GUEST POST BY AMIABLE AL: THE MORE THINGS CHANGE...

Pin-up of The THING, FF #2.  Images copyright MARVEL COMICS

Are you in for a treat!  No, that's not a question, it's a
statement of fact.  ALAN McKENZIE, writer, editor, and a

former wearer of the mantle of THARG, has graciously written

the following guest post which you're all about to read (if you're

smart).  I'm making a rod for my own back here, because once

you've read Al's post, the ones I write in the future may seem

disappointing by comparison.  Never mind, I'll just have to
up my game.  Ready?  Okay, Al - take it away.

******    

I was thinking about The Thing recently.  Mostly because I

was writing a post over on my 'Marvel in the Silver Age' blog, all

about the Human Torch stories in Marvel's Strange Tales mags

of the early '60s.  Back then, it seemed that no one could agree on what

The Thing looked like.  Even Jack Kirby drew him in different ways

in different titles...or so I thought.  But as I started to look at different

comics that included the character during those formative years,

it seemed more and more like there was a definite timeline.

Narrow doorways?  Then how did he get into the store?  (From FF #1)

In the first few issues of Fantastic Four, Jack Kirby was draw-

ing The Thing like a big shapeless lump of orange clay.  This 'mud-

slide' Thing would last just a few months before Kirby started to tinker

with his appearance.  So in the first issue of FF (dated Nov 1961, on sale

in Aug), Ben Grimm's monstrous alter ego looked...well, kinda monstrous.

There's no real shape to him.  His head seems to join directly to his shoul-

ders without the benefit of a neck.  I'm guessing Kirby's thinking here was

to make him look like a heavyweight wrestler, or an over-developed body-

builder...in brown underpants.  And he acted all monstrous, as well.  He

seemed constantly in a bad mood and there was a real sense of danger

to the character.  There was also a weird undercurrent that he

wanted Sue Storm for himself.

Yeah, right.  Lose your temper, reach for a tree.  I do it all the time

It's been said elsewhere that the cosmic quartet are based on

alchemical elements.  Mister Fantastic is Water, because his body

can flow into any shape.  The Human Torch is Fire, of course.  The

Invisible Girl is Air.  And The Thing is Earth...which fits his 'mud-

slide' appearance.  The second issue of FF (dated Jan '62) included a pin-

up of The Thing, which gave us a really good look at the character, pen-

cilled by Jack Kirby and inked by George Klein.  There's no reason to

think that Klein was in any way stamping his own version of The Thing

on top of Kirby's original pencils.  This would have been the way

Kirby was drawing the character at this point.

The THING rips off his costume.  Be still my beating heart

With FF #3 (dated Mar '62), there was a bit of a shift away from

super-powered individuals in street clothes.  My guess is that Stan

Lee wanted the characters to have costumes - or maybe it was publisher

Martin Goodman - but anyhow, first chance he got, The Thing ripped

his costume to shreds, so there's not much doubt on where Kirby stood.

('Though, on the pencils for page 7, Sue was wearing a mask, her intention
being they'd all cover their faces - but it was erased before inking.)  There

wasn't any real change in FF #5, except that The Thing was now in blue

underpants and black booties.  He was still the same old mudslide, pen-

cilled by Kirby and inked, for the first time, by Joe Sinnott.  Here's

a nice page of original art from FF #5 which better shows how

the character looked at this point in his development.

In FF #6 (dated Sep '62), inked by Dick Ayers for the first time,

The Thing has lost the black booties and gained a neck.  There seemed

to be a move away from the mudslide look and Ayers was rendering Ben

Grimm as though his skin had the texture of dinosaur hide.  And this look
would persist for the next year and a bit, so I'd always believed that's just
what Kirby had intended.   But here's something startling I noticed.  Take

a look (below) at how Jack drew The Thing on the cover of FF #7 (dated

Nov '62), just a year after his initial appearance.  It's the 'blocky' Thing

readers would later come to know and love, but more commonly asso-
ciate with the character's look in 1964.  And we know this is what
Kirby intended because he inked his own cover pencils.

Meanwhile, inside the mag, The Thing is inked by Ayers to look

like he has dinosaur hide.  For the next year or so, we'd continue to

have the dinosaur-hide Thing in the Ayers-inked stories.  I'm not saying

Ayers invented the dinosaur-hide look.  In fact, below is a pencil sketch
by Kirby which was probably done in the early part of '62...but I do think

Ayers was responsible for keeping the dinosaur-hide Thing going (pos-

sibly at Stan's instruction) long past the point when JK had moved

on from that particular look.

1962 pencil drawing of The THING for
JERRY BAILS' fanzine ALTER EGO

There he goes, ripping off his clothes again - swoon!  (FF #18)

With FF #18 (dated Sep '63), the blocky Thing made another

appearance, on the cover, inked by Paul Reinman...though inside

the comic, we still had the Ayers dinosaur-hide Thing.  It wouldn't be

until Ayers was moved onto other assignments by Stan, that George

Roussos (as Bell) would come in - at FF #21 (dated Dec '63) - and

start inking The Thing the way that Jack Kirby was pencilling

him...in all his blocky glory.

The rocky, blocky THING that fans came to know and love

And just because I came across them while looking for

images for this article, above is a Jack Kirby pencil drawing of

The Fantastic Four from 1965 (Marie Severin redrew The Torch

figure), and a later one from 1977, both depicting the familiar blocky

Thing.  Much, much later, other hands - John Byrne, I'm looking at

you - would revive the look of good old mudslide Thing for an enter-

taining run of issues (during his tenure from FF #232, dated Jul 1981 -
#293, dated Aug '86).  In #238, Mister Fantastic tried once again to
cure Ben's condition...the outcome was that The Thing reverted
to his original, mudslide appearance.  The condition would last
for a couple of years before The Thing mutated again...

...but that's a tale for another time.

Posted in: Cartoons