FF Week #21--Ben Grimm's Long Running Solo Act!!

People tend to under-estimate Ben Grimm's substantial solo career.

The short-lived Marvel Feature launched the Defenders, and then it's final two issues gave the spotlight to The Thing teaming with other heroes:

That, of course, launched the oddly named Marvel Two-In-One!

Yeah, yeah, it was "just" a team-up title. But it also gave us some wonderfully oddball match-ups, like Benjy and Shang-Chi vs. Hydra!!

Or time traveling to meet up with the Liberty Legion!

And the unreprintable (due to shifting rights) meeting of the Man Of Bronze with The Man Of Rocks!!

But Marvel Two-In-One was also home to some of the most significant events in Marvel history, such as the the tie-up to the first arc of Jim Starlin's Warlock saga:

You had Ben traveling in time in order to cure a younger version of himself...

And then came the Golden Era for Marvel Two-In-One, as Mark Gruenwald made Ben an active participant in some of the most impressive continuity building exercises in the Marvel Universe, such as the Project Pegasus arc (co-written by Ralph Macchio)...

..and the cosmic Rebirth of Adam Warlock arc (and the debut of Her):

 And the Serpent Crown Affair:

Artists on those issues included George Perez, John Byrne, and Gene Day.

Marvel Two-In-One was phased out after issue #100, but it wasn't so much cancelled as replaced by a brand new, truly solo series:

The series was written by John Byrne, during his Fantastic Four run, but it never seemed to get a lot of attention. Perhaps because the art was "only" by Ron Wilson? Anyway, it was a much-neglected series, and spent over a year on Ben's wanderings around Battleworld after the first Secret Wars. Seriously, Marvel, why hasn't this been collected?

After Byrne left, the series focused on, and I'm not making this up, Ben Grimm's adventures in the super-powered Unlimited Class Wrestling circuit:

Seriously. If this series came out today, it would be worshiped, I think--at least to judge by the amount of my Twitter feed that seems consumed by wrestling. Marvel, why hasn't this been collected?!?!

Ben even got to wrestle Beyonder!!

The Thing ended after 3 years, a respectable run.

It took another 20 years, but Ben got another solo series:

Gosh darn, this was a fun little series...

Sadly, it only lasted 8 issues...

So the question once again, is (comeone everybody, you know the chorus), "Marvel, why hasn't this been collected?"

The obvious other question, then, for some butthead Marvel executives is: Fine, if you insist on not having the FF in their own comic, what about solo series? I mean, you can throw the Human Torch (Inhumans) and Ben Grimm (Guardians) prominently on the cover of other books without violating the anti-Fox diktat. Why, then, at a time when you're launching 60-odd books, can't you do a solo series for some of the FF? Huh? Huh?