Marvel Novel Series 09 - The Marvel Superheroes

by Len Wein

  “Tiberius’ boastful ways were ever his undoing, but the strangling net of Braccus will draw the second demon to me.”

  With a single smooth motion, the crimson giant flung a great silver net over the Man-Thing’s lumbering form. The murk-dweller reacted to this latest threat as he did to all the others. He shambled on heedlessly, as if nothing had happened.

  Braccus drew the net tight, then watched in astonishment as it slipped harmlessly through the murk-dweller’s seemingly substanceless form.

  “By the gods, it cannot be,” muttered Braccus. “My metal net has pulled right through the accursed creature.”

  “Then forget the net, you dolt,” shouted the Collector. “You have a sword, man—use it!”

  Braccus’ gleaming silver sword flashed twice in the mutely lit chamber. Both times it slashed cleanly through the Man-Thing’s horrible flesh, drawing nothing but muck and mire. And the swamp monster kept coming.

  Frightened now, the alien gladiator backed away from the misshapen mockery of life that shambled toward him. The revulsion that welled up within him swiftly gave way to sheer abject terror.

  The shambling swamp beast felt the gladiator’s emotions, sensed the hatred, the pure terror. Awkwardly, the Man-Thing reached out a slime-encrusted claw to stifle the unpleasant emotions, his foul-smelling fingers closing about Braccus’ face. And, regrettably, though quite understandably, the gladiator panicked.

  Instantly, Braccus’ face began to smoke, the fetid stench of smoldering flesh filling the air. The gladiator screamed, but it did him little good.

  Whatever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing’s touch.

  The control chamber resounded with a monotonous pounding like the din of thunder gone mad.

  Again and again, faster and faster, harder and harder, the incredible Hulk drove his massive fists into the wall of lights that held him captive. And with each awesomely powerful punch, with each frustrating failure to break free, the man-brute grew madder.

  And, as legend has it, the madder the Hulk gets, the stronger he gets.

  Relentlessly, tirelessly, the man-brute continued his assault, hammering against the intangible barrier that restrained him. And then, when it seemed that even his awesome power had reached its limits, his strength somehow seemed to renew itself. As impossible as it might seem, he grew stronger, more powerful, until not even the Collector’s sizzling energy field could contain the Hulk’s growing power.

  A final crushing blow, and the twinkling lights abruptly vanished—but the Hulk’s rage was not yet spent.

  Still wild with frenzy, the man-brute turned on the banks of complex machinery that filled the control chamber, his monstrous fists reducing them to so much scrap.

  “Prune face tried to keep Hulk prisoner with his machines, but puny machines cannot stop Hulk!” roared the green Goliath. “Nothing can stop Hulk! Nothing!”

  Still furious, the Hulk finally turned from the vast expanse of wreckage that now surrounded him, lumbering toward the open door of the control room. “Prune face did this,” he muttered. “So Hulk, will go find prune face. And then Hulk will squash him like rotten fruit!”

  Unbeknownst to the Hulk himself, his devastating temper tantrum had done far more than merely decimate the Collector’s control room and his invaluable computer circuitry. For, without the machinery which sustained them, the museum ship’s twinkling force-field barriers suddenly ceased to exist. And, without the force fields to restrain them, the Collector’s living “exhibits” were free for the first time in centuries.

  Suddenly, countless human and inhuman figures alike were scurrying about. Alien creatures who had been imprisoned since before the dawn of recorded time watched in tremulous horror as their fellow prisoners made a mad dash for freedom. Were the others crazy, these few wondered. What possible good could come of all this newfound freedom? Life was meant to be regimented, they had learned from the Collector. Life was meant to be restrained. And yet . . . And yet . . .

  Even as the euphoria of sudden freedom overwhelmed the escaped captives, a new sound could be heard; the monotonous tread of approaching soldiers. These were the Collector’s personal defenders, and they charged toward the startled ex-exhibits like a living wedge.

  “Protect yourselves, my brothers in captivity,” shouted a reptilian warrior of the race of Badoon, as he hefted the laser pistol that had proven so ineffectual against his force-field prison. “If we are to die, then let us go down fighting!”

  “Fighting will only delay the inevitable, Badoon, for you fight a battle you cannot hope to win. Surrender now, and spare yourself great pain.”

  The Badoon whirled, already dreading what he knew he would see. For the daring alien recognized that chilling voice, and he knew that in that moment, his cause was lost.

  “Yours was a noble effort, Badoon,” the Collector said grimly, “but one doomed to fail.” And, with that, an eerie light seemed to flash from the ancient conqueror’s glove, paralyzing the Badoon warrior where he stood, before he could hope to trigger his useless laser pistol.

  Then, the Collector gestured to the armored figures at his side. “Strike, my faithful defenders,” he shouted. “Drive the rabble back where they belong!”

  “Never, Collector,” snarled one of the shape-shifting Skrull race, as he tossed the fallen Badoon’s laser weapon to the shaggy Cro-Magnon man standing at his side. “We’d sooner die than be your prisoners again!”

  “Then so be it, fools—so be it!” the Collector replied savagely, his anger overriding his good sense.

  Two brawny bodies suddenly flew past the startled eyes of the Collector. The first he recognized as the faithful captain of his loyal defenders. The identity of the second didn’t really matter. For the Collector’s gaze was riveted upon the lumbering emerald figure who had so casually tossed the two warriors aside. And in that moment, he knew a fear he had never known before.

  “Hulk is coming to crush you, prune face—just like Hulk promised,” the man-brute snarled as he stalked forward, clearing a path through the battling bodies with a single swipe of his ponderous paw.

  “I should have realized that mindless monster was somehow responsible for this,” the Collector thought, as he beat a rather hasty retreat. “I mustn’t allow him to get those grotesque hands on me.”

  “You cannot run away from Hulk, prune face,” the jade behemoth roared. He crouched low, tensing his powerful leg muscles for a leap which would carry him across the chamber to the fleeing Collector’s side.

  “My friend—wait!”

  The man-brute paused at the sound. The voice was soft-spoken, quite out of place in this raging battlefield. And somehow oddly familiar.

  The green Goliath turned, to find himself facing a dark-haired angel—the girl from the Arabian Nights exhibit.

  “Please, my friend, don’t run away from us. We need you.”

  The Hulk studied the woman carefully. She was young, beautiful, and seemed not at all afraid.

  “What does girl want with Hulk?” the man-brute asked suspiciously.

  Tenderly, the young woman approached the brute, as if somehow sensing his uncertainty. “I can see now why the Collector captured you,” she said, her soft voice slowly calming the raging spirit which dwelt within the Hulk. “You are two beings in one. But still I recognize your clothing . . . and the valor in your soul. You swore you’d release us, and you have. But now you must lead us to freedom.”

  For a moment, the Hulk stood silent, uncertain of what next to do.

  “Please, my hero,” the young woman beseeched him, “you’re the only hope we have.”

  Hesitant, the Hulk glanced after the fleeing figure of the Collector, dwindling away down a distant corridor. “But prune face is getting away,” the man-brute muttered, “and Hulk swore Hulk would smash him before . . .” His deep voice suddenly faded, as his dim mind flickered.

  “Hero?” the brute said softly. “You think Hulk is hero?”

  “Yes, my friend,” she ass
ured him, “you’re our sole hope of survival. The others will all follow you, but you must be willing to lead.”

  “Then Hulk will forget prune face,” the green Goliath snarled, “and do as girl says.”

  Taking the man-brute’s massive hand in her own, the girl steered him toward one of the yawning corridors. “Swiftly, my friend, the exit hatch lies this way.”

  The Hulk’s brooding eyes sought out the others, the shambling forms of the muck-encrusted Man-Thing and the equally gruesome golem. He studied the aliens and the others, then gestured with one mighty knotted arm.

  “Come,” the man-monster shouted, “and Hulk will take you away from this strange place.”

  “Then lead on, man,” an ex-gladiator responded. “To be rid of this accursed prison, we would follow you anywhere!”

  “Aye, even into hell itself,” finished one of the judges of witch-haunted Salem.

  Anxiously, all of the Collector’s ex-exhibits turned to accompany the emerald man-brute out of the museum of the mad. All, that is, save one.

  Slowly, deliberately, the grotesque golem shuffled away from the excited throng, to be lost in the yawning bowels of the great ship—his destination and his purpose unknown to anyone save he.

  Back in his control room, the Collector struggled desperately to repair his shattered equipment. “It’s still not too late,” he kept repeating. “If I can just manage to jury-rig some of this ruined circuitry, I can still recapture my rebellious collection. All I have to do is—eh?”

  The startled Collector turned toward a sudden soft slushing sound behind him. “It’s the golem,” he said in astonishment. “Why did he not flee with the others? What is he doing here?”

  Deep within the befuddled brain that still dwelt beneath the clay creature’s gruesome exterior, a faint spark smoldered—a spark that swiftly fanned itself into a raging flame at the sight of the one who was responsible for his hideous fate.

  Sensing this, the Collector was suddenly afraid.

  “Stay back, Golem. Stay back, I say! What do you want from me?”

  For an instant, the clay creature paused, pondering the Collector’s question, recalling how it might yet be almost human but for the ageless mystery man’s whim. And then, at last, his primitive mind found an answer.

  What the golem wanted was simple; he wanted the Collector’s life.

  A deadly shadow fell across the terrified Collector’s face, and he screamed one plaintive soulful scream. It was a sound that faded to nothingness long before it could filter through the museum ship’s endless corridors.

  For several interminable seconds, silence reigned within the star-spanning craft and without. Then everything abruptly returned to normal.

  Propelled by a single blow from the Hulk’s huge emerald fist, the vessel’s exit portal erupted savagely out into the swamp. Moments later a satisfied Hulk exited with a myriad of creatures who had been little more than exhibits for far too long a time.

  “How good it is to take that first fresh breath of freedom,” sighed one who had once been Julius Caesar’s foremost gladiator.

  “Thank you for all you have done for us, my friend,” said the beautiful young girl, as she took the man-brute’s hand once more.

  “Girl is happy?” the Hulk asked timidly.

  “Happier than I’ve ever been.”

  “Then Hulk is happy too.”

  “Come on, folks,” cried Jamie Dawson, corporal in the Army of the Confederacy. “There’s a whole new world a-waitin’ fer us out there.”

  But the bright rejoicing of those newly freed was all too terribly short-lived, as that “new world” suddenly began to claim its due.

  “Wh-what’s wrong with me?” a Napoleonic captain asked, looking down at the lines and wrinkles spreading rapidly across his hands. “I feel so odd . . . so weak . . .”

  Before the man-brute’s startled eyes, his time-tossed companions began to wither and fall, the heavy hand of the centuries pressing down on them like an all-oppressive weight. Not one of them was spared.

  Even as the Hulk looked on in helpless horror, the beautiful young girl who had so recently befriended him collapsed at his feet.

  “Girl? What is wrong, girl? How can Hulk help you?”

  “It’s far too late for that now,” she replied, her creamy skin now the color of parchment. “We should have known . . . Beyond the protective confines of the Collector’s ship, all the untold years we spent as his captives are catching up to us at last.”

  “No,” the man-brute shouted to the now-frail figure before him, “Hulk will not let—”

  “Hush, my friend,” the old woman said through cracked and drying lips, as she put a gnarled finger to the jade behemoth’s mouth, silencing him. “It’s all right. We said we’d rather die than remain the Collector’s prisoners—and we meant it.

  “Farewell, my friend, and thank you for everything. Perhaps now we can finally find peace.” With that, she sighed softly, and crumbled into dust, joining her companions in that last great sleep of peace.

  At the edge of the clearing, the Man-Thing watched the tragic tableau in silence as always, his empathic nature echoing the Hulk’s confusion, frustration, and sheer helplessness. Finally, as if sensing there was nothing more he could do, the murk-dweller shambled off, to be swallowed by the shadows of the swamp, leaving behind him a most forlorn Hulk and a great gleaming starcraft that was already being overgrown with moss.

  In a matter of weeks, no one would be able to tell that either of them had ever been there.

  And, worse, no one would care.