Yancy Street Gang

The Yancy Street Gang are a fictional street gang occasionally featured in the Fantastic Four comic book published by Marvel Comics.

The Yancy Street Gang was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and first appeared in Fantastic Four #15 (June 1963), though mostly off-panel; as in most of their appearances, only their arms are visible as they throw objects at the Thing and yell insults. The gang was first mentioned, although not seen, in Fantastic Four #6. Yancy Street is named in reference to the real Delancey Street, which extends from The Bowery in Manhattan's Lower East Side eastward to the Williamsburg Bridge. However, Yancy Street is seen in Fantastic Four #15 (June 1963) to intersect with 10th Avenue, which is on the west side of Manhattan.

The Yancy Street Gang is depicted as frequenting downtown Manhattan, and serves as a recurring antagonist of the Thing, tormenting him for typically humorous effect. It was originally depicted as composed only of youths, but later depictions have both young members as well as adult members from an earlier generation, who have passed their grudge against Thing to the younger members. Although described as a gang, the Yancy Streeters are rarely depicted as engaging in criminal activities (except in their harassment of the Thing, who rarely takes their actions seriously) and may be more accurately described as a circle of admittedly roughneck friends and associates who encourage neighborhood youths to divert their energies into harmlessly heckling the virtually indestructible Thing, rather than into more dangerous and illegal pursuits.

The adult members of the Yancy Street Gang, all apparently blue-collar workers (many of them typically wear hardhats) who still live in the neighborhood, are often seen tormenting Thing in some way, usually by throwing things at him and shouting abuse whenever he entered Yancy Street. They were also thought to send him booby-trapped parcels, although a retcon in Fantastic Four vol.3, #61, written by Mark Waid, revealed that these packages (or at least many of them) had actually been sent by the Human Torch as part of his own recurring campaign of pranks against the Thing. As a youth, Ben Grimm formerly led the gang, and the other members, who have retained their loyalty to it in adulthood, seemingly resent him for having "sold out" by leaving the neighborhood and pursuing a higher education and standard of living, culminating in his position as one of the Air Force's most accomplished pilots and, later, as a world-famous adventurer. However, they are generally portrayed as good-natured at heart and have occasionally helped the Fantastic Four if a supervillain threatens their neighborhood itself or if they think a villain is giving the Thing too much trouble (noting on such occasions that "That's our job!"). They sometimes seem to genuinely like the Thing, if only because he makes such an effective and (sometimes) good-humored target for their pranks; they were quite remorseful when he seemingly died in action, only to quickly retract the sentiment when he proved to have survived.

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