The Thing with Charlton Comics

Category: Charlton
Last article published: 22 September 2015
This is the 10th post under this label
It has nothing to do with Ben Grimm. Charlton came out with this series in 1952, and it ended in 1954, although we should mention Steve Ditko did a number of stories, and I don't know what the original Marvel Bullpen talked about. It also doesn't have anything to do with The Thing from Another World, except that the movie came out the year before and Charlton was no doubt trying to capitalize on its brand by naming their sf/horror anthology "The Thing!". Indeed, there is no ONE Thing. The book was all short stories with many different "Things". This was a Thing:
And THIS was a Thing:
There were, by all accounts, several Things per issue. The only one that was ever called "The Thing" was in a prose story in the first issue. So I think Ben Grimm can still lay claim to being the one-and-only comic book Thing. Phew! That was close!

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Brendoon said…
I was reading a 1940 Captain Marvel and came across another title Charlton had first... Dan Dare! Instead of being the pilot of the future he was a private detective, (may have been a one shot story?) but I think it was a good decade before Eagle comics in the UK came up with the name themselves. In the fading British Empire we prided ourselves how much better at everything Englishmen were than the "Yanks". It was devastating to learn that our ubiquitous Action Man figure was a relabelled GI Joe... and Now this!
April 22, 2019 at 6:46 PM
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