schman... It's clobberin' time!" You damn right, Ben. That is exactly how I "plan" to start my next civil war/rebellion. +9 pointsBatman spends a good part of the issue teaching an American Indian friend to throw spears, ride horses, wrestle, etc. in order to beat a crooked rival in games held to determine the chief of a tribe. When it comes to archery though, he calls in the expert: Green Arrow! But Bats stays active throughout the story, though clearly, it's GA's time to shine. Let's just say you can't score too many bat-points by spending a whole chapter in the clutches of a mutated giant vulture. I do like how the police defers to Batman in all things though:
"Are you gonna let him get away with it?" +4 bat-pointsThe Guests
The credited guest-stars are the Guardians of the Galaxy, at this point a quartet of futuristic superheroes fighting the good fight against the Badoon insurgency. They don't do too badly either, though I gotta say their spaceship, the "Captain America", looks like it should have the letters NCC somewhere on it.
Vance Astro is a telekinetic mutant from our time. Martinex is a crystal man who can make things hot or cold. Yondu is a fairly violent archer (certainly kills more people than Green Arrow in these stories). And Charlie-27 is big, buff guy from Jupiter Colony. He certainly knows how to swing a guy by the head!
But let's not forget Captain America, who's still in this story, inspiring everyone to do their best, plan or no plan. He manages to mobilize an entire army in less than seven hours! +9 pointsThe Green Arrow in these pages isn't the bleeding heart, lefty bearded Neal Adams/Mike Grell one. It's the fun-loving Jack Kirby model. And he's great! Not only does he teach a man to use a bow and arrow blindfolded in no time at all, but he's brought a lot of neat trick arrows with him. An eavesdropper arrow, bola arrow, smoke arrow, electric arrow, and my personal favorite, parachute arrow!
And of course, the moment I always look for in any Green Arrow story is the one where the archer becomes separated from his bow and must improvise. And it's always great when that moment comes. Remember the time he used Elongated Man?
Well, now that you do, let's look at that moment in the B&B story: Giant vulture eats his bow, the jeep he's on crashes (Haney has a thing about crashing cars, doesn't he?) and he must use... the jeep antenna!
Well... yeah! +9 bat-pointsThe Villains
As with last issue, the Two-in-One villains are the Badoon, reptilian aliens that control an army of drones. Cookie cutter, yes, but when they start calling humans "pinkskins", they suddenly start sounding like Geoffrey Combs (better known as the Re-Animator, or Weyoun, or most relevantly here, the Andorian Shran).
Combine that with those antennae on the drones, and you have a recipe for extra points. Nice bell jar technology on their memory probe equipment. And then they get there asses handed to them by a makeshift army of slaves. +5 pointsThere's a crooked city Indian by the name of Tom Tallwolf who's not on the up and up, but as he makes good at the end, I guess the real villain is "The Promoter", a kind of clichéed Texas businessman who fixes the games, makes Tallwolf chief then uses him to summon a giant vulture with some mystic ritual. I can't really fathom his motivation. The bird's not a bad threat though: It rips the tail right off a helicopter and takes a batarang in the eye without flinching. +4 bat-points
Odds vs. Ends
From Marvel Two-in-One:
The story suffers from some outrageously heavy exposition. After all, we need a recap of the last issue, the future world's situation, the origin and powers of each and every Guardian of the Galaxy, and Astro Vance's side of things. -2 points
There's a full page battle scene at the end that takes no prisoners.
Yow, that Yondu sure doesn't condescend to using "trick" arrows, does he? +1 pointFrom Brave and the Bold:
While it's a fun little adventure that rolls along pretty well, it's unfortunate that it takes such a racist attitude towards Natives. They call the White Man "Paleface", say "heap" a lot, and Batman's friend thinks it's good that his tribe will leave the reservation to see the big city. Assimilation, that's what the Melting Pot is all about! Of course, I grew up about three feet away from a reservation, and I'm really not sure any of my Native friends would be offended by this, no more than by your average western, which is probably where Haney got all of his research on the subject. -2 bat-points
But like I said, the story moves at a nice clip, with good turns, such as the televised chief competition, Tallwolf seeing the error of his ways and handing over his title to John Whitebird, and excellent use of the guest-star. +3 bat-points
Points off for some repetitive wording. Haney uses "famed" a lot, such as when the famed Batman uses the famed batarang. And he likes to remind us that the comic only cost us 12¢. -1 bat-point
"Great Hera!" "Great Scott!" "Great Gotham!" (That last one is Batman's on Super-Friends, but I don't know if he ever used it in a comic.) Green Arrow's is "Great Shafts!" Ooookay... +1 bat-point
Farewells and Scoring
The Thing gets points for Unfriendly Farewells, remember, but there's just no way people are gonna be anything but friendly with Captain America in the equation.
See? That Mantis lookalike even makes sure to say "...to ALL of you" so he feels included. +0 pointsBatman and G.A., for their part, commend Tom Tallwolf on his masculinity, while the newly minted Chief Whitebird parades his feathers in the background. It's a big "friendship" message about never having to stand alone.
I am Batman. I am not a loner. +2 bat-pointsSo where does that get us? Looks like Green Arrow gave it the old Sherwood try, but he just can't beat a quintet of true patriots. It's 22 to 20 for the Marvel team. Ouch! And Ben takes the lead again, 4-3!
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