The Thing (2025)
Someone wants Ben Grimm AKA the Thing dead, dead to the tune of $10 million. Let's just roll the clock back 4.5 hours to figure out how we got here. And it starts with one of Ben Grimm's childhood bullies.
This miniseries doesn't seem to take place in current Marvel comics, happening some time in the past when some good guys were still bad guys, so keep that in mind. It took me a bit to figure out this was happening so I was confused for a bit?
But after that? After that, I was having fun.
The Thing is one of Marvel's most human characters, and it's a narrow competition for first place. At his lowest, he can be full of self-loathing and sadness and anger, but at his best he can be joyful and empathetic and understanding, and in the middle he can be smart and determined and heroic. He's one of those character that can be compelling when he has to deposit a check, and I would read it.
This miniseries understands him fully. It puts him in a situation that's not as outlandish as the scraps he normally gets into but keeps him on the back foot as he struggles to reach his goal. He's extremely competent in this series and all fights go pretty quickly his way, but the central conceit of the series is that he's just trying to get a girl back to her mom so fighting isn't the be-all, end-all of the series.
I loved it. It packs a lot of humor and humanity into a five-issue run, sometimes more than multi-year runs I've been consumed, and boils the Thing down to his core essence. Not one of the greatest Ben Grimm stories ever told, but certainly one of the truest to who he is. And it's a wonderful introduction for anyone who doesn't know the ever-lovin' blue-eyed thing.
