10 Things Marvel Wants You To Forget About The Thing

2. He Turned Evil

Thing Evil Fear Itself
Marvel Comics

As far as comic book tropes go, seeing heroes turn evil has to be one of the worst, especially when it's temporary and out of character.

Marvel tried such a ploy with Daredevil for Shadowland, and followed it up with the Thing in the year afterwards during Fear Itself, a universe-wide comics event that featured Ben as your average, ordinary, everyday possessed hero. He's deployed as an antagonist throughout the comic as Angrir, the anointed 'Breaker of Souls', and reverts back to normal shortly after fighting Thor.

That wasn't the only time Ben's had to contend with an unfortunate event, sadly. In Original Sin, it turned out that he'd actually murdered the Puppet Master, and that Johnny had unwittingly sabotaged an experiment to bring him back to his normal form.

Event books don't seem to do ol' Ben any justice whatsoever, but at least things are looking up for him now, starring alongside Johnny in Chip Zdarksy and Jim Cheung's Marvel Two-in-One.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.