The Thing

Last Thursday I was getting a haircut, and my stylist (I pay him more than $20, so I think that's the appropriate definition) is right next to the comic book/hobby store. I wandered in to see if I could find Eryn her first comic book. There weren't any Richie Rich or Sabrina the Teenage Witch, comic books I remember as being inoffensive from my comic-book heavy childhood (I used to cruise down the street to the dime-sale comic book guy's store on a tricycle if my memory serves me correctly. I might have even gone on my Fisher Price ATV), but I was on a mission, and knew there had to be something that wasn't along the lines of Sexy Quarter-Dressed Death Knight of the Heavenly Veldt. I paged through several Simpsons comic books and a number of Futurama issues and finally settled on a mostly non-violent copy of each. However, in the checkout line, after remarking to the cashier that they were my little girl's first comic books, he handed me a very old copy of The Thing - the big orange guy from the Fantastic Four - with the comment, "So she knows what it was like when you were a kid."

What's it about? The Thing is on some other planet and can now control his Thing-ness and does so to the end of delivering a small child to some alien city past unicorns that poke him in the butt (literally - I can't tell if it's gay subtext) and strange guys flying around on big red bats that go "Screeeee!". He has a (female), alien companion who doesn't quite understand English, so she constantly refers to the child as Juneyar. Guess whether Eryn likes the three superhero Barts Simpson comic best or her copy of The Thing? I am primarily urged to read the bits where the bats go Screeeee and where Ben Grimm actually makes his change from human to The Thing - apparently those are the best parts.