Spoiler Warning:
 Poor
Ben Grimm, he just can't seem to catch a break. Whether it's being turned
into a giant, orange rock-monster or being forced to fight wave after
wave of mutants and robots every month, luck is never on his side. As
we see in this new series from Marvel, even a seemingly lucky break can
turn sour for Mrs. Grimm's blue-eyed baby boy. Having now been given a
quarter stake in Fantastic Four Industries, Ben has all the money he could
ever want. He has a beautiful girlfriend, a luxurious home and is invited
to all the right social events, but at the price of alienating his fellow
superheroes and friends. The poor guy finally gets some payback for the
way life has treated him, only to have the hero community give up on him.
The book kicks off with a fantastic action sequence featuring Marvel
second-stringer Goliath. Ben is once again thrust into an all out slugfest
with Cauldron: The scalding man, a poor villain if ever there was one.
Dan Slott knows how to please long-time Thing fans, with big splash pages
and the immortal line "It's Clobberin' Time!" making appearances early
on. Unfortunately, the book takes a slight dive from there. There are
some funny scenes with Peter Parker and his wife MJ talking about Ben's
newfound wealth and lifestyle. Parker seems to think that Ben is unworthy
of the exact lifestyle Peter has been enjoying since he took a place within
the Avengers as Spiderman. While it is a funny scene, I can't help but
be annoyed at Parker's shallow attitude. Something doesn't seem right
with him seeming jealous about a friend's success. It doesn't suit the
character. Also, the
book heralds a return of one of my all time favorite villains. It will
be interesting to see what happens in later issues with this bad-egg in
the works.
The rest of the book deals with Ben's new lifestyle/approach towards
attending social functions and the state of his love life. There is a
particular scene where Ben wakes up in bed and berates himself for his
'freakish' appearance in the mirror. While it pulls to heartstrings to
see a loveable guy like this hate his body so intensely, we've seen this
1000 times before in the Fantastic Four comics. We don't need Ben being
a continually self-loathing loser all the time. It almost makes me angry
to think that Ben has had very little character development over the years.
I mean, Ben was an astronaut and fighter pilot before his transformation
into The Thing. Wouldn't that mean he'd have to be a reasonably smart
guy? You need at least some smarts to get onto a space program; they don't
let just anyone up there y'know! Yet time after time we see Ben bumbling
through life like an idiot, always questioning Reed Richards and never
understanding what is going on around him. All too often he is treated
like a big, dumb ape when really he should be of above-average intelligence.
I apologize for the rant, but you'd think after 40 years of battling through
parallel dimensions, flying through the sky on high-tech machinery and
living in a technologically advanced building would rub off on him, but
no one cares. Everyone just wants to hear him shout those same three words
and smash the bad-guy with a roundhouse punch, Dan Slott included. Sure
I want to see him smash someone's face every so often, but  I'd
also like to see a newer take on the guy. It's not a bad issue by any
means; it's just more of the same old Thing.
Pardon the pun.
The art is absolutely perfect in every way. DiVito perfectly captures
the look of the modern Ben Grimm. The fight scenes are brilliantly paced
and the expressions that Ben makes are priceless throughout. The coloring
is perfectly adequate for the book also, if a little hit-and-miss in places.
The textures used on the Thing himself are brilliant and really give the
character a standout feel. Also, a scarcely mentioned hero of this book
is the letterer Dave Lanphear. If you're a fan of good lettering (like
me) then check it out.
A small note. I'm glad that Marvel has decided to put 25 freakin' advert
pages in this book. I wasn't sure what to buy this coming Christmas season,
and filling my comic with crap like this really made my day. Here I was
thinking I was getting a bumper-sized book, or at last some sort of backup
feature. I guess that they've been smarter in the placement of them this
time though, since last month they were having 2-page adverts on the second
page of the comic! Eurgh!
Ahem…so yeah! The Thing #1 from Marvel Comics: It's pretty decent!
Score: 7/10
Gav
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