If you are looking to invest in a sleeper pick, take a closer at Sharon Ventura, better known as She-Thing.

We’ve got the Ms. Marvel sequel, The Marvels, and Fantastic Four on the MCU horizon, and with those films will come new live-action firsts. There’s a forgotten 1980s character who could be connected to both movies: Sharon Ventura.

Hold on. Who?

Sharon began as Thing’s object of affection, though she wasn’t much interested in the rock monster at the time. It all began to change when she got powers, called herself Ms. Marvel, and became a professional wrestler in a superpowered fight club. Then the fateful day came that, like her predecessor, she was exposed to cosmic radiation and became…She-Thing.

Since virtually everyone has forgotten Sharon, that makes her key issues cheap finds, and these are the three you’ll want to target first.

THE THING #27

Readers first met Sharon in 1985’s The Thing #27. Around this time, Marvel was pushing Thing sans the FF, and he even joined the West Coast Avengers in ‘86. It had worked in the Silver and Bronze Ages with his FF teammate, Johnny Storm, so why not the Ever-Lovin’ Thing? The series itself is not particularly revered, but it did offer a few notable moments. In this case, Thing’s adventures in his red-and-black pro wrestling outfit introduced the future She-Thing and second Ms. Marvel. 

There hasn’t been a 9.8 to sell online since 2020 when a copy brought $100. Last year, a 9.6 sold for $40.

THE THING #35

Monica Rambeau may be the most famous Captain Marvel outside Carol Danvers, but Sharon Ventura is the forgotten Ms. Marvel. Okay, so maybe Sharon wasn’t actually THE Ms. Marvel, but she did use the name during her wrestling career. Wanting powers of her own, she contacted the Power Broker. With the help of resident mad scientist, Karl Malus, she was given enhanced strength, speed, reflexes, and endurance before joining the Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation. Later, she would join the all-female villains straight from the UCWF, the Grapplers.

In 2021, the graded 9.8 was selling for as much as $250, but prices fell when the calendar turned to 2022. Still, it’s earned a respectable $167 average for the past 12 months.

FANTASTIC FOUR #310

Around this time, Thing began to mutate into his most famous look of the 1980s. The transformation started a few issues earlier, but the final product was revealed in FF #310. Thing and Sharon had been fighting a terrorist, and the battle took them into space. Their ship would crash in Wakanda after being inundated with cosmic rays. Those rays finished Thing’s mutation, giving his rocky skin a rough, spiked. It also turned Sharon into another version of Thing, but her depiction looked more like Nerf than rock. She was also saddled with the highly creative name of She-Thing.

March saw a graded 9.8 sell for $100. Meanwhile, a 9.2 brought $40 in May.

HERE’S THE SHE-THING

As much as Marvel Studios likes its comedic characters, I would not be surprised to see She-Thing and her Nerf skin in the MCU. If nothing else, there may be an Easter egg in The Marvels with a woman wrestling under the name “Ms. Marvel” as an allusion to Sharon Ventura. It’s getting harder to find any reasonably priced first appearances, so it makes her budget-friendly keys all the more inviting.

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