The Thing's Forgotten Comic Book Adaptations Rescued Kurt Russell's MacReady

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.

While Childs might have remained himself through "The Thing from Another World," his luck finally ran out in the second "Thing" comic book series, "The Thing from Another World: Climate of Fear." Published in 1992, the story catches up with MacReady, who is now working at a science research base in Argentina to try and bring the Thing down once more. Tragically, though, the the creature finally takes one of the last remaining survivors of Outpost 31 and ends up replacing Childs for good, as revealed in the third issue of the comic's four-issue run.

What's disappointing about this twist is that it's an incredibly ill-fitting death for such an iconic character. Childs-Thing then willingly reveals himself (which is an odd thing for an alien that constantly tries to remain in hiding to do) and is swiftly eviscerated by a team of commandos in the next issue, which doesn't feel right at away. But while Childs undoubtedly deserved better than that, the "Thing" comic book series was apparently determined to play out closer to an '80s action movie, turning all of its focus onto MacReady and transforming him into a one-man army. With more firepower and less tension, the final chapter of the "Thing" sequel comics evolved MacReady into a very different version of the original character, and it didn't even need a shape-shifting alien to do it.

By the time MacReady had made it to the final installment in the "Thing" comic book series, "The Thing from Another World: Eternal Vows," the days of him being a paranoid, incredibly weary loner were over. Instead, he'd become a bulkier, flame-throwing action hero who was eager to confront the eponymous alien and ultimately battled a Thing/human hybrid that had merged with its host rather than replicating its target entirely. Did this break all the rules that Carpenter had established years earlier? Absolutely. But the "Thing" comics took a very different storytelling approach compared to Carpenter's original horror film overall, and it ended up being all the flimsier for it.

Indeed, when beloved films are adapted into comic books, their rules are often bent and their established lore is scrapped, all in the hopes of creating an engaging page-turner. In the case of the "Thing" comic book series, that meant killing off Childs and transforming MacReady into a lead similar to John Rambo or Dutch from "Predator." For those who weren't satisfied, however, another take on the chilling and incredibly ambiguous ending to Carpenter's original film would emerge years later — one that took a very different approach to continuing its story and ultimately eliminated one of the movie's surviving characters much sooner than the "Thing" comics did.

In 2002, Konami and Black Label Games published "The Thing," a video game that served as a sequel to Carpenter's movie. The third-person survival horror shooter let players face the iconic monster themselves, putting them in the position of a Special Forces team sent to uncover why things had gone so quiet in the Antarctic, only to find something not human chilling out there. Besides being a bloody good horror game that used paranoia and trust as a game mechanic, it also gave its answer to the age-old question regarding Childs and MacReady's identities. Players discover early on that Childs was, in fact, a Thing by the end of the film, while MacReady was savvy enough to have stopped him before the creature made its way back to civilization. The heavily bearded helicopter pilot also appears near the end of the game, coming to your rescue and flying you to safety.

While the game may have retconned the expanded comic book story that Dark Horse wove in the '90s, it's still interesting to see that even years later, people remain hungry as ever to know what happens after the ending of "The Thing." Carpenter, for his part, teased that a "Thing" movie sequel could come to pass as recently as 2023, so it's possible moviegoers may yet get a chance to return to Outpost 31 and discover the truth for themselves. Should that ever happen, though, it begs the question: will we find MacReady alive and well ... or will we finally learn for certain that whatever is left isn't MacReady at all?