THE THING #17

Cover shows good gloss and color with no major creases, but there is a visible diagonal crease/bend line running through the upper right portion of the cover near the title logo, plus a couple of minor stress lines. Corners appear reasonably sharp with slight blunting. The book is in a protective sleeve which shows some surface wrinkles/reflections that may be from the sleeve rather than the comic itself. Interior and back cover were not assessed.

Published with a November 1984 cover date, The Thing #17 falls in the stretch of the character's first solo title that followed Secret Wars, with Ben Grimm remaining on Battleworld while the rest of the heroes returned to Earth. Mike Carlin scripts, Ron Wilson pencils, and Joe Sinnott inks over Wilson's cover, continuing a creative pairing that defined most of the run and carried forward from their long association on Marvel Two-in-One. The issue turns on the abduction of Tarianna, the idealized woman Grimm's own imagination brought to life on the patchwork planet, and introduces the strongman antagonist known as the Rekoner into that storyline. It is a connected chapter of a self-contained arc rather than a debut or origin, and it has no first appearance of lasting market consequence.

Market behavior matches that profile. Copies circulate freely in dealer boxes and online, supply well exceeds demand, and the book trades as run filler for collectors assembling the complete 1983 series or completing their Secret Wars-adjacent reading. The newsstand designation carries no premium here: in 1984 newsstand distribution still accounted for the bulk of Marvel's print run, and direct-market copies of this issue are the comparatively less common format. Certified examples are scarce simply because almost no one submits the book, so what slabbed activity exists reflects the cost of grading more than any underlying scarcity value.

Buyers are largely Fantastic Four and Thing completists, Battleworld continuity readers, and collectors who follow Ron Wilson's long tenure drawing the character. Across grades the book compresses sharply: low-grade and mid-grade raw copies sit within a dollar or two of each other, and any meaningful step up in price occurs only at the top of the census, where a high-grade certified copy commands a premium tied to registry set-building rather than speculative interest. For a dealer archive, it is best positioned as a run-fill offering, moved most efficiently in lots or as part of a complete-series presentation.