Recently in The Thing Category

This week's Thing comes a real Dude, Steve Rude!

The Thing is his ever-lovin' self, with a nice editorial comment added, to boot!  Check out Steve's website where he does all kinds of cool commissions like this one.  Nuff Said!

Link:  Steve Rude's Gallery at ComicArtFans.

Link:  Steve Rude Original Art.

For those of us that loved watch the Thing fight the Hulk, Fantastic Four 112 from 1971, titled "Battle of the Behemoths" was a doozy.  After a quick search on ComicArtFans, I see that my love for this particular issue is shared among many geeks.

The original cover to Fantastic Four #112 by John Buscema was simple and effective, showing the two Marvel monsters about to trade blows.  It looks to me like this cover was both pencilled and inked by Buscema, or at least, it was not inked by Sinnott.  Marvel Wikia also states this as well.

Michael Finn is a great Marvel fan with gallery on ComicArtFans (see links to all sources at the bottom), with tons of commissions.  Michael has a series of them titled "One Minute Later" where he gets an artist to interpret what happened one minute after the original cover.  In this one, Mike McKone gave his vision and the cover is numbered 112.5.  One of the things you can see here about modern Marvel vs classic Marvel: the Hulk is always drawn much bigger than Ben Grimm in the present day, whereas in the past the Hulk was almost the same size as the Thing.

Buscema re-created this cover several times for collectors.  The version above was commissioned by Bill Thomson and it's very faithful to the original.  One thing I have always wondered about these cover re-creations: how do the artists reproduce the title logos and Marvel sidebar?

Gary Sella also commissioned Buscema for this cover, but with a twist: adding Mr. Fantastic into the middle of the fight!

Ending this with a giant-sized piece of art, here is a look at the original art to the splash page of Fantastic Four #112.  I am especially enthralled with the creator credits on the lower right, framed by bullets exploding into the tree the Thing is holding up.  Nuff Said!

Link:  Gary Sella's Gallery on ComicArtFans

Link:  Michael Finn's Gallery on ComicArtFans

Link:  Bill Thomson's Gallery on ComicArtFans

The Thing pinup by John Byrne, featured in the Fantastic Four Special Edition that I yakked up two weeks ago.  Byrne portrayed Ben Grimm as he appeared in the early issues of the FF, somewhat lumpy in places, rather than his modern rocky design.  Nuff said!

John Byrne originally gave this tutorial as a pinup page in the Thing #5 (1983).  Byrne's third and fourth rules were especially important to artists who followed him:  Avoid the Fozzie Thing!  He is a monster, not a teddy bear!  Keep him craggy! Nuff said.

Here's a charming pinup of the Thing and his nephew Franklin Richards that Mike Deodato drew, somewhere around 2007.  Doesn't it just make you go awwwhhhhh?  Nuff said.

I have a fond attachment to Marvel’s reprint titles from the 1960s and 1970s.  This is where I was schooled in Mighty Marvel History, after all.  Marvel’s Greatest Comics was the home to Fantastic Four reprints, and issue #39 contained the story that originally appeared in FF #52, the debut of the Black Panther.

The reprint cover was by Jim Starlin and Joe Sinnott.  At first glance, you can’t determine the identity of the penciller, because Sinnott always managed to make these characters look consistent.  But if you look at the Thing, his expression and his stance, it is unmistakably a Starlin Thing.

Here’s the original art to the cover.  My apologies to the owner or gallery, I totally forgot where I found this scan!  Nuff said.

I featured Chris Stevens’ Doc Strange illo last Sunday, and his Thing really rocks as well:

Thing- Marker Illo by *chriss2d on deviantART

I love not only how he uses the markers to indicate shadow and texture, but this is a fairly classic portrayal of Benjamin J Grimm as well.  Nuff said.

How many Fantastic Four covers did Jim Steranko produce in the 1970s?  Only three to my knowledge.

Fantastic Four #130 was produced during Steranko's flurry of 1972 covers for Marvel.  This issue featured the return of the Frightful Four, with an interesting twist.  Medusa, once a member of the Frightful Four in 1960s, had switched sides and become a member of the FF.  Taking Medusa's place?  Thundra, the Femizon who wanted to make babies with Benjamin J. Grimm.  The Thing looks great on this cover.

Fantastic Four #131 featured the answer to a mystery that began in Avengers #104--whatever happened to Quicksilver?  The last we had seen of the silver speedster, he had heroically sacrificed himself to defeat a Sentinel.  Seriously injured, Pietro saw something horrible approaching him.  Then he vanished, leaving the Avengers and his sister Wanda to wonder where he had disappeared.

This issue gave us the answer!  Quicksilver had been approached by Lockjaw, the teleporting giant bulldog from the Inhumans.  Lockjaw brought Pietro to Attilan, where he was nursed back to health by Crystal.  Crystal melted Quicksilver's icy exterior and he fell in love.  Naturally, when Johnny Storm discovered them together, a massive fight ensued.

It was a pretty darn good soap opera moment in the Marvel Universe.  Unfortunately, it had the side effect of removing Quicksilver from the Marvel playground for a number of years.

While the 1972 FF covers are good, they don't seem like iconic Steranko.  But the cover to the Fantastic Four Marvel Comics Index in 1977 is really groovy and psychedelic, man.  Nuff said.