Ebon Moss-Bachrach says some of his 'earliest sexual visions' came from comics — but not 'Fantastic Four'

Ebon Moss-Bachrach has fond memories of reading comic books in his youth — but not Marvel.

The Bear Emmy winner, who is set to play Ben Grimm/The Thing in Marvel’s Fantastic Four, discussed his relationship with the medium in an interview Variety.

“I was a comic book fan, but the comic books I used to read when I was a kid were more like the cheaper kind of ones I could get from the five-cent bin,” Moss-Bachrach said. “I liked Archie, some Richie Rich. I really liked Groo.”

One title got an especially enthusiastic shout-out — and it wasn’t Fantastic Four, as the actor said he never read that title as a kid.

“I liked Elfquest a lot,” he said. “I think some of my earliest sexual visions were Elfquest… That’s the good stuff.”

Moss-Bachrach will be the third actor to play Ben Grimm in live-action in 20 years, following Michael Chiklis’ turn as the rock-skinned clobberer in Tim Story’s 2005 and 2007 films and Jamie Bell’s portrayal of the character in Josh Trank’s 2015 reboot. It won’t be the actor’s first Marvel project, though — he previously played David Lieberman/Micro on Netflix’s Punisher series.

Moss-Bachrach’s Thing will co-headline the film alongside Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, and Joseph Quinn’s Johnny Storm/Human Torch. 

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Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige teased that the upcoming superhero film will take place in the 1960s in a universe parallel to the main Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“There was another piece of art we released with Johnny Storm flying in the air making a 4 symbol and there was a cityscape in the corner of that image,” Feige explained on The Official Marvel Podcast. “There were a lot of smart people who noticed that that cityscape didn’t look exactly like the New York that we know, or the New York that existed in the ‘60s in our world. Those are smart observations, I’ll say."

Feige also said that the film will finally begin shooting on Monday, July 29.

Season 3 of The Bear got an early release on Hulu on Wednesday, and all 10 episodes are now available to stream. Fantastic Four will release in theaters on July 25, 2025.