Issue(s): Marvel Two-In-One #42, Marvel Two-In-One #43
Cover Date: Aug-Sep 78
Title: "Entropy, entropy.." / "The day the world winds down"
Credits:
Ralph Macchio - Writer
Sal Buscema / John Byrne - Penciler
Alfredo P. Alcala & Sam Grainger / "Friends" - Inker

Review/plot:
Art credits for issue #43: "John Byrne & Friends".

This arc introduces the Project Pegasus facility that would serve for many years as a super-villain prison. Its primary purpose is supposed to be energy research but most plots dealing with it focused on the fact that super-powered criminals were kept there for "study" (which sounds a little creepy to me). The facility was created by the Department of Energy which itself was new in 1978.

The story starts with the Thing breaking into the facility because he is looking for Wundarr, who has been taken there. Captain America is also there, and he stops the Thing from going on his rampage.

The tone of the story seems to suggest that the Thing is unreasonably worried, but the truth is the scientists at Pegasus are indeed exploiting Wundarr.

They're trying to use him to re-power the cosmic cube.

In any event it turns out that the base has been infiltrated by Victorius, who is now the leader of a cult called the Entropists. With a name like Entropists, you know they've got to be from a Gerber story.

Victorius steals the cosmic cube and heads to the Everglades so the Man-Thing can get involved.

Fight fight fight against a cosmically powered baddie (Jude the Entropic Man, created by Victorius using the Cosmic Cube and the remains of Yagzan from Giant-Size Man-Thing #1)...

...and then everyone goes home and forgets about the troubling moral issues raised by Project Pegasus.

After everyone else leaves, the Man-Thing briefly touches the crystal that Victorius got himself turned into. It turns his hand human, but Man-Thing doesn't understand or care enough to stick around and cure the rest of him.

Nice art in issue #43 despite the fact that the credits indicate a rush.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 7 - first Project Pegasus, first Jude the Entropic Man

Chronological Placement Considerations: The MCP has this after Fantastic Four #201.

References:

• Wundarr was last seen in Ms. Marvel #15.
  
• The Thing was Wundarr's guardian from Marvel Two-In-One #2 to Marvel Two-In-One #4.
  
• The Thing bumps into Dr. Lightner, who was previously the villain Blacksun in Marvel Two-In-One #21. (He'll also go by the names of Nth-Man and Mysterium in future issues. Dude gives Henry Pym a run for his money on multiple names.).
  
• The Entropists previously appeared in Giant-Size Man-Thing #1.
  
• Victorius, an AIM scientist that developed a super-soldier serum, first appeared as a Ka-Zar villain in Astonishing Tales #18 and Astonishing Tales #19-20.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

The "death" character is actually named Jude and reappears in the Universe X title(but maybe not anywhere else).