What I Bought 4/9/2022 - Part 3

Saved the one comic that was wrapping up for last, so it could get its own post. Do I have enough to say to justify that? Let's find out.

The Thing #6, by Walter Mosley (writer), Tom Reilly (artist), Jordie Bellaire (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - The only copy the store had was with the Mahmud Asrar variant cover, which is Ben glaring at us while holding a big sandwich. Like I'm gonna try to steal the Thing's sandwich. Be like stealing beer from Wolverine.

So Amaryllis is Death. She takes Doom, and she already has Alicia. If Ben wants Alicia to be free, he's got to give himself to Death. Conversely, he and Bobby could take Doom's deathless robot army and storm Death's realm themselves. They opt for "B", which is good, because it's much more fun to read. They fight some dead warriors, Ben takes care of Mot (who was Death's lackey I guess, rather than just Death in another disguise) and they rescue Doom, who has experienced the time as centuries of torture. 

Death has been kind enough to give Doom a new mask after Ben smashed the previous one, although it looks like it was made from a potato sack, so it's probably not an act of kindness. Makes Doom look like a scarecrow. His mother shows up, basically telling him to suck it up. She was kinder than that when he rescued her from Mephisto, but I guess she's learned what he got up to since her death in the interim.

Alicia, meanwhile, is handling being in the realm of the dead rather well. Turns out being a living person has certain advantages, as Alicia trounces some dead warrior bent on chopping a child up with an axe. Bellaire colors Alicia as brighter than everyone and everything around her. Sometimes with an actual glow, but mostly minus the grimy filter that everyone has. Then she confronts Death herself and they have a bit of a throwdown, which Alicia wins long enough for them to leave. I guess because, by fighting her, none of them are willing to accept Death, so she can't hold them. Everyone gets home, though Doom's mama stays behind, 'cause she's dead. Ben and Alicia get back together, and Bobby takes the Champion's teleporter belt and goes, somewhere.

Right before Alicia shows up, Ben has to fight another monster, who doesn't offer a name and looks like he might be out of Hindu mythology, based on the headgear Reilly draws, mostly. Ben can't beat him by fighting, but once he admits he just wants to find Alicia, the monster seems stymied. I think it's a misplay by Mosley, because Ben doesn't figure this out on his own, the weird orb/helmet thing he's wearing tells him that's the key. 

All through this story, Ben has met every challenge by punching first. Just two pages earlier, he wants to fight his way through the next wave of Death's forces rather than take off to find Alicia because he doesn't want to be a coward. Maybe it would have been unrealistic for Ben to just suddenly realize that refusing to fight is sometimes the smart move. That not every person that bars your way need to be met with violence. But he has shown intelligence and insight at points. Enough to recognize there was something unusual about Bobby and Amaryllis. Enough to get in touch with the Silver Surfer to take the Champion someplace else.

Maybe the point was he needed it pointed out to, in a way he couldn't dismiss. He and Alicia have a brief exchange near the end that suggests she's brought up his temper before, and Ben hasn't taken the conversation to heart. I do like that, at the very end, when he promises to try to be better, to get anger management, and rescue Alicia from Hell, Ben says the last one is the easy part. The grand gestures and declarations, the one-off things, those are easy to do. It's the everyday stuff that's hard, because you have to stick at it. But Ben doesn't give up, so maybe he can pull it off.