THE THING #20

Cover shows strong gloss and bright colors with sharp corners overall; a faint vertical crease/waviness is visible running through the upper right portion of the cover near the logo, and slight surface waviness near the top edge suggests minor handling. No major spine stress lines, tears, or color breaks are evident, and edges appear clean. Book is in a protective sleeve, which limits assessment of spine and back cover; interior pages were not examined.

The Thing #20 lands in the middle of the "Rocky Grimm, Space Ranger" sequence, the extended Battleworld detour that occupied Ben Grimm's solo title after Secret Wars, with John Byrne scripting, Ron Wilson penciling and Mike Gustovich inking. Wilson and Joe Sinnott supply the cover, a pairing that gave the series much of its house identity, while Bob Sharen colored and Jack Morelli lettered under editors Mike Carlin and Jim Shooter. The issue carries Ultron, the alien companion Llrrllllnnllyyrrl, Tarianna and the Takers, and it functions as a chapter in a serialized arc rather than as a standalone event; no first appearance, origin or death is attached to it.

Demand is driven almost entirely by run collectors filling the 1983-1986 Thing series and by Byrne completists, both relatively small and price-disciplined pools. Copies circulate in quantity, the print run was healthy, and unslabbed examples turn up regularly in dollar boxes and dealer bulk lots, which keeps the low and mid brackets compressed within a couple of dollars of each other. The certified market is essentially inactive: the census is thin because submission economics do not justify grading a non-key Copper Age issue, so high-grade slab value rests on the scarcity of certified copies rather than on any underlying demand for the book itself.

Buyers are set builders, Fantastic Four family readers and the occasional registry collector chasing a complete graded run, and that mix explains the shape of the market. Across low and mid grades the book trades as commodity stock, with condition barely moving the needle until near-mint territory, where the near-total absence of certified competition can produce outsized results relative to raw pricing. Anyone acquiring at the top end should treat the premium as a function of slab scarcity rather than collector demand, while raw copies remain a straightforward, low-cost way to complete the series.