Death has had terrible tastes in men. Thanos? Deadpool? At last, it seems like she’s chosen a worthy lover in Ben Grimm. As the Thing is, though, he doesn’t like it when cosmic entities manipulate his life and take his girlfriend out of the picture just to win his affections. That’s right, it’s clobberin’ time, in The Thing #5 and #6, written by Walter Mosley, drawn by Tom Reilly, colored by Jordie Bellaire, and lettered by Joe Sabino.
From the Netherrealms, Death watched the world of heroes. For the first time in this cosmos’ long existence, Death fell in love, with the champion known as the Thing. Cosmic deity that she is, she took on a mortal form, and sent agents scurrying through Earth, manipulating events to drive the Thing into her arms, to have her love him, as he loved her, and to end her eternal loneliness by sitting beside her on her deathly throne.
She failed, but she came awfully close. Ben did come to fall for her, very quickly, and Ben’s nothing if not loyal. Maybe Death could have put the “ever” in the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing — and when a compelling villain comes awfully close to winning, it’s important to the story to wonder about their plan’s one fatal flaw.
First, though, we’ve got some recapping to do!
Coming Down Fast, Don’t Let Me Break You
One thing that’s fun about this journey back through Reily’s art to a more classic era is how easily it slips into a Scooby Doo chase scene. Scooby Doo may not have been the funniest of TV shows, or had the cleverest of mysteries, but damn if it didn’t have some of the best chase sequences in history. Especially in the rare moments when you had multiple monsters. The gang splits up, runs about all helter skelter, each monster sort of goofs their way into their own downfall and then everyone reunites to unmask the villain. Ahh, good times.
The gladiator fella known as the Berserker makes the most obvious mistake that a middle-management henchperson can make — going face to face with the hero. He gets a few good hits in, but Grimm’s black metal glove is a heck of a power upgrade, and it’s not long before the Berserker is down for the count. The Faceless one is overcome by his own hubris — he assumes there’s nothing in the Watcher’s sanctum that can take him down. Turns out, spiders can. Lots and lots of giant yellow spiders. As much of a jerk as the Faceless One is, seeing his arrogance fall to fear in the face of the swarm is still pretty disturbing to see.
As for Terrax, his mistake wasn’t that he went chasing down Death herself. She was in a mortal form, he couldn’t have known it was ultimately futile (as every race with Death is). No, his mistake was calling her a %$#&! The idiot. The complete @$$#&!*. Some villains gloat, others are almost apologetic for the harm they cause, but Terrax? Terrax was banal and petty to a woman who has proven time and time again in this series that she takes no bull@&%!.
It’s such a great moment, drawn well. Her fleeing form. The stop. The turn. The quiet monologue as she uses a magical weapon that, while not killing him, tears him apart from the inside in a thousand different places.
I’m going to miss Amaryllis.
The Final Unmasking
Monsters taken care of, there’s only one last thing to do — unmask the true villain behind it all. The problem is, the man who shows up is rather averse to having his mask taken off, as Doctor Doom descends in a gorgeously dramatic entrance. The Champion, the three other henchfolk, the robot army — all Doom’s, in yet another attempt to save his mother’s spirit from the underworld. It makes a certain sense, defeating death with an army of the undying. I especially loved the recap page. I miss the way older comics would devote significant pages to recapping previous stories, drawing them with a certain softness to lines’ edges, as if gazing through the mists of the past. Jordie Bellaire’s haunting greens did a lot for this bit, taking Doom’s signature color and brightening it for that eerie taste of Hellfire and loss.
Doom’s not about to let the Thing stand in his way, though, but the Thing has been tangling with tougher goons than Doom. Like a good video game protagonist, he’s gathered the upgrades he’s taken from his enemies and uses it all to defeat the final boss: four violent death-red panels, and Doom’s mask cracks. He’s defeated…and just miserable looking enough for the Thing to take pity on him, and vow to help Doom get his mother back.
The thing is, though, that the helmet Ben took from the Faceless One turns out to be something called an Advisor. Something that gives him a cosmic sight, of a sort. That’s when we finally get the answers to the mysteries that have been teased throughout the entire series: Bobby Spector is a relative of the Watcher, and Amaryllis?
Amaryllis is Death — and all of this was set in motion just to win Ben Grimm’s heart.
It’s a heck of a twist, one that’s especially fantastic in that it makes going back and rereading the series that much more delightful. Death wasn’t just Amaryllis, either. She was the Elysium Courtship Dancer imp that introduced Ben to Amaryllis. She was the fake boyfriend that caused Alicia to break up with Ben. She was everywhere, doing everything, all because she’d been watching Ben Grimm, hero of Earth, and had fallen in love with him.
What a revoltin’ development.
To Hell and Back
We open Thing #6 with Ben’s reaction – now that he knows who Death really is, he wants nothing to do with her. The fact that she’s kidnapped the love of his life doesn’t really help his case, but try telling a cosmic being you want nothing to do with them. They don’t take it very well.
Fortunately, thanks to Doom, Ben has everything he needs to be able to take the fight to Hell itself and rescue his girl. As for Alicia herself, the afterlife is taking very strangely to her. She was taken there alive, which gives her a certain power over the place. Sight, for one, and a surreal burning strength. There’s a minor, disorienting fight scene in which she protects a young girl’s soul from a tormenter — one where Alicia seems to be moving more by thought than in any physical space, where she catches up to the victim of her blows without seeming to actually move. It’s dreamlike, unsettling, and kind of beautiful: apt for the realm of the dead.
Using his handy helmet of endless answers, Ben Grimm extends his sight to try and find Alicia — but not before being witness to the true nature of the cosmos that few mortals ever really get to see. All the old cosmic favorites, Eternity, Infinity, Lord Chaos, Master Order and the like, Time Itself laid out before his astonished eyes.
My favorite page in Thing #6, though, comes immediately after. Ben seems to have been able to focus his gaze, and sees minor vignettes of other Marvel characters at the time. We only see half of Ben’s face, but there’s still so much charm packed into the minor changes seen in his rocky face. The awe as he spies Thor bringing down a burst of lightning. His Grimm grim sympathy as the Hulk finds a moment of lonely peace. The fond smile for a glimpse of Spider-Man. The unsettled hello as he sees Agatha Harkness, who’s clearly aware that someone’s watching her and gives a friendly wave right at the camera. So many different little moods; it’s a quiet moment amidst a cosmic mess that I just absolutely adore.
It’s the quiet before the storm, as it turns out, because Thing soon finds Alicia, and from that point on it’s punches, robot armies, deathly battles and Death-ly knockouts for a good number of pages until Grimm wins the day. The death realm is fascinating, and appears to come with its own lore of which I’m unaware. I would have loved to have been able to explore more of it, but this comic only glimpses at stuff of cosmic fascination — the Thing himself has a job to do.
He rescues Alicia from Death, who says she’ll be waiting for him. Bobby Spector, now aware of his Watcher-origins, leaves to explore the cosmos with the girl Alicia saved. Ben and Alicia get back together. Everything’s tucked snugly back into continuity with juuust enough threads left loose for other creators (and hopefully Mosely himself) to pick back up somewhere down the line.
That One Fatal Flaw
This has been a beautiful series. Heavy, dark, and surreal as a dream you only get in the very heart of sleep, one that speaks to the core of you, that you wake from with an ache because you know you’ll never see another story quite like it again. Blessedly, the ache’s not quite the same here — we all get to read The Thing as often as we like.
I don’t think there’s a lot more I can say about how beautifully this series has been crafted that I haven’t already said, so I’m just going to bring it back to the idea that I started this with.
Marvel’s superheroes, by and large, have two sides, a thing that made them a refreshing change from DC’s one-sided heroes when the Marvel Universe was born. Marvel heroes have their heroic sides — the ones that save the day, bursting through walls at the last minute with their costumes at their brightest, making sure that by the “The End”, everything is okay.
They also have the side of them that is a tangled erratic mess of flaws. The human side, their more grounded one. Sometimes the split is as simply seen as the masked persona and their secret identity. For public figures, though, the split isn’t quite that clean cut. The Thing is a hero, a valued member of the Fantastic Four. He is their rock in every good connotation of that word which exists. He is their heart, and he holds them up.
Ben Grimm is reckless. Grumpy. He never gives up, and has a temper, and he hurts and frightens people more than he ever intends. He mourns his humanity, because there’s nothing in the world that’s more important to him.
In issue #3, before I knew who Amaryllis was, I thought that she could see how ridiculous the life of a hero was. That she loved Ben for his chosen lifestyle both because of and in spite of the inherent absurdity of impossible bravery. That, however, is the kind of contradiction that humans bear — Death herself only saw the impossible bravery. She fell in love with The Thing. She saw nothing but a hero to which she would present Eternity itself. But all Ben Grimm wants is Yancy Street on a Saturday night.
There are many reasons I love the Thing, but the part of him that this series has shone a light on is that Ben Grimm is not a polished charm. There are cracks, all over him, ones he struggles seeing past, ones he’s aware of, and ones that everyone who truly loves him sees as well. He will go to Hell itself to rescue his love, then, unprompted, apologize for the ways he’s messed up. It’s been a long while since I’ve read a truly great Thing-centric story, and I could not be more grateful to this series’ creative team for reinforcing my love for the character. And for reinforcing my love for comics by showing me just how much the medium is capable of.
