Walter Mosley's The Thing comic with Tom Reilly begins with a fishing trip

The Thing #1 excerpt (Image credit: Marvel Comics)

Acclaimed novelist Walter Mosley is going to be crisscrossing the Marvel U this fall, but don't worry - he has back-up: the Thing. After becoming one of the most popular living novelists with crime fiction such as the Easy Rawlins books, Mosley makes his comic book debut in a five-issue The Thing series with artist Tom Reilly.

Check out this four-page preview of The Thing #1:

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The Thing #1 preview

According to Marvel Comics, Mosley and Reilly's The Thing series will send the brooding Ben Grimm on a journey that'll tough on almost all corners of the Marvel U, with equal mixture of fighting and conversing.

Mosley's fascination for comic books - and the Fantastic Four - in particular, goes back to his childhood. Growing up in the late '50s and '60s in Los Angeles, Mosley snuck comics into the house under the nose of a father who disapproved of them. This fascination with the FF led him to understand that "entertainment, education, and art could all coexist in one form" as he states in the mid-'00s coffee table book Maximum Fantastic Four, which he conceived. Mosley is particularly a fan of FF co-creator Jack Kirby.

"As an adult I can also see the parallels between some of the greatest painters and Kirby's compositions - from Goya to the grotesques DaVinci drew, on to some of the most dynamic painters of our last century," Mosley said in the marketing for Maximum Fantastic Four. "Jack Kirby's unique sense of composition and narrative put him in a league along with these masters."

Walter Mosley's The Thing collaborator Tom Reilly has drawn the primary cover to The Thing #1, and there will be variants by Lee Bermejo, Superlog, Todd Nauck, and more. Check out The Thing #1 covers here:

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The Thing #1 covers

The Thing #1 (of 5) goes on sale on November 10.

Make sure you've read all the best Fantastic Four stories out there.

Chris Arrant covered comic book news for Newsarama from 2003 to 2022 (and as editor/senior editor from 2015 to 2022) and has also written for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Marvel Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, AdHouse Books, Cartoon Brew, Bleeding Cool, Comic Shop News, and CBR. He is the author of the book Modern: Masters Cliff Chiang, co-authored Art of Spider-Man Classic, and contributed to Dark Horse/Bedside Press' anthology Pros and (Comic) Cons. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. Chris is a member of the American Library Association's Graphic Novel & Comics Round Table. (He/him)