DC’s “The Flash” team (Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins) comes to Marvel for an inventive 4-issue miniseries focusing on Ben Grimm. This was part of the “Icons” cluster of miniseres.
It starts with Ben as a kid, sneaking into a traveling circus to see a freakshow, and getting cursed by gypsy. Young Ben is kind of a jerk and he bullies a deformed kid whose mother then tells him that some day Ben will know the tears of being ugly…
We’re then in the future where Ben takes a vacation in Florida (after helping his team beat the Wrecking Crew), and while there he comes across the same circus and the same kid…Now a man. Although Ben now has empathy for the boy, the boy remembers him–and wants to fight.
Turns out, the boy is mind-controlled by a sinister being hiding in the carnival. Ben finds himself in the middle of a group of Kree hunting some skrulls hiding in the carnival–led by Paibok.
The skrulls have been holding the carnies hostage while waiting for the birth of baby. The Kree are there, also for that baby.
What are they all fighting over?
A baby Watcher!
As far as I know, this is the only time we’ve seen a baby Watcher.
Ben fights EVERYONE and frees the carnival from the skrulls, and in the end more Watchers appear to claim their baby.