Thing
Like the rest of the Fantastic Four, Ben Grimm was once an ordinary human before being exposed to cosmic rays, turning him into the blue-eyed, ever-lovin' Thing. Now the self-proclaimed idol of millions, his big mouth writes a lot of cheques, but fortunately his rocky skin and super strength mean he can cash 'em.
Fiction
Enjoying a strawberry-scented bubble bath and a stogie while Reed and Susie were out shopping, the Thing was disturbed by a security alarm, alerting the building to an intruder in Reed's lab. Stopping to grab some shorts, the Thing arrived in the lab just in time to see the Human Torch being blasted by a gross gaseous monster. "Uncle Benjy" grabbed a busted computer bank to throw, but the intruder electromagnetised the console, burying the Thing under a pile of metal.
When the Thing freed himself, declaring it to be the time of clobbering, there was another intruder in the lab, a robot on one wheel. Telling him he'd had enough guff for one day, the Thing blocked the robot's exit and demanded an explanation. The android abruptly tripped him, and as he escaped through the window after ramping him, the Thing asked if this was any way to treat the idol of millions.
The Thing and the Torch tracked the two intruders to the nearby Quality Meat Market, where the monster, now in human form, was unconscious in the meat locker, with the robot having left instructions on how to preserve her in cryogenic storage while they searched for a cure for her condition. When Johnny explained the situation to Reed and Sue, Sue expressed how she felt sorry for the frozen scientist, but the Thing told her to save her pity for after he got finished with that dad-blasted robot. Kill Me or Cure Me
Ben would get his rematch with Machine Man after he and the living robot became embroiled in a conflict involving Ultron and his wayward creation, Jocasta. The New Machine Man
Notes
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- The Thing was pictured alongside many other Marvel heroes on the cover of Transformers U.S. issue 22,
as part of that month's celebration of 25 years of Marvel Comics. - The Thing had had his own Marvel UK comic in 1984, under the clunky title of The Thing is Big Ben.
The first four issues of that series reprinted ol' blue-eyes' encounter with Machine Man and Jocasta, which took place after – but was published before – "Kill Me or Cure Me". "The New Machine Man" fills in this narrative gap to prepare The Transformers readers for the second volume of Machine Man reprints.
