Marvel Two-in-One #50
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeMarvel Two-in-One #50 is one of the most narratively ambitious single issues in the Bronze Age Marvel canon: it sends Ben Grimm back in time aboard Doctor Doom's time platform to administer a cure to his earlier, less-evolved self, only for Reed Richards to explain that Ben's interference created a divergent alternate reality rather than altering his own history — one of the earliest formal articulations of that concept in the Marvel line. The issue introduced Earth-7940, the alternate dimension where a now-human Ben Grimm must live with the unintended consequences of being cured, a world later devastated by Galactus without the Thing to help stop him, and that dimension became a cornerstone of Marvel's multiverse infrastructure. The story also marked a creative watershed moment for John Byrne, representing one of his first complete solo writing-and-penciling credits at Marvel, anticipating the celebrated Fantastic Four run he would soon helm. Its direct sequel, Marvel Two-in-One #100, revisited and retroactively reframed the events here, making issue #50 the anchor of a rare long-form character study stretched across fifty issues of a team-up anthology series.
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The issue was written and penciled by John Byrne — working, per Tom Brevoort's account, out of growing creative frustration with the collaborative writing arrangement on Uncanny X-Men, where scripter Chris Claremont frequently reshaped Byrne's plotted intent — making this one of Byrne's first opportunities to exercise sole authorial control at Marvel. Roger Stern edited the book under editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, and veteran Fantastic Four inker Joe Sinnott finished Byrne's pencil breakdowns, lending the story a visual continuity with the FF's classic house style. The cover was provided separately by George Pérez, also inked by Sinnott — an unusual split between interior and cover artists that collectors have noted as a distinguishing production detail. The issue's time-travel framework drew on ideas about divergent timelines that Mark Gruenwald was actively developing within Marvel's editorial culture at the time, and Reed Richards' in-story explanation to Ben functions almost as a canonical statement of those emerging cosmological rules.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Title: 'Remembrance of Things Past!' — the series' 50th-issue milestone, published with a cover date of April 1979 (on-sale January 2, 1979).
- Written and penciled by John Byrne — one of his first solo writing credits at Marvel — with inks by Joe Sinnott and a cover by George Pérez (also inked by Sinnott).
- Edited by Roger Stern under editor-in-chief Jim Shooter; colored by Françoise Mouly and lettered by Jim Novak.
- The story introduces Earth-7940, an alternate reality where Ben Grimm successfully receives Reed's cure and reverts to human form, but the loss of the Thing from the Fantastic Four sets off a chain of consequences ultimately allowing Galactus to consume the Earth unopposed.
- Reed Richards' explanation to Ben that time travel creates a divergent parallel reality rather than altering one's own history serves as one of Marvel's earliest in-continuity codifications of the branching-timeline model, a concept then being shaped editorially by Mark Gruenwald.
- The alternate-dimension Ben Grimm of Earth-7940 — cured and living as a human — is first seen here; his story is later continued and substantially expanded in Marvel Two-in-One #100 (February 1983), where Byrne retroactively reframed the dimension as a pre-existing alternate reality rather than a divergent timeline created by Ben's trip.
- The issue also marks the first in-story acknowledgment that the Thing's physical form continued to mutate over time — from a more reptilian hide in Fantastic Four #1 to the familiar rocky orange exterior — which is why Reed's cure could only have worked on the earlier version of Ben.
- The story has been reprinted multiple times, including in The Adventures of the Thing #1 (1992), Essential Marvel Two-in-One Vol. 2 (2007), Fantastic Four Visionaries: John Byrne #0 (2009), the Fantastic Four by John Byrne Omnibus (2011), and Marvel Masterworks: Marvel Two-in-One Vol. 5 (2020).
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