10 Insane Alternate Versions Of The Thing You Won't Believe Exist

Here's the thing: there's a lot of Things.

And by Thing, we of course mean the ever lovin' Benjamin Grimm, the long-serving muscle of Marvel's first family, the Fantastic Four.

When he made his debut appearance in 1961, there really wasn't anyone else like the Thing. A superhero who looked more like something a superhero should fight, with the bad attitude and short temper of, well, a regular adult man. Despite resembling a pile of cracked orange rocks crudely assembled into an angry golem, the Thing was one of the most realistic depictions of a human being that superhero comics had seen at that time. He didn't have the uninfected virtuous spirit of Superman, or the unbreakable cool edge of Batman. He was just a regular, somewhat hot-headed man who reacted to his transformation the way any normal person would.

The idea of giving ordinary people extraordinary powers, and having them react realistically, proved extremely successful for the Fantastic Four. We've seen countless other superheroes follow this formula since, and that's not all: we have also seen a huge number of variations on the Thing himself.

Whether it's a being from an alternate reality, an in-universe copycat, or just a straight-up rip-off from another publisher, there are so many alternate versions of the Thing that we couldn't even fit them all on this list (apologies in advance to any Captain Thingbeard fans).

Call us Maria von Trapp, because these are a few of our favourite Things!

In the early 2000s, Marvel was still recovering from their late nineties bankruptcy, and they were willing to jump on any trend that could make them a few extra bucks. This was probably the thinking spawned the Marvel Mangaverse, an attempt to reinvent their flagship characters for fans of the Japanese comics that had suddenly exploded in popularity.

The Mangaverse was not just using a newly popular art-style as a gimmick, however. Yes, the comics were drawn in an Eastern style, but the stories within them were also completely retooled to incorporate the tropes and trends of manga and anime storytelling.

So, the Mangaverse's Benjamin (pronounced Ben-Ya-Meen) Grimm was no longer the grumpy rock monster we knew and loved. He was now a geeky young introvert with a stammer, who had the power to manipulate rubble and other 'urban material'. He used this power to create a mecha-like armour of rocks around his own body, and once armoured up, Benjamin's real personality would rise to the surface: a bad-ass, hyper-aggressive fighter with an extreme potty mouth.

Although he claimed to never notice any change in his personality, his teammates were quick to comment on how he would suddenly change from neurotic scaredy-cat to destructive renegade as soon as he was covered in a few hundred thousand tons of assimilated armour.