My Favourite Superhero is a Self-loather
By Dan Brown It’s a question every self-respecting geek must grapple with: Who’s your favourite superhero? Mine is the Thing, from the Fantastic Four. I’ve been a fan of many comic characters in my 57 years, but he is the one who remains closest to my heart after all this time. If you’re not a regular reader of Marvel Comics, the Thing is the one who looks like an anthropomorphic pile of orange rocks. Maybe you saw him in last summer’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps. His defining trait is that he doesn’t want to be a superhero and has many times tried to get changed back to just normal Ben Grimm. Unlike, say, DC’s Superman, the Thing hates being super-powered, and considers his condition a curse. He is, put simply, a self-loather. The first time I met the Thing was in the summer of 1977 when I picked up Fantastic Four No. 183. I got it at a variety store just down the road from Orr Lake, where I went with my parents and brother for our annual cottage visit with my mother’s side of the family. The furious action, the lively colours, the compelling dialogue . . . it captured me. I was later delighted to discover the Thing had his own title, Marvel Two-in-One, in which he would team up with other Marvel characters for side adventures. Fantastic Four always had a sci-fi feel. The leader of the group is Reed Richards, who was Grimm’s college roommate. Grimm piloted the spaceship that flew through a shower of cosmic rays, transforming each of the FF into their superpowered self. I grew to love Grimm because he was imperfect. For whatever reason or non-reason, the fact he was rough around the edges drew me to him. He didn’t speak in lofty superhero phrases, in fact he had a New York accent. I loved that he smoked cigars. I loved that he was the one who always started a poker game when other heroes came to visit the Baxter Building, the FF’s headquarters. When the team was battling villains like the shape-shifting skrulls, or Annihilus from the Negative Zone or Doctor Doom, there would inevitably come a moment when the Thing would really let loose with his stony fists. His war cry in those moments was “It’s clobberin’ time!” He also had other stock lines, including one – apparently inspired by radio comedies of yore – that he uttered darkly when a situation turned for the worse or became perplexing: “What a revoltin’ development!” In my young mind, it stuck. Of course, for Grimm the most revolting development of all was how he had been turned into a monster by his best friend, who insisted on breaching Earth’s atmosphere without proper shielding. Not to mention Grimm suspected Alicia Masters, his girlfriend, only loved him because, being blind, she couldn’t see his rocky visage. He may have been able to land a haymaker punch, but in life it was the Thing who got knocked down. Yet he always got back up. He did his stoic best. Eventually, he learned to make a kind of peace with the bum hand he had been dealt. What a role model! That’s me. Now let’s do you – who is your favourite superhero? Why that particular character? Let me know in the comments! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
