Issue(s): Marvel Fanfare #7
Cover Date: Feb 83
Title: "With friends like these... / Bless the beasts and children..."
Credits:
Steven Grant / Bill Mantlo - Writer
Joe Barney / George Freeman - Penciler
George Freeman - Inker
Al Milgrom - Editor

Review/plot:
Unus the Untouchable's powers have gotten out of control. He pushes everything away. Only his friend the Blob can force himself through the field in order to bring him food to eat.

Their goal is to make it to New York so "one of them super-types" can cure Unus. The Blob holds a grudge against the X-Men, but Unus doesn't, despite the fact that the Beast's manipulations of Unus' powers from Unus' first appearance in Uncanny X-Men #8 caused the exact same effect, which i find very suspicious. Anyway, they're traveling across the country as part of a circus, with Unus hidden inside a large circus tent.

The Hulk stumbles into the circus and winds up in a fight with the two mutants.

The Hulk manages to smash Unus' forcefield...

...but at the very end of the issue it's hinted that the 'cure' is just temporary. Meanwhile, the Hulk has put the Blob into a coma, so now Unus has to take care of him, reversing their previous roles.

It's nice to see the Blob/Unus friendship being developed, but this isn't exactly a great story and it's not clear why it deserved Marvel Fanfare treatment. The story's awkwardly written, including a scene where the Hulk is tempted onto circus grounds when he sees a hot dog vendor, even though it's the middle of the night and it's said a few panels later that no one's permitted on circus grounds. So why was the guy selling hot dogs? The art isn't particularly great, either.

The back-up story (by Bill Mantlo/George Freeman) features Daredevil failing to locate a blind kid's seeing eye dog, and the dog is put to sleep. That's just depressing.

Quality Rating: B-

Historical Significance Rating: 2

Chronological Placement Considerations: The Hulk is in his classic Hulk Smash persona here, placing this before Hulk #272. The MCP places this and a few other random Hulk appearances between Hulk #268-269. It's not great placement considering the Hulk is supposed to be with Betsy and Ross at Banner's old desert lab as they try to work out a cure for him, but it's not completely off-base to allow for the Hulk to have wandered off for a while.

References:

• The Hulk says he remembers the Blob, presumably from Defenders #15-16.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

The back-up story's title refers to a popular novel by James Herriot(at least, I think that's the author's name).

No, you're thinking of All Creatures Great and Small, which was a book I loved a great deal.
Bless the Beasts and Children was a fictional novel, but I can't place the author's name either.

OK, that seeing eye dog thing has completely ruined my day.

These one-shot, context-free stories have got to be tricky to place for you.

Blob's last appearance before this was Rom #31, from June of 82. He's still a full-time member of Mystique's Brotherhood. Then there's this appearance in March of 83. And then we see next him again in UXM #177 in January of 84, still a full-time member of Mystique's Brotherhood.

In this case it's not too bad - big enough spaces of story-time to fit in this episode. But it's still odd to think that he's just randomly away from his job, and caring for Unus, to the point of wandering with him to New York and setting up circuses and all this. He's got free time, sure, but that sounds more like a whole different life. And it's nice actually to know they've continued the friendship, but then why didn't Blob ever get Unus into the Brotherhood or Freedom Force? Anyway a good job here by Grant at (somewhat) making up for one of the casualties of Claremont's reign, which was Unus and his friendship with Blob. Unus never appeared in a Claremont comic so far as I know despite being a regular during the original X-Men era.

Also, interestingly, this would be Unus's second to last appearance before his death in Spectacular Spider-Man #91 the next year - which is another "Blob alone" issue. He was basically written out of existence because by this point, for whatever reason, he wasn't interesting to writers except as Blob's friend - and that was problematic because Blob had an ongoing role with Mystique's team, and Claremont obviously didn't want to use Unus. So you'd have to keep having these random issues where Blob is just off by himself.