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Featured creator Ron Wilson has shown up numerous times in the project, though I don't know that I've ever spent that much time thinking about his art. Mr. Wilson illustrated the Masters of the Universe comic produced by Marvel's Star Comics, but is better known for his tenure with The Thing, stretching over today's series and Ben Grimm's solo series from the late 80s. I used to have a fair chunk of that series too, but it's disappeared from the collection over the years somehow.
Mr. Wilson's work definitely hearkens to the 70s Marvel style for me - there's a lot of Rich Buckler in there, I think, though I'm really only beginning to appreciate some of the nuance that the artists of that period (the Bronze Age, I suppose) bring to the characters. There's much more of a cleaving to a "house style" during this era, so one has to look very closely to note the differences individual artists put into these characters. For Mr. Wilson, I say there's a lot of Rich Buckler there, but beneath that there's a fair bit of Kirby as well, though perhaps that has more to do with the house style than it does Ron Wilson's particular personal style.
What can I say about the comic otherwise? I really like the Marvel Two-In-One run from this era, especially when Tom DeFalco takes over. I've never really been a big fan of The Thing, but these team-up comics place him in interesting situations and remove him, for the most part, from the larger team dynamic within which he is usually presented. I think it allows us to see Ben Grimm for who he actually is, rather than as back-up for his more dynamic team mates. And it doesn't always work out well, as Grimm's derogatory attitudes toward Native Americans in the Marvel Two-In-One annual I reviewed here, attests. Ben gets better as the years roll on, as, one hopes, does the society that has produced his stories. I find that he's one of the Marvel heroes whose character development is most striking over the course of his existence. While some characters have remained pretty much how they were first portrayed (I'm thinking about Quicksilver, who shows up in this comic), the Thing undergoes quite radical shifts of his perspective. Can we make some preliminary suggestions over the relative traditional monstrousness of a character and their ability to grow and change? Is someone like Ben Grimm, as a result of his appearance, forced to shift and change his personality more than someone who looks stereotypically "normal?"
And just so we're clear here, Grimm then becomes a rather adroit metaphor for the very people whose uprisings I'm here supporting. And that's where our problems begin.
More to follow.
Further Reading and Related Posts
If you're interested in Marvel's young readers output in the 80s, have a look at the Star Comics stuff I've reviewed.
And for some of the Thing's team-based adventures, here's the reviews of the Fantastic Four that I've posted.
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