Reasons Why I Should Write The Thing, Part The Second

Or, 'There Are Nine Seas Not Seven, Actually'.

What are the other two? Space and Time respectively.

Ben Grimm was a pirate once. Just for a little while. Twice, actually, if you count that time he was also Sinbad. It's one of his fondest memories actually...what red-blooded, two-fisted brawler doesn't occasionally dream of taking to the high seas and plundering the ports of the world?

But, as any half-way decent historian (which Ben is, natch...I mean, if you travelled in time as much as the FF, wouldn't you do a bit of boning up on all of the possible eras you could be stranded in?) could tell you, there's a BIG difference between Captain Blood and the real deal.

This is something a version of the Thing found out, much to his cost, in his own universe. A universe where the Thing stayed in the past and played pirate until it stopped being fun and started being something altogether more unpleasant. See, unlike Reed Richards or Tony Stark or even Dr. Doom, the Thing (especially at this point in his history) had about as much respect for the time continuum as he did for oh, say, Namor. Not much, in other words.

Ever read Lest Darkness Fall? Think that, only in the Age of Piracy. With the Thing (excuse me, 'Blackbeard') in charge of a confederacy of freebooters and scalliwags that controls the Seven Seas. Sounds fun right? But the Thing of this universe is a savage, selfish bastard, having never reached the acceptance of his condition that the proper, 616 Thing did. He's become the angsty, frustrated, downright nasty monster he always feared himself to be. In the process, he's brought the whole world to a boil, and forced the sovereigns of half a dozen of the most powerful countries to band together in an effort to destroy his stranglehold on the seas.

And now to top it all off...he's gone. Vanished. Poof. Leaving a big orange hole in his universe. A spot that his most able advisers, including one Valeria Von Damme (ancestress of a certain doctor/dictator of ill-repute) attempt to fill with the aid of ancient sorceries...sorceries which pluck the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing out of his universe and into one where he's anything but ever-lovin'.

Forced to play the part of his doppelgänger as the navies of the Great Powers come for the final showdown in the Bermuda Triangle (because where else would the Thing have his base but Monster Island?), the Thing (our Thing) must find away to save a world his double screwed up as well as find out what happened to said double in the first place!

And that's just issue one...