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Benjamin
J. Grimm was born on Yancy Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side, where
he grew up in poverty. His father, an alcoholic, was unable to hold a
job. Much of the family's income came from Grimm's older brother,
Daniel, who obtained funds illegally as leader of the Yancy Street
Gang. Grimm, who idolized his brother, became embittered against the
world when Daniel was killed in a battle between rival gangs. Grimm was
only 8 years old at the time; within 10 years, he had succeeded his
brother as leader of the Yancy Street Gang. After his parents died,
Grimm was taken in by his Uncle Jake, who had risen from poverty to
become a successful physician. At first, Grimm resisted his new
guardians' kindness toward him. But eventually, he came to return their
love. He left his life with the Yancy Street Gang behind, entered high
school, and became a football star there. While he was a senior at
Stuyvesant High School, Ben received a football scholarship to Empire
State University.
Grimm's
freshman year roommate was the brilliant science student Reed Richards,
who became his closest friend. During their first meeting Richards
confided in Grimm his intention someday to build a starship for
interstellar travel. Grimm jokingly promised that he would pilot the
starship for Richards if he ever built it.
Upon
graduating Grimm went into the U.S. Air Force and became a highly
skilled test pilot and astronaut. In the meantime Richards went ahead
with his project to build a starship, using both his own fortune and
funding from the Federal government. On the day that Grimm left the
military, Richards came to Grimm to remind him of his promise to pilot
the starship.
Richards' project was based in Central
City, California. When the federal government threatened to withdraw
its funding from Richards' project, Richards decided to take the
starship on a test flight himself as soon as possible. Grimm was
opposed to the idea, warning that the starship's shielding might prove
to be inadequate protection from intense radiation storms.
Nevertheless, Grimm was persuaded to serve as pilot, and Richards'
future wife Susan Storm and her adolescent brother Johnny insisted on
accompanying Richards' as passengers. The four friends stole onto the
launch facility, entered the starship, and launched it. They intended
to travel through hyperspace to another solar system and back. However,
unknown to Richards, a solar flare caused Earth's Van Allen radiation
belts to be filled temporarily with unprecedented (as far as is known),
ultra-high levels of cosmic radiation. Since the ship was designed to
shield against ordinary levels of radiation, the cabin interior was
subject to intense cosmic ray bombardment which irradiated the four
passengers and wrought havoc on the ship's controls. Pilot Grimm was
forced to abort the flight and return to Earth.
Once
back on Earth, the four passengers discovered that the cosmic radiation
had triggered mutagenic changes in this bodies. Grimm was transformed
into an orange colored, thick-skinned, heavily muscled, and
superhumanly strong "thing." Richards convinced the three others that
the four of them should use their new powers for the good of humanity
as members of a team ha named the Fantastic Four. Richards called
himself Mister Fantastic, Susan and Johnny Storm took the names of the
Invisible Girl (later Woman) and the Human Torch, and Grimm, morose
over his new grotesque appearance, named himself the Thing. Under
Richards' leadership the Fantastic Four has become Earth's most honored
team of superhuman adventurers, and has saved the world from conquest
or destruction many times.
Over the years the mutations to
the Things body have continued to progress
slowly. The composition of his epidermis changed from an abnormally
dense, somewhat lumpy but still comparatively smooth hide to a
flexible, interlocking network of rock-like lumps. His superhuman
strength increased considerably over time. Early in Grimm's life as the
Thing, he would sometimes revert to his original human form
unexpectedly. But neither these changes nor those induced by Richards
in his efforts to turn Grimm back to human form ever proved to be
permanent. Eventually Grimm always reverted to his monstrous,
superhumanly powerful form. Appalled by his appearance, Grimm was at
first filled with anger at his situation, but he eventually became
resigned to his fate, although he continued to be disturbed by his
appearance and to hope for a means of regaining his human form that
would last. Instrumental in helping Grimm to adjust to his life as the
Thing was the blind sculptress Alicia Masters, with whom Grimm fell in
love. Reed Richards eventually discovered that Grimm had reached a
state in which he could transform from his Thing form to human form and
back at will. However, Grimm feared that Alicia Masters would only love
him as the Thing, for she had not known him before his initial
transformation. Hence, Grimm suffered from a subconscious mental block
that prevented him from becoming human.
The relationship between Grimm
and Masters was suffering from strains
when
Grimm was transported to the distant "Battleworld" by the alien
Beyonder for the first of the so-called "secret wars." On that planet
Grimm found himself able to change to human form and back. Concealing
his discovery of Grimm's mental block for fear of hurting his feelings.
Richards claimed that the nature of the planet itself was somehow
responsible for Grimm's ability to transform back and forth. Once the
"secret war" was over, Grimm remained on the planet for months.
Eventually, however, he found himself trapped once again in his
monstrous form, unable to change to human form, and he returned to
Earth. There Grimm learned that his teammate Johnny Storm and Alicia
Masters had become lovers, and that Reed Richards had concealed the
information about his mental block from him. Furious and distraught,
Grimm quit the Fanatic Four. He worked for a time as a superhumanly
strong wrestler for the Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation, and also
participated in missions with the West Coast Avengers.
Grimm was about to accept
membership in the West Coast Avengers when he
began
to undergo further mutation, becoming, at least in his own mind, still
more grotesque. Greatly disturbed, Grimm journeyed to Monster Island,
where he had first encountered his foe, the Mole Man. Now, however, the
Mole Man befriended the Thing and welcomed him into the society he had
organized in his underground realm, composed of physically ugly people
like himself who had believed themselves to be outcasts in the surface
world. Grimm agreed to help the Mole Man in his attempt to use an earth
shifting machine to raise a small continent in the Pacific Ocean to
serve as a homeland for the Mole Man's society. While Grimm lived in
the Mole Man's realm, his most recent mutations went into remission,
leaving him looking little different than before these recent mutations
had begun.
The three other original
members of the Fantastic Four found the Thing
in
the Mole Man's realm, where Reed Richards realized that by raising a
continent in the Pacific, the Mole Man would trigger earthquakes that
would destroy California. The Thing joined Mister Fantastic, the
Invisible Woman, and the Human Torch in destroying the Mole Man's
earth-shifting machine, and rejoined the Fantastic Four
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