Comic Review: Thing (Vol.2) #4: Paws and Fast Forward

Thing (Vol.2) #4

Paws and Fast Forward

Written by Dan Slott
Illustrated by Andrea Divito
Published my Marvel Comics

This done-in-one issue is a bit sappy, but it has its fun moments. We open on the city of Attilan on the Blue Area of the moon, where the Inhuman Karnak is practicing his very Zen Ninja-like ability to destroy any item with a single blow. A fragment from the shattered block of “lunar marble” embeds itself in Lockjaw’s neck. Like the lion with a thorn in his paw, Lockjaw teleports from place to place (okay, maybe not exactly like the lion) in search of assistance, but everyone he encounters is too busy to pay any attention to him—except for Uatu the Watcher, who understands that he needs help, but is forbidden to interfere (like that ever stopped him before).

Meanwhile, Reed Richards launches some cockamamie scheme using his son Franklin as a guinea pig to teach Ben a thing or two about finances—primarily, how to manage them, and how to prevent them from changing you.

Along the way, Ben and Lockjaw are reunited—they spent a bit of time together in the Thing’s first series—and Ben removes the marble fragment from Lockjaw’s neck. Lockjaw is so grateful that he informs Blackbolt, the leader of the Inhumans, that he is leaving Attilan to live on Earth with Ben.

There is no real villain here, just a real brief battle with a Z-lister named Shockjock that seemed tacked on in order to appease action fans. The greatest scene here is actually a bit of a throwaway joke: the Human Torch gets so excited about his latest additions to his Little Black Book that he flames on, accidentally burning all of the girls’ digits.

Serves the precocious bastard right. What a chump.

What a revoltin' development!
--J/Metro