Top Five Most Iconic Thing Covers

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Sep 21, 2009

Here are my picks for the top five most iconic covers featuring Thing (with iconic being determined by what covers are most established and most recognized when it comes to Thing, with a preference towards covers that are homaged a lot). This is not a BEST cover list and due to the very nature of icons, very few (if any) recent covers will be on the list. A notable exception to the rules is that I don't count covers from a character's first appearance (which isn't applicable to all characters, of course, just those who appeared on the cover of the comic they debuted in), as those tend to be automatically iconic so they're boring. Here's a list of all characters featured so far.

Enjoy!

First off, while I'm exempting first appearance covers from the countdown, it's only fair, I suppose, to share them here before the countdown begins, so here is the first cover appearance of the Thing from his debut story, Fantastic Four #1...

Artist: Jack Kirby

Of all the characters featured, I think this is probably the one with the oddest covers for the list, in the sense that Jack Kirby was usually so good with having the covers shared on the Fantastic Four that he really very rarely had covers that spotlighted the Thing, and the ones that did usually came more towards the latter half of the Kirby/Lee run (the less iconic phase of the run), so the Thing ends up with a shocking lack of iconic Kirby covers.

Artist: Ron Wilson

I guess it makes some sense that Thing's own title would be well represented. This was a very iconic Thing story.

Artist: John Byrne

An iconic shot by an iconic Fantastic Four artist!

Artist: John Buscema

Of all the Thing/Hulk covers, I think this Buscema one is the most iconic from the Thing's perspective (I think FF #12 might be more iconic from the Hulk's perspective - the Starlin/Wrightson graphic novel was big, but Wrightson's cover was one of the weakest aspect of that book).

Artist: Ron Wilson