It elaborated on Ben Grimm's poor childhood on Yancy Street in its early issues, and chronicled the Thing's later foray into the world of professional wrestling.

It also featured a major storyline offshoot from Marvel's Secret Wars event, in which the Thing elects to remain on the Beyonder's Battleworld after discovering that the planet enables him to return to human form at will.

In 2003, Marvel released a four-issue miniseries written by Evan Dorkin and illustrated by Dean Haspiel, The Thing: Night Falls on Yancy Street.

[11] Born on Yancy Street in New York City's Lower East Side, to a Jewish[12] family, Benjamin Jacob "Ben" Grimm has an early life of poverty and hardship, shaping him into a tough, streetwise scrapper.

[16] Excelling in football as a high school student, Ben receives a full scholarship to Empire State University, where he first meets his eventual lifelong friend in a teenaged genius named Reed Richards, as well as future enemy Victor von Doom.

Prior to the stories published in the 1970s, Grimm, after earning multiple advanced degrees in engineering,[18] serves in the United States Marine Corps as a test pilot during World War II.

[20] Following this, he becomes an astronaut for NASA,[volume & issue needed] taking part in attempts to reach the Moon, occurring at a time before any crewed spaceship had escaped Earth's gravity.

He recites the Shema, an important and oft-recited Jewish prayer (which, translated to English, begins "Hear, O Israel") over the dying Sheckerberg, who eventually recovers.

During this unauthorized ride into the upper atmosphere of Earth and the Van Allen Belts, they are pelted by a cosmic ray storm and exposed to radiation against which the ship's shields are no protection.

Grimm's skin is transformed into a thick, lumpy orange hide, which gradually evolves into his now-familiar craggy covering of large rocky plates.

[29] Years later, after Grimm chose to remain on Battleworld in the aftermath of the "Secret Wars" due to his apparent control over his transformation between his human and mutated states, he asked the She-Hulk to fill in for him.

[30][31] The Thing's time on Battleworld lasted until Ben eventually decides to return home after defeating Ultron and slaying his manifested dark side Grimm the Sorcerer.

Fantastic and the Invisible Woman leave the team to raise their son Franklin, at which point Ben invites Crystal and Ms. Marvel II (Sharon Ventura) to fill their slots.

Some personality traits of the cantankerously lovable, occasionally cigar-smoking, Jewish native of the Lower East Side are popularly recognized as having been inspired by those of co-creator Jack Kirby, who in interviews has said he intended Grimm to be an alter ego of himself.

When Reed and Sue arrive near the issue's end, they announce that they are taking a break from the team and have found two replacement members: the Black Panther, and Storm of the X-Men.

"[44] Ben Grimm served as one of the pallbearers at the memorial service for Captain America, along with Tony Stark, Ms. Marvel, Rick Jones, T'Challa and Sam Wilson.

[49] In the Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four miniseries, the Skrull Lyja, posing as Sue, sends the Baxter Building, with Ben, Johnny, Franklin, and Valeria inside, into the Negative Zone.

[50] With the aid of the Tinkerer, who Ben broke out of the Negative Zone Prison, they, with the exception of Lyja who stayed behind,[51] were able to return to the regular Marvel Universe just after the invasion was over.

[54] In this form, he then destroys Yancy Street and Avengers Tower,[55] and battles Spider-Man,[56] Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman,[57] before confronting Thor, who seriously wounds him.

[62] Although power-dampeners in the Raft restrict his strength to a more manageable level, he is attacked by various other thick-skinned superhumans — including the Armadillo and Ironclad — on orders of the current 'boss' of the prison, Sharon Ventura, the She-Thing.

[63] Eventually, Ben forms an alliance with the Sandman and manages to escape the prison with the aid of a plan coordinated by the She-Hulk and Ant-Man, allowing him to rejoin Sue and Johnny to investigate Reed's recent abduction,[64] revealing that the dead Puppet Master came from the alternate Earth Franklin had created.

[volume & issue needed] As the Fantastic Four disbanded in the aftermath of the "Secret Wars" storyline, the Thing is working with the Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Human Torch is acting as an ambassador with the Inhumans and becoming part of the Uncanny Avengers.

[66] To help the Thing cope with Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman's disappearance, the Human Torch takes him on a journey through the Multiverse, using the Multisect to find them.

Although the Baxter Building is now owned by a new superhero team, Fantastix, the Thing allows his teammates to use his hometown in Yancy Street as their current operation base.

[volume & issue needed] He is capable of surviving impacts of great force without sustaining injury, as his body is covered with an orange, flexible, rock-like hide.

[89] In the Age of Apocalypse, Ben Grimm never becomes the Thing, and instead is a Human High Council Agent, fighting Apocalypse's forces, alongside Clint Barton (Hawkeye), Donald Blake (Thor), Carol Danvers (Ms. Marvel), Gateway, Gwen Stacy, Tony Stark (Iron Man), Susan Storm (Invisible Woman), and Victor von Doom (Doctor Doom).

[91] Ben Grimm's counterpart is shown to be unaffected by the cosmic radiation and is currently assisting Richards by gathering data held by the High Evolutionary.

Following Black Skull's defeat, Ant-Man joins Robbie Reyes and his Deathlok companion in their quest to liberate the enslaved Earths from the Multiversal Masters of Evil as he leaves Infinity Thing and Wonder Man to rebuild Earth-818.

In Marvel Two-in-One #100 (June 1983), Reed examines records of that trip and determines that Ben did not create that reality after all, based on a newspaper that shows the name of the city as "New Amsterdam" instead of "New York".

Grimm's decision to refuse Richards' offer seems to be the single moment that caused this reality to go horribly wrong, with ramifications leading to a corrupt government, concentration camps and the horrific fates of the would-be Marvels of this universe.