Legionnaires assemble!I'm writing an (unpaid) essay for a book about Ben Grimm's blue collar background. What scenes can you remember that show his background or worldview?
For example:
- The issue of Marvel Two-In-One where he sits in a bar with Sandman. He reflects on his past as a poor Lower East Side kid.
- The issue where he meets his former rabbi. (I don't remember the issue. Does anyone else?)
- "It Happened on Yancy Street." There are probably better issues dealing with the Yancy Street Gang, but that's the one that I recall.
Does anyone remember the issues I mention? And do you have any others that have stuck with you, that reveal some of Ben Grimm's hardscrabble origins?
Replies
The issue where Ben meets his former rabbi is FF #56, August 2002. Here's some info on it:
http://www.adherents.com/lit/comics/Thing.html
The Thing #1 (1983), written by John Byrne, depicts how he grew up. He’s shown to have been a member of the Yancy Street Gang himself, and to have been raised by his uncle after the death of his father. I believe the uncle was first introduced in Fantastic Four #239, which also established Aunt Petunia, his second wife, as a young woman.
The Yancy Street Gang guest-starred in Marvel Two-In-One #47 and #70. I haven’t read either issue. The first time they got a cover logo.
The Thing #2 (1983) depicted a serious romance Ben had in college.
Fantastic Four #11 established that he went to college on a football scholarship. It also established that he fought in the Pacific during WWII. In Capt. Savage and the Leatherneck Raiders #7 the title characters rescue him from the Japanese. He was a Marine pilot. I owe this point to Commander Benson.
In Fantastic Four #168, from the short 70s period when he was temporarily Ben Grimm again, he gets into a bar fight.
He’s interested in wrestling. I’m not sure when that first showed up: Fantastic Four #15, where he’s briefly a wrestler? He tried wrestling again in the 80s in The Thing around #30.
Back in the 70s he ate junk food and liked to watch the late show. There’s a bit in Fantastic Four #219 where he’s settling down to watch a movie, catches a news report on the rampage of a monster, and at first things it’s a Japanese movie.
Back in the day it was sometimes indicated that he didn’t always live at the Baxter Building. In Fantastic Four #65 there’s a scene where he’s shown as having shared a bed with Johnny and the dialogue indicates he stayed too late to go back to his own place. (At least, in the Marvel’s Greatest Comics reprint. I don’t have the original issue.) In Fantastic Four #201 his room on the cutaway of their headquarters is labelled “Ben Grimm’s living quarters (when in Baxter Bldg)”. The captions on the opening page Marvel Two-In One #19 indicate the setting is the Baxter Building, but it sure doesn’t look like it. But I don’t have the issue, so it might become clear in the art that that's the setting later.
In Fantastic Four #196 he spots John Wayne in Hollywood and gushes before grabbing and shaking his hand: “Right next’a Willie Bendix, he’s my one an’ only idol."
He can be spooked, as in Fantastic Four #95. In Nova #13 there's a bit where he gets spooked reading Dracula when Nova flies past his window.
In the first Mark Waid/Mike Wieringo issue of Fantastic Four Johnny sends Ben a fake Yancy Street package and the Thing heads off to Yancy Street for revenge. Sue forces Johnny to confess that he's been responsible for all the packages. He goes after the Thing and in the ensuring sequence the Thing says the packages drive him wild because he came from Yancy Street and they make him realise there's no going back there.
He worked as a military test-pilot and had a buddy named Desmond Pitt, later Darkoth the Death-Demon. (Fantastic Four ##193-194).
There's a bit in Fantastic Four #37 where Ben is complaining about Reed's explanation of sub-space travel and one of the others says "Ben, you old phony, as an ex-test pilot you probably know more about this than any of us do!" He's the one who recognises the Q-bomb in #38. In other issues, of course, he was portrayed as not really understanding Reed's technology. E.g. he'd call things garbled names.
I don't see why being a test pilot makes one an expert on space warping, but Ben is a college man. And he did room in college with Reed.
He's had repeated experiences as a spacecraft pilot as well as an aircraft pilot. He's the pilot in Fantastic Four #1, of course, and obviously has a reputation. Does he do that in #13? On the opening page of #14 he tells Reed to move over so he can over the controls and land the craft, but that's not shown in the art. Other instances are Fantastic Four #193 and #310. He acts as a test pilot for a rocket craft in Marvel Two-In-One #77, which issue also has a WWII flashback where he meets the Howling Commandos.
If there's no Yancy Street Gang then who were those guys waving handkerchiefs at Ben after he got the Valentine with the drawing of him in a tutu with the words "The Thing is a sissy!" All of them couldn't have been Johnny.
There was an early issue where Reed says Ben has a few degrees himself.
The 90s cartoon had Johnny flying the plane and Ben screaming he was getting airsick a lot. It also had a two part Namor story that I think was supposed to be based on FF Annual#1 but somehow ended up the most boring FF cartoon I ever saw.
I know that Ben went to college on a football scholarship but he also completed astronaut training during the 1950s.
From The Life of Riley Wikipedia page:
The reworked script cast Bendix as blundering Chester A. Riley, a wing riveter at the fictional Cunningham Aircraft plant in California. His frequent exclamation of indignation—"What a revoltin' development this is!"—became one of the most famous catchphrases of the 1940s. It was later reused by Benjamin J. Grimm of the Fantastic Four.
Did Grimm become a pilot because Riley worked at an aircraft plant?
I can't believe "Idol o' millions" is a phrase created in Fantastic Four, but Mr. Google is decidedly unhelpful tonight. Anyone know of a different use for it?
Other people must have googled it since it asked me if the results were helpful, unhelpful, slightly helpful, etc. Besides the Thing it keeps pushing the Torch and also suggested Elvis and Babe Ruth. I've noticed lately both google and Amazon have been incredibly unhelpful. Looking up ventriloquism on Amazon resulted in episodes of Howdy Doody, bad 90s comedies, and a cheap horror movie, but not a single book on the subject.
I'm sure it's a vaudeville joke. Stan's told the punchline somewhere: "Idol of millions...Sam Millions, the guy that delivers our mail." Sounds like the sort of thing Jimmy Durante might have said, he did a lot of comments like that. "Say I just had an argument with Ziegfield, on the corner of Broadway and 43rd. Ziegfield said Do you know who I am? I said Do you know who I am? He said Who are ya? I said nothing. I was cornered." (Interestingly, the Thing sounds like Durante in the infamous Fred and Barney Meet the Thing show where Ben was turned into a teenager.)
Some singers and movie stars become love objects for girls, some sports stars heroes for boys, and I would guess a lot of them have been called the idol of millions at one time or another. Frank Sinatra had that kind of audience when he was young and was also known for his blue eyes.
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