Monday, April 15, 2019

Original art from the wedding of the Thing and Alicia!

In December, 2018, in the pages of Fantastic Four #5, Ben Grimm and Alicia Masters finally got married! When I read the issue, I said to myself, "if the artist ever sells pages from this issue, I need to get one." Well, Aaron Kuder, the book's regular artist, put a bunch of pages from this issue on sale recently and I jumped at the chance to get one. Let's take a look!


This is page 58 of the oversized issue, and this particular page happens immediately after Ben and Alicia share their "you may now kiss the bride" moment. Kuder both pencilled and inked the page, so I didn't have to choose between one and the other.

Ben and Alicia have been destined for each other since Fantastic Four #9 (1962), so it's great to see them finally tie the knot, more than 50 years later. One of the covers for the issue (by Alex Ross, pictured below) was an homage to FF Annual #3, which featured the wedding of Reed and Sue.


The Thing appears in every panel of this page, from the top sequence where he's breaking the glass:


At the bottom half of the page, we can see quite a few other supporting characters, including Reed, Sue and Johnny, Alicia, Franklin, Valeria, Aunt Petunia and more!


I kinda never thought I'd be able to buy artwork from such an important issue in the life of the Thing, but the page I bought was surprisingly affordable and I managed to grab it before someone else came along. This is a great page and I'm so happy to have it!

Lastly, here's the page as it was in print:


And they lived happily ever after. It's clobberin' time.

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