The Thing: The Next Big Thing

The Thing (2021) #1-6

by Walter Mosley, Tom Reilly (Illustrator), Jordie Bellaire (Colorist)

Renowned storyteller Walter Mosley brings his signature style to a sweeping saga of Yancy Street’s favorite son, the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing — one that will range from the urban sprawl of Manhattan’s back alleys to the farthest reaches of the cosmos! A lonely evening and a chance encounter (or is it?) sends Ben Grimm embarking on an unexpected sojourn — where he must battle foes both old and new! But as the Thing fights and fights to rescue his newfound love, Amaryllis, from the seemingly unstoppable Brusque, there’s more going on than meets the eye! Featuring characters drawn from all throughout the Marvel Universe, “The Next Big Thing” is here to remind audiences why the Thing is one of the most popular and beloved characters in the history of comics!

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics, Fiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published August 23, 2022

About the author

Walter Mosley (b. 1952) is the author of the bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins, as well as numerous other works, from literary fiction and science fiction to a young adult novel and political monographs. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and the Nation, among other publications. Mosley is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Grammy, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

This takes place in Ben Grimm's past. Alicia breaks up with him. He goes on a blind date and immediately dives into bed with her after saving her. There's also this little kid Bobby who follows them around and knows things he shouldn't This story has this dream like quality to it. The Thing doesn't really make any decisions of his own. He's just led around by this kid and new girlfriend from issue to issue. There's also this strange predilection with the police showing up to arrest the Thing at least once an issue. It's just strange. This whole thing is strange. Tom Reilly's art is really good though.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collects The Thing #1-6, written by Walter Mosely with Tom Reilly and Jordie Bellaire on art.

First off, I love the art. The color palette is subdued and not overdone like a lot of modern comics and the art has kind of a retro feel. It's a great looking book.

The story is kind of a mess at first but I like where it ultimately ends up. Ben and Alicia break up, Ben winds up using a dating service run by a fairy or something, and winds up doing some poorly explained stuff. I didn't really understand what exactly was going on until over halfway. If I was reading this in singles, I probably would have given up on it.

When Ben's new girlfriend's identity is revealed and someone else shows up, I understood what was going on. Some cosmic stuff happens and everything is set to right.

I didn't have a problem with the actual story but Ben doesn't have a lot of agency in it. Everyone else knows more about what's going on than he does. If you swapped out The Thing and Alicia with another couple, the story probably wouldn't have changed much. I guess I'm trying to say it was a decent story but didn't really feel like a Thing story except that he and Alicia were in it.

I'm still not sure if I articulated my thoughts on this. Good not great? I didn't hate it? It was fine? Three stars. This one is headed to Half Price Books sometime in 2023.

[Dan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow. Probably the most disappointing comic I've read in a LONG time. I've never read Walter Mosely before, but the prospect of a HUGE mainstream author taking on a Marvel comic had me excited about reading it, especially since it stars The Thing, who has always been one of my favorites.

The art, by Tom Reilly, is easy on the eyes, and I have to give Mosely props for including a ton of characters and plot points from The Marvel Universe. It seems very likely that the man is a fan. He seems to know his stuff.

Which made the nonsensical nature of the story all the more disappointing. I couldn't really sum up the plot of this book easily, but it is so simple and wispy that I could easily imagine it being told in eight pages in an issue of the old MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS weekly. Some of the dialogue is embarrassingly bad, and there were a lot of moments where I just kind of cringed at what I was reading. I'm sure Editor Tom Brevoort was intimidated by Mosely, but this really needed a firm editorial hand to help mold it into something.....readable. As it is, it is far from that point.

Having never read Mosely before, this certainly didn't change my mind and make me want to seek out his work.

[Fraser Simons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clearly, Mosley is a fan of classic Marvel, because this was very retro in very fun ways. It also makes sense that it’s polarizing, because older plots were more about exciting twists that often felt only foreshadowed but not explained, which is what the plot beats for this does. I think the art style would dip people off to this off the get-go, though. There are a lot of twists that are fun to roll with, for all the characters and how they know each other and how they relate to one another. It even gets into cosmic territory, which I love. And I think the foreshadowing Mosley does in later twists really showcase how much of a fan he is of those old comics, because he certainly drew from some esoteric material. It also inverts power dynamics in classic quests like this, which I thought was a breath of fresh air. Great stuff.

[Jaq Greenspon · Rating 3 out of 5]

It just seems to me that these days comic writers are trying to jam too much into one miniseries. You don’t need a new villain every issue, just a compelling story that’s clearly told.

[François Vigneault · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun little adventure that goes places you probably won't expect, in more ways than one. The story, which at its best feels reminiscent of Charles Soule's run on She-Hulk, can honestly be extremely difficult to follow at times, overpacked with character cameos and sideways transitions, in some ways this feels like the writer Walter Mosley just went wild playing with a bunch of beloved action figures, mashing them together until he tossed 'em all back in the toy box at the end. The dialogue is very uneven and often stiff (yes I know this is on purpose sometimes, but it doesn't really work), twists that should have been wild (like the identity of the main antagonist) are telegraphed far to early, while key practical elements that should have been laid out carefully (like the creation of and later deployment of a vibranium gauntlet) are just tossed off. Overall this tale of the Thing is fun, but far from essential.

The art work by Tom Reilly, however, fairly rules. This is my first full comic from Reilly and I'm impressed, from the sweet way he draws the Ben Grimm's rocky mug (I loved the distinctive cracks on the Thing's face) to the slamming action, I was 100% on board. Again, some of the transitions and action were oddly hard to follow, but I think that might have been a bit of a mismatch between the script and the page on this particular project. This artist is definitely on my radar for future releases.

[Dakota Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Walter Mosley succeeds in the dialogue department and even makes some of the pathos work (The Thing and Alicia are on a break!), but the rest of The Next Big Thing is entirely incoherent. It's like Marvel emptied out the toy box at Mosley's feet and he picked up the toys least likely to fit together.

So, there's Death and Kid Uatu and the Champion of the Universe and a bunch of heralds of Galactus and that weird underground New York City and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. And The Thing traipses through all of it in a punch-heavy brawlfest. He has very little agency here, just trundling along until the next thing to punch arrives. It's almost like a surrealist drama. Or maybe it is? Maybe that's what Mosley is going for?

In any case, the only positive element of The Next Big Thing is the art, which is terrific. Loved the look, hated the book.

[Sem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only is this a visual delight, it's just a fun, twisty story that compliments all the beautiful art in all the right ways.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very groovy art even though the story is a little too metaphysical and hard to follow for my basic tastes.

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nunca havia ouvido falar de Walter Mosley e, embora ele seja um escritor famoso de livros de crime nos países anglófonos, aqui no Brasil nenhum livro dele foi publicado. Ele é responsável pelos roteiros desta minissérie do lindo sobrinho de olhos azuis da Tia Petúnia, o Coisa, ao lado de Tom Reilly, que eu também não conhecia o trabalho. Entre o trabalho de Mosley e de Reilly, gostei mais do último, traços dinâmicos, claros, crus, que lembram o trabalho do brasileiro Leonardo Romero, e são completados com uma paleta de cores reduzida que combina bem com os desenhos. Achei que o roteiro de Mosley tem cenas de ação muito longas, que se enxugássemos dariam duas revistas a menos, isso parece cansativo quando é um recurso muito usado. Ele apela para o plano cósmico e elemental das narrativas da Marvel, envolvendo a Senhora Morte e o Vigia na trama que preparou para o Coisa, centrada nele e na sua esposa Alicia Masters, embora não consigamos situar cronologicamente quando que a narrativa se passa levando em conta a história da Marvel. Uma HQ ok de roteiro e muito boa de arte.

[John Shaw · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have rarely been so disappointed by a book.
Especially since it should have been amazing.
I love The Thing, W. Mosely is gifted.
But he should not be writing comics.
Boring and listless and just plain sad.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some incredible art and a strong story.

[Jameson · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was just bad artwork and bad scripting. Cringe dialogue. Barely finished the first issue.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got very excited to see Reilly's name on this book, his art the whole way was the true highlight. Every issue had a standout page or panel.
The actual plot needed another draft or some editing. mosely tried to go big with a Thing solo story, but it seemed like it had panels missing between pages. motivations weren't clear, characters came and went at weird times, and I was never very engaged with the dialogue. A confusing read in itself, but like I said, I read this for the art/colors.

[Lucille · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,5/5
Sympa sans plus

[thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

very good art

[Brett Marcus Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've recently learned that while I don't care much for the Fantastic Four (they're fine, just not my thing), I do love Ben Grimm a lot, for reasons which in hindsight are pretty obvious. I had the final issue of this for a year or two and finally picked up and read the rest and adored this wild cosmic adventure he brute forced his way through. Tom Reilly's art is so damn good, too.

[Alex Sarll]

Walter Mosley is renowned for his hard-boiled crime fiction, none of which I've read. The one novel of his I picked up turned out to be a "sexistential" outlier, and now there's this. Granted, Ben Grimm is probably the most hard-boiled member of the Fantastic Four, but that title is not hotly contested. And this doesn't really lean into that: no trenchcoats or poker games here. Instead, it feels very much a thing of primary colours, and I don't just mean Reilly and Bellaire's art, though that did remind me of Javier Rodriguez, which is never a problem and certainly helped to sell this. There's an embodiment of decay called Mot, or maybe MOT, given all-caps lettering; obviously the latter is the alternative that tends to stick for a British reader. There's a surprisingly high body count, and a few too many scenes of men fighting over 'their' women, even if that notion of possession is normally challenged within the scene. It's at once far too reliant on going the obvious route for a character who's good at punching, and determined to take him on a cosmic odyssey where (at least as a solo player) he feels out of place, resulting in some quite jarring and staccato scenes. Like that one Mosley novel I read, I feel like maybe it's some sort of parable of masculinity, but once again I'm missing the key. And/or one of the times superhero comics really wear their correspondences with commedia dell'arte on their sleeve, not that I have all that firm a grasp on commedia dell'arte. In short, I didn't really get it, but compared to another go-round of the obvious staging posts, which Marvel have been doing a little too often lately, at least I wasn't bored.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I was so excited to see a Thing solo adventure, but then it just went to a weird, Death-is-in-love-with-the-Thing place. And his whole very short break-up with Alicia just seemed out nowhere and not in line with her character. (And I get she was magicked, or whatever, but still...) And then there was the Watcher kid which was cool in theory but just sort of... there. I don't know. Nothing really felt fleshed out or all that interesting. Nothing in here was what I actually wanted from a Thing story. It just felt like: "Let's put the Thing in all these weird situations that tie into an even weirder situation, add in some clobberin', and call it a good time." And it... wasn't. It wasn't a good time. I will say, for the most part, the Thing's voice was well-written. (That's the only thing stopping me from giving it only one-star.) But the rest of the story and motivations just felt like they were put in there to move the plot along, not like they were actually organic parts of the narrative and the characters we love. If I want a Thing story, I was something that's more grass roots, more down to Earth... I don't want Death having some sort of weird crush on Ben Grimm. All in all, this was just weird. I've read better Thing stories in comics targeted at kids, honestly.

[Adam Rodgers · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Thing returns home to find himself alone, suddenly single, before he is launched into a series of eclectic encounters.

This is a bit of a mishmash of a book. While there is a central narrative, its a loose one and more just a vehicle for Mosley to throw Ben Grimm up against as many characters as possible. Mr Fantastic, Dr Doom, The Champion, the Silver Surfer, and Terrax, amongst numerous others, make an appearance here and most for tenuous reasons at best. The new characters of Amaryllis and Bobby are interesting but random additions, being story devices as much as characters. This is a shame, as Mosley has a good grasp of the Thing's character, but little interest in putting together a coherent storyline. He seems to prefer to loosely string together scenes involving one character after another, before removing them and introducing the next, which reads more like a fever dream than a linear narrative. Tom Reilly's artwork is strong however, with a Kirby-esque vibe, being given plenty to do, if for the wrong reasons.

[Brenton Walters · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a weird story. I picked it because I loved Devil In A Blue Dress, and I'm reading Mosley's book on writing, Elements of Fiction. (And because I love comics.)

I didn't like it but it was interesting. The art was good, and I like Ben Grimm as the protagonist.

But it felt too forced, like every single thing had to have a twist, seemingly with no reason. It was just new characters and new twists and new motivations and new everything every page. I think I must like slower stories that have room to breath.

Interestingly, some of his example scenarios in Elements of Fiction felt like that. "Gus loves Mary, who can't stand him. But they marry, then Gus wants to kill her, but her ex-husband shows up, but he's really a cop, he arrests Mary, then attacks her on the way to the station, but Gus shows up and saves her."

[Nerdmaling · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Cosmic Marvel is the best marvel"

Oavsett om man håller med ovanstående så är detta en typisk "Cosmic Marvel" med Ben Thing i
huvudrollen. Serien har lite av en micro handling och en mega handling. Å ena sidan är det kärleksproblem, tema som att värdesätta sig själv etc .. å andra sidan är det stora kosmiska krafter i rörelse. Båda är någorlunda intressanta men det är nästan ett för snålt omfång för att få det episkt. Det är en ganska självklar 3:a. Jag är underhållen när jag läser den. Det är kul med välkända karaktärer (om man är lite nördig) och historien håller ... typ ihop.

Sen är det inte så mycket mer och knappast något jag kommer att läsa igen. Inte dåligt men inte heller särskilt bra.

Teckningstilen har faktiskt sina höjdpunkter. Humorn på ett sätt också även om jag kanske inte riktigt ät helfrälst.

Kan vara värt att läsa/låna om man är investerad i karaktären.

[Camilo Guerra · Rating 4 out of 5]

-¿COMO ES LA CARGA D EUNA VIDA SIN FIN?.

144 páginas del buen Ben con: Pelea con Alicia, otra mujer que le hace ojitos y más, viaje a otro mundo, otro universo, peleas cósmicas, enemigos de siempre y nuevos, y otras cositas.

LO BUENO: Es increíble, una historia compacta que te da de todo, desde un Ben que intenta ser lo mejor mientras hace cosas, y que cuando falla responde de una manera muy honesta( la pelea y charla final con Alicia) , y sin ponerse tan melancólico, vemos muchas peleas contra enemigos de calle y de nivel cósmico. El arte de Tom Reilly es simplemente hermoso, se pone Kirby , se pone Michael Lark y te cuenta de todo y te lo cuenta bien.

LO MALO: No sabía de este escritor, Walter Mosley,y es una pena, el tipo deberían darle más miniseries, y muchos escritores deberían ver lo que el tipo hace y copiar cositas.

[Dan Barr · Rating 3 out of 5]

In many ways this storyline is a throwback to Silver Age comics and their bad-guy-of-the-week format, which is fun in its own way. But, for someone looking to read a more modern Thing story with some depth and heart, it's kind of disappointing. There's so little story because there seems to be a new villain every three pages or so, and their reasons for being involved in whatever the hell is happening in this book are nonexistent. Plus, Ben's response to all of them is to punch first before they even get a line of dialog out. All the big reveals make little to no sense and the end might actually make a big cartoon question mark pop out above your head.

Fun, though. You have to give it that.

[Ross · Rating 2 out of 5]

Walter Mosley is known for being an amazing noir writer. He is NOT known for his comic book storytelling.

This feels like a fan letter to a late 60's / early 70's FF and Ben Grimm. It's brash and bold in places. The story is LOADED with big ideas and cosmic characters. That being said, this feels out of place in current comics. We haven't had a Ben Grimm limited series since the early 2000's. That was a current telling.

I could see this serialized as a backup story, maybe. As its own title? Unnecessary

Bonus: New girlfriend? Weird. Random kid that Ben meets? Weirder.
Bonus Bonus: Where is Thanos? Anyone? Anyone?

[Ryan Miller · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a jumbled mess of a story with characters suddenly appearing without solid motivation and lots of punching through problems I know, I know; it’s The Thing and clobberin’ time is typical, but I expect more reasons to be explained—or even explainable—before the clobberin’ commences. I’m not sure, even after finishing this, why the villains went after Thing to begin with, and the new secondary characters who just happen to have all the talent and expertise needed for the plot are far too convenient. What a mess.

[Richard Woodhouse · Rating 1 out of 5]

So disappointed in this work by Mosley. Just a jumbled up mess. So many out of character aspects to the Thing. The story made little sense and it has only one redeeming quality. The Artwork is pretty good. But Mosley should stick to writing novels. This isn't his cup of tea. Damn I am disappointed. The Thing is my all time faovorite comic character. Heck my all time favorite fictional character period. Never gets a proper portrayal anymore. Wish Gerry Conway or Roy Thomas or Tom Defalco would comeback and do the Thing. Stan the Man is no longer with us, so that's out.

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

The art in general was cartoony but ok, but if you are going to do a book about the Thing, you should use an artist that can actually draw the Thing.
The story felt shallow and somewhat nonsensical. There were way too many places where I thought, “that’s not normal, or right”, but the characters just kept on like nothing was out of place.
I’m still not sure what actually happened. Who was the fairy girl? Why and how was the kid involved? What was the deal with the black hearts? Why did the Champion show up?

[Ryk Stanton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was almost afraid to review this book here. I mean, it’s Walter Mosley, you know? Amazingly popular author, and one that I particularly enjoy. And Ben Grimm, my new favorite character as of several years ago. So I had some pretty high expectations, and they were destroyed pretty quickly.

But then I got here, and so many other people were criticizing this book for the same reasons I was. So at least I’m not alone and thinking that this was not a very good effort on anyone’s parts. Except the art, the art was OK.

[Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Walter Mosley writes a decent Ben Grimm, but the rest of this story is a mess.
It's not bad, but it's a jumble that never fully clicks.

Lots of good comic booky elements, but too many forced moments or times when Ben or other members of the cast can't be bothered to ask basic, obvious questions.
It's frustrating, as this mini comes close to being really good, but then does something dumb, just because the plot needs it to happen.

Art's nice.