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.
The Fantastic Four, The Thing, and Lou Reed
By Dan BrownIt’s official: Pedro Pascal will play Reed Richards, also known as Mister Fantastic, in the upcoming Fantastic Four adaptation, expected in 2025.But this column isn’t about Pascal. It’s about another Thing entirely.As Hollywood history shows, the Fantastic Four property is easy to screw up, hard to get right. Considering recent signs Marvel’s superhero offerings are wearing out their welcome on both the big and small screens, the studio is taking a big risk. Also announced last week was Ebon Moss-Bachrach, a performer not known to me, will play Ben Grimm.I don’t have any brilliant suggestions for Marvel Studios beyond the obvious: The FF are a family, not just another team of superheroes. That’s what makes them different from the Avengers.I do, however, have a dream sequence in mind. All I humbly ask from Marvel’s big brains is they include what I describe below. No biggie.By dream sequence I don’t mean an actual dream, I mean it’s been playing in my mind for years in anticipation of another FF movie. I don’t much care about the rest of it, so long as I get a scene of the ever-loving and always-clobbering Thing walking down a crummy and litter-strewn Yancy Street in New York.That may not sound like gripping cinema, so let me explain.The first thing you need to know is how, according to online rumours, the FF movie is going to be a period piece set in the 1960s, which makes sense since the first FF comic ushered in the Marvel Age when it came out in 1961. Another rumour has it the film’s story unfolds in dual storylines, past and present.Given that, and given the FF making the Big Apple their home, this is what I would like to see.It’s later in the film. Ben Grimm has come to a level of acceptance of his fate: He will never be human again, he is destined to be a monstrous pile of orange rocks after the team’s disastrous experimental flight into space. He leaves the Baxter Building. He is wearing a trench coat and pulls his hat down as low as it will go – he’s still self-conscious about his appearance.He shuffles his bulk along the sidewalk. Maybe he lights a stogie. Then the strains of Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side start to play. The song, Reed’s ode to sexual freakery, came out in 1972, so it just fits in the timeline of the film and is the soundtrack to this scene.As Grimm lumbers in his childhood neighbourhood, we see people outside shops, pedestrians walking the other way, families sitting on stoops. Close up on the crowd. We see faces of different races and ethnicities. We see a spikey-haired punk rocker with a safety pin in her nose. We see a drag queen strutting proudly. Weirdo after weirdo.Then a call back to Frankenstein: A ball crosses Grimm’s path. He picks it up and tosses it back to an Asian child playing with his Black friend. The kid smiles. Grimm smiles back.Viewers get the point: This is where Grimm belongs. He isn’t as singular as he has come to think. He is just one more freak in a metropolis populated by freaks.In fact, New York is the only place he could belong: Grimm thinks he’s ugly and deformed, but in the hyper-diverse Lower East Side of Manhattan, it doesn’t matter.Such a scene would mark an important transition for the Thing, who is probably my favourite superhero. Do I think director Matt Shakman will actually borrow my brilliant idea? Naw, but a fan can dream.And judging by the many failed attempts to translate the Fantastic Four story into motion-picture form, he’s going to need a lot of help.Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 31 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
