The Best Man

Johnny stole Alicia Masters off of Thing. Then Johnny had the audacity to ask the Thing to be the best man at his wedding, Ben goes berserk . Chasing him across the Four Freedoms Plaza, Sue and Reed step in to try and calm down but Ben is too angry to be talked down. Instead of continuing his altercation with Johnny, Ben decides to go out and blow some steam.So he goes downtown for a drink. In the lobby he is swarmed by reporters who want to know what his status with the group is and if his return to the Fantastic Four is marking the end of She-Hulk's membership on the team. Among the group is Daily Bugle photographer Peter Parker -- secretly the hero Spider-Man -- When Ben shoves aside one of the reporters, Peter uses his spider-like reflexes to save them from a nasty spill. As Ben is getting into a cab, She-Hulk and Wyatt ask him where he is going and that he is going to miss the wedding party. The Thing simply ignores them and dives off. When they get upstairs, She-Hulk learns what happens and she reams out Johnny for being so insensitive as to ask Ben to be his best man while he is still hurting over the fact that Johnny and Alicia are together. She-Hulk decides to resolve matters in her own hands and storms out of the building. Johnny apologizes to Reed and Sue for causing so much trouble when they are about to officially open their headquarters to the public.

Meanwhile, She-Hulk manages to track Ben down to a bar and convinces him to start talking about his past relationship with Alicia. Ben recalls how he first met her when her step-father the Puppet Master first attacked the Fantastic Four years earlier. Using his puppets to take control of Ben and then disguising Alicia as Sue, he sent the Thing to attack Reed Richards. However that plan was foiled when Ben stumbled over some chemicals that briefly changed him back to human form, severing the control the Puppet Master had over him. The two began dating almost immediately after that, and Ben didn't mind how strange he looked because Alicia seemed to love him no matter what he looked like, being blind. Ben's recollection is interrupted when the television begins playing news coverage of the opening ceremonies for the Fantastic Four's new headquarters. Ben gets upset and demands the television be turned off, when the bar tender refuses, the Thing throws his beer bottle at the television destroying it. She-Hulk smooths over the situation, pays for the damages and tells Ben that she is going to take him someplace else.

Back at headquarters, Reed concludes his unveiling, announcing the name of their new headquarters as the Four Freedoms Plaza. When the press begins asking questions about the Thing, Johnny takes this moment to slink away. Noticing this, Peter Parker decides to see what's wrong and slips away himself to change into Spider-Man. Spidey catches up to the Torch and the two begin talking about what's going on. Spider-Man is shocked to hear that the Torch is getting married. As Johnny begins talking about what's going on, they are overheard by a woman in the apartment below. Hearing this news, the woman rushes to the phone and calls the Daily Bugle newsline.

Elsewhere in the city, the She-Hulk and Thing arrive at Al's Bar, a dive that is located near a building that is about to be demolished. Inside the bar are members of the demolition crew who are having a few drinks after their shift. The room grows immediately quite when the two powerhouses enter the establishment. Sitting in a booth in the back, Ben talks about the end of his relationship with Alicia. How she wanted them to get married, but Ben didn't feel that he could as long as he was the Thing. Then Alicia was hospitalized after she was tortured by Annihilus. This led Ben to think that they should stop seeing each other. Before he could tell her this, Ben was whisked away with other heroes to take place in the Beyonder's Secret Wars. There he discovered during a battle that he could change back and forth between his human and Thing forms on Battleworld. He then goes on to explain how he decided to stay on Battleworld until he lost his power to change back into human form and learned too late that Reed knew he had the power to change back and forth all along. He then quickly recounts returning to Earth and discovering that Johnny and Alicia had since formed a relationship. This led to Ben leaving the Fantastic Four and wandering the United States to figure out where he belonged. He then tells Jennifer how he thought he found his place fighting in the Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation. But during his time there he started to mutate even more forcing him to hide. This led to his eventually living with the Mole Man who cured him. He finishes his tale by telling her that he grudgingly returned to the Fantastic Four and is hurt because Johnny asked him to be his best man.

She-Hulk is annoyed by this point, explaining to Ben that he is not the only one out in this world suffering. She compares Ben's problems to that of her cousin Bruce, who has to live with the nightmare of being the Hulk and having no control over his alter-ego. When Ben is upset by the comparison he smashes the table with his fist. This causes the bartender to ask them to step outside if they are going to fight. She-Hulk thinks this is a perfect idea and literally throws Ben out of the bar and into the building slated for demolition. There the two fight it out as the construction workers cheer them both on. The two fight it out but are too evenly matched, but succeed in demolishing the buildings. The 2 of them brutally beat each other through loads of buildings. They destroy about a city block, and much debris lands on them. They pull themselves out of the rubble, and She hulk tells him they better quit fighting because there's only one building left and his fan club is on top of it. Ben pauses when he hears the demolition workers cheering him on. The Thing realizes that She-Hulk instigated the fight in order to allow him to blow off steam. He also feels duped because she took him to a HUGE demolition sight so their fight didn’t hurt anybody and actually helped the demolition crew. Eventually, the Torch and Spider-Man arrive and Johnny apologizes to Ben for not considering his feelings. Ben tells Johnny that he is sorry as well, realizing how important the big day is for himself and Alicia and decides that he is going to be the best man at the wedding after all. With everything cleared up, Ben and She-Hulk decide to go and get another drink -- this time some non-alcoholic ones.

Recurring Characters

Fantastic Four (Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, She-Hulk), Thing, Wyatt Wingfoot, Spider-Man

Continuity Notes

• Johnny asks Ben to be his best man at his wedding. He is going to marry a woman everyone thinks is Alicia Masters. In reality, as revealed in Fantastic Four #358, this is not Alicia but Lyja a Skrull spy sent to spy on the Fantastic Four. She took Alicia's place during the events of Fantastic Four #265. Johnny proposed to "Alicia" in Fantastic Four #297, the couple will get married next issue.

• Ben's recounting of the Fantastic Four's first battle with the Puppet Master and the first time he met Alicia is taken right from the pages of Fantastic Four #8. Ben and Alicia began dating immediately after in Fantastic Four #9.

• This issue is the first time the Fantastic Four's new headquarters, the Four Freedoms Plaza, is named. Their original headquarters the Baxter Building was destroyed by Kristoff Vernard in Fantastic Four #278. The construction of the Four Freedoms Plaza began in Fantastic Four #285 and was completed in Fantastic Four #296.

• Following their unveiling here, Reed and Sue are next seen in the second story of Fantastic Four Annual #22. In that story, they discover that the Watcher recovered all Reed's inventions and other personal possessions moments before Kristoff destroyed the Baxter Building.

• On the cover of this issue, Spider-Man is depicted wearing his trademark red and blue costume, yet within the story, he is wearing a black and white costume. In Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #8, Spider-Man used a machine to create a black and white costume after his costume was damaged. Later in Amazing Spider-Man #258, Peter discovered that the "costume" was actually a living creature and had it removed from his body. Since then Peter began alternating between his trademark costume and wearing a fabric version of his black and white costume. It should be clarified that the costume worn here is a cloth replica, not the alien symbiote. At the time of this story, the symbiote was seemingly slain in Web of Spider-Man #1.

• Ben goes through a substantial chunk of his recent history leading up to this moment. Some moments he is detailed about, others he glosses over. Here are some points:

  • What he omits off the top is that in Fantastic Four #245 Reed had realized that Ben could change back and forth between his human and Thing forms at will but his belief that his girlfriend Alicia Masters only loved him at the Thing. Reed kept this a secret.

  • He then goes on to talk about how Alicia was brutally tortured by Annihilus. This happened in Fantastic Four #251-256.

  • Alicia's recovery in the hospital and Ben's doubts about their relationship, including Alicia's insistence they get married was covered in the Thing #2-10. Just prior to when most of the Fantastic Four were among those kidnapped by the Beyonder to battle in the first Secret Wars on Battleworld. Ben discovered he could change back and forth and believe it was because of Battleworld itself. In Ben's recollection of his ability to do so is when he battled the Absorbing Man in Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #8. That was the second time he shifted into human form during that event, the first time being in Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #3.

  • Thinking that it was Battleworld that allowed the Thing to change form, he decided to stay there in Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #12.

  • Ben remained in Battleworld between Thing #11-22 where he eventually lost his ability to change back into Ben Grimm and returned to Earth.

  • When he arrived in Fantastic Four #257 he discovered that Johnny was now in a relationship with "Alicia". Finally in Thing #23 the truth of what Reed had known came out and the Thing quit the Fantastic Four. He began wandering the country since that story.

  • Ben joined the UCWF in Thing #28 and remained with the organization until issue #36 of that series. He glosses over the fact that he met and fell involve with a woman named Sharon Venture and was in the process of uncovering the Power Broker's hold over the drug addicted super-human wrestlers.

  • In Thing #36, Ben was injected with a virus that caused him to mutate into an even more hideous form, he fled hospitalization. Again he glosses over the fact that this was done to him by the Power Broker.

  • He ended up joining the Mole Man's society in Fantastic Four #296 where he was cured of his condition but still held a grudge against Reed and the Fantastic Four for everything that happened to him. Despite this he grudgingly rejoined the team.