The Thing: Liberty Legion

The Thing: Liberty Legion by Roy Thomas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Thing: Liberty Legion collects Invaders 5-6, Marvel Premeire 29-30, Fantastic Four Annual 11, Marvel Two-In-One Annual 1, and Marvel Two-In-One 20.

I've been on a Marvel Two-In-One kick lately. I found this for ten bucks at a lackluster comic convention a little while back.

The title is a little misleading. The Thing is only in three out of the seven comics within. There's really two stories going on here: the formation of the Liberty Legion after the Invaders fall under some mind control and a missing cylinder of Vibranium that winds up falling back in time with the Fantastic Four in hot pursuit.

The Liberty Legion consists of a lot of second stringers from Marvel's Golden Age: The Patriot, Miss America, Blue Diamond, Red Raven, Jack Frost, the Thin Man, and The Whizzer. When the rest of the invaders fall under the Red Skull's influence, Bucky gathers the Legion together to battle them.

The first half of the collection feels like a trial run of what Roy Thomas would later do on The All-Star Squadron, heroes vs. Nazis in World War II. Once the Fantastic Four and the Vibranium get involved, it becomes the tale of stopping the Nazis from winning World War II with advanced technology.

The first half was fun for what it was, seeing Nazis get punched. The second half, in my opinion, was superior with the Fantastic Four, and later the Thing on his own, traveling through time. The Fantastic Four/Thing issues take place in that weird time period where Ben Grimm is human but wearing his Thing armor.

The writing is par for the course for mid-70s Marvel. I got a kick out of Reed mentioning Chico and the Man. I also found it interesting that they're still acknowledging Ben and Reed being in World War II despite the current year being 1975. Wouldn't that put Reed and Benji in their 50s at that point?

The art is probably the most enjoyable part of this. Kirby did a lot of the covers and the Buscema boys did some of the interiors.

The Thing: Liberty Legion was enjoyable enough but nothing to get overly excited about. Three out of five stars.

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