The Thing #1 Review

Written By: Walter Mosley
Art By: Tom Reilly
Colors By: Jordie Bellaire
Letters By: VC’s Joe Sabino
Cover Art By: Tom Reilly
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: November 10, 2021

The Thing #1 takes a trip back to simpler times where Mr. Ben Grimm aka The Thing returns from a fishing trip to find his family and girlfriend away. When he seeks out his girlfriend, only to find her in the company of another man, Thing’s temper turns an off day into a really bad day.

Was It Good?

Confession time. I have a soft spot for tragic hero figures. Characters cursed (or blessed, if you prefer) by Fate to carry both the burden and the responsibility of power they never wanted. The Thing fits that description to a tee and seeing him get his own title, even if it is just a mini, is a welcome arrival.

What I like most about this first issue is the titular character. Mosley nails Thing’s manner of speech, his tough demeanor with a heart of gold, and yes, a bit of the self-esteem issues that plague Thing due to his condition. It’s a near-perfect representation of the character that should make fans happy.

What I don’t like is everything around Thing past the initial setup. The sequence of events after Thing confronts Alicia on the street while she’s walking with another man is random chaos with no rhyme or reason.

[Spoliers Ahead]

The story opens with a Grim Reaper-like figure invading a Brooklyn apartment to rip out a man’s heart, turn it black, put it back, then give him a small vial with a glowing substance in it. There’s no explanation as to who, what, or why any of this is going on.

Later, Ben comes home from a fishing trip, gets pepper-sprayed during an argument with Alicia, gets arrested, breaks out of jail with the help of his cellmate, Hercules, while Reed is already in the process of bailing him out, gets his ring and his heart handed back to him by Alicia, is visited by a telemarketer pixie who pops out of an envelope on his nightstand who offers to hook him up on a special matchmaking site after he has a dream about the same Grim reaper character from Brooklyn, receives a match for a famous fashion designer who also happens to be on a poster of the man who had his heart ripped out in the opening prologue, and then we see the man from the prologue come busting out of his apartment holding a stack of tires.

Oof! My brain is tired just trying to list that out. It’s a jumbled collection of things (no pun intended) simply stuffed together in one issue and only half of them make any sense. It seems the creators were trying to have an over-the-top bit of fun, but they forgot to make the story coherent.

At least the art from Reilly and the team is excellent. There’s a mid-century, Silver Age style to the book that feels familiar yet avoids looking dated. The story may be a jumbled mess, but I thoroughly enjoyed the visuals.

Bits and Pieces

The Thing #1 is an amusing trip back to the simpler days of the Fantastic Four with an adventure focused on the blue-eyed Thing. The art is great and the writing perfectly captures the character voice of the titular hero. That said, the plot is a jumbled, chaotic mess with events happening at random without reason or explanation.