Thing’s solo comic has been, frankly, terrible. Maybe it’s because it’s so gimmicky—what with him being a pro-wrestler and all—that Mike Carlin decided to bring Thing back into the more traditional Marvel Universe by bringing on the bad guys. Unfortunately, the villains he chose were Sphinx and Puppet Master.
Sphinx kind-of-but-not-really hooks up with Puppet Master (both of them met with defeat at the hands of The Thing), and the two go after Thing. But Puppet Master decides to kill Sphinx rather than let Sphinx kill Thing. He does this by mind-controlling Sphinx into destroying the Ka Stone that enables him to be immortal.
Perhaps as a nod to how terrible this book is, the letter column announces that the book will end in a few more issues.
If they were honest, they’d admit the only reason this book got launched in the first place was to allow John Byrne to put She-Hulk into the Fantastic Four. It was Byrne’s pet project, and really Byrne’s only failure during this 1980s Marvel tenure, and it should have died when he quit the title.
For the complete history of the MU, year by year, go here.
And see my Ratings of Runs on comics here.