The Thing #4
The Thing #4 (2025) is the dramatic penultimate chapter of the fourth solo series ever dedicated to Ben Grimm — a character who, despite being a cornerstone of Marvel since Fantastic Four #1 (1961), has rarely sustained an extended spotlight of his own. The issue represents the escalation point of Tony Fleecs and Justin Mason's love letter to the street-level, villain-gauntlet storytelling of the Marvel Bronze Age, pitting the Thing against one of the publisher's most recognizable heavy-hitters in the Juggernaut while foregrounding the child-protection stakes that give the arc genuine emotional weight. Its deliberate mid-1980s aesthetic and self-contained continuity stance make it accessible to readers arriving fresh from the 2025 MCU film, broadening the character's footprint at a culturally significant moment. As part of a five-issue run capped by a collected edition, the issue functions as the fulcrum on which the series' central mystery — who is orchestrating the hit on Ben Grimm and why — tips toward resolution.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Marvel announced the series in February 2025, positioning it as an event-adjacent companion piece timed deliberately ahead of the theatrical release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps (July 2025), giving retailers a Ben Grimm solo title on shelves when mainstream awareness of the character was at a modern peak. Tony Fleecs, whose creator-owned work on Stray Dogs demonstrated a gift for mixing nostalgia with darker emotional undercurrents, was paired with Justin Mason, fresh off Spider-Punk, a collaboration that brought a kinetic, street-level energy suited to the Yancy Street milieu. Editor Darren Shan oversaw the project under editor-in-chief C.B. Cebulski, and the team made the conscious choice to set the story in a floating, mid-1980s-inflected continuity — keeping the Fantastic Four at the Baxter Building and deploying a roster of classic villain designs — rather than anchoring it to any specific current Marvel continuity moment.
Trivia · 9 facts
- Published August 27, 2025 by Marvel Comics; issue #4 of a five-issue limited series (Thing Vol. 4).
- Written by Tony Fleecs (Stray Dogs, Venom War: Wolverine); pencils and inks by Justin Mason (Spider-Punk); colors by Alex Sinclair; letters by VC Joe Caramagna; cover by Nick Bradshaw with colors by Rachelle Rosenberg.
- Edited by Darren Shan under editor-in-chief C.B. Cebulski.
- Central conflict: Ben Grimm faces the Juggernaut (Cain Marko) while trying to protect an innocent child, with an unidentified figure observing the battle from the shadows — a mystery seeding the finale.
- No new first appearances are confirmed in issue #4 specifically; the series' sole documented first appearance (Marty Flynn, a character from Ben's Yancy Street past) occurred in issue #1.
- The series is deliberately set in a non-specific, Baxter Building-era continuity evoking mid-1980s Marvel, meaning several characters' costumes and status are intentionally anachronistic relative to strict Earth-616 chronology.
- Two covers were produced for the issue: a standard Nick Bradshaw cover and a Todd Nauck Iconic Variant.
- The complete series was subsequently collected in a trade paperback edition; this is only the fourth self-titled solo Thing series in Marvel history (following Vol. 1: 1983–1986, Vol. 2: 2006, Vol. 3: 2022).
- The series was timed to coincide with the theatrical release of Marvel Studios' The Fantastic Four: First Steps (July 2025), positioning it as a new-reader entry point.
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Reprints
Reprinted in The Thing: The King of Yancy Street #[nn] (2025), La chose - Le roi de Yancy-Street #[nn] (2025)
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