John Carpenter’s “The Thing” has one of the greatest horror movie endings of all time, but it also baffled audiences upon its initial release. After buckets of body horror and enough suspense to make your blood run cold, Carpenter left the world dangling by a thread, hoping that just like MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Childs (Keith David) in the movie’s final moments, we’d simply wait it out a while and see what happens. Nothing ever did, though, and you know what? For many, it’s why the film’s ending is perfect, leaving us to dread that the titular alien had consumed one or even both of the survivors of Outpost 31. More determined “Thing” fans still needed answers, however, and they actually got them courtesy of the Dark Horse comic book series “The Thing from Another World” (along with the other stories that spawned from it).
Debuting in 1991, “The Thing from Another World” picks up after the events of Carpenter’s film and reunite us with MacReady and Childs, both of whom are still alive after destroying their outpost and nearly freezing to death. They part ways for a time, with MacReady immediately testing himself to ensure he is still human and not at risk of becoming a spindly, limb-growing alien likely to separate its head from its body. Thankfully, he isn’t, so he decides to return to where the nightmare began to try and eliminate the other-worldly “Thing” once and for all. Unfortunately, he fails, and as a result, his old colleague Childs suffers greatly for it.