THE THING #4

Cover shows a visible vertical crease/press line running through the logo area, likely from the protective sleeve, along with a bit of surface sheen loss near the top edge. Corners appear reasonably sharp with no major blunting visible, and the spine shows no obvious major stress lines from this angle, though the book is in a plastic sleeve which obscures fine detail and possible edge wear. Colors remain bright with no visible fading or staining. Interior pages and back cover were not assessed.

Thing #4 continues the solo series Marvel launched for Ben Grimm in 1983 while John Byrne was simultaneously steering Fantastic Four. Byrne scripts, Ron Wilson pencils and Hilary Barta inks, with a cover by Brent Anderson, colors by Bob Sharen and lettering by Rick Parker under editor Ann Nocenti. The story sends the Thing and Lockjaw to the town of Rock Hollow, where a mutant boy, Lucas Jackson, and his mother Sarah Anne face a hostile mob, giving the issue the prejudice-and-outsider theme that ran through much Marvel writing of the period and that fits Ben Grimm more naturally than most. It is a self-contained chapter rather than a continuity landmark, and the characters introduced here did not become fixtures of the wider line.

The market treats this book as a run issue. Print runs in 1983 were large and newsstand copies were the norm, so supply in mid grades is deep and steady, and the title has never developed the speculative following attached to Byrne's Fantastic Four or Alpha Flight work of the same years. Demand comes from Byrne completists, Fantastic Four collectors filling the 36-issue solo run, and buyers assembling reader sets, all of whom transact at bulk-box levels. Certified copies are scarce simply because the grading cost outweighs the return; what census presence exists is thin at the top, which is the one factor capable of producing an outlier result when a high-grade slab does surface.

For a dealer archive, this is inventory that moves as part of a run rather than on its own merits, and it is best presented that way. Low-grade copies trade as filler, mid-grade copies as readers, and only a top-census slab attracts a specialist bidder, typically a registry-minded Fantastic Four collector rather than an investor. Buyers should expect the gap between raw and certified to be driven almost entirely by grading scarcity, not by the content of the issue, and should price accordingly when a 9.8 comes to market with no recent comparable behind it.