21 Tuesday Apr 2015
Posted in superhero
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Alex Nino, black and white, Hulk, Jim Starlin, magazine, Marvel Comics, other side of night, Rampaging Hulk
Anyone… Anything… can be smashed!
This book features a rare collaboration between two of my favorite artists: Jim Starlin and Alex Niño. Collector’s Guide: From Rampaging Hulk #4; Marvel Comics, 1977. “The Other Side of Night.”
20 Monday Apr 2015
Tags
Hulk, Incredible Hulk, Marvel Comics, Marvel Treasury, marvel treasury edition, marvel treasury edition 17
This is one of two Marvel Treasury Editions featuring the Hulk. (Behold the Rampaging Hulk treasury edition in our archives.) Each one has a story about the alternate earth on the opposite side of our sun, a world full of man/beast hybrids where Hulk meets an early incarnation of Adam Warlock. In this volume, he meets a version of Bruce Banner.
This volume also holds an underrated but iconic Hulk story where he meets the legendary golem, a protector of the people. The murky swamps and military attacks on Hulk, combined with dramatic panel narration, make this a very representative (and perhaps our favorite) Hulk story of the 1970s. A showdown with Havok, of X-men fame, really shines in the enlarged treasury size. The massive rocks and Hulk’s feats of strength seem appropriately enormous here. Havok was easily our favorite mutant for years after reading this in the late 70s or early 80s.
Buy your own copy of Marvel Treasury Edition 17: The Incredible Hulk; Marvel Comics, 1974.
30 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in science fiction
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Collector’s Guide: From Strange Tales #75; Marvel, 1960. Art by Don Heck?
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby would recycle the name of this robot when they created The Incredible Hulk. This issue also contained a Jack Kirby monster story: Taboo! The Thing from the Murky Swamp!
30 Sunday Mar 2014
Posted in superhero
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Abomination, Bruce Banner, Bruce Jones, collection, Hulk, Incredible Hulk, John Romita jr, Kaare Andrews, Leandro Fernandez, Lee Weeks, Mike Deodato
Even after repeated readings of Bruce Jones’ run on The Incredible Hulk, we get a visceral thrill from turning the page to find this portrait of Hulk grimacing, with a bullet firmly gripped in his teeth.
Marvel gave Hulk a new #1 issue in 1999, in the first renumbering of his series since Tales to Astonish became the Hulk’s own series at #102 back in 1968. John Romita, Jr. jumped on board with issue #24 of this series for an Abomination story, left, and came back with #34 to team up with Jones for Return of the Monster. The Jones/Romita collaboration gives us a brilliantly executed silent story where Banner’s meditation practices and an autistic child make a deep connection.
We also get something often attempted but rarely achieved: Banner Hulks out at the most dramatic moment for maximum effect.
Jones implicates Hulk in the murder of a young boy, which steers the plot towards crime or spy fiction interspersed with ‘day in the life’ stories where Hulk confronts normal people in troubled times. Lee Weeks joins in the artistic foray as the insidious plot thickens — and let’s not forget the stunning covers by Kaare Andrews!
Mike Deodato draws the next Abomination story. One can scarcely imagine a better choice of artist for what follows: the dark underground recesses where a captured Abomination seethes, the stark desert landscapes where Banner finds love that threatens to destroy him, the savagery of rage and passion consuming the minds of monsters in combat.
We are fans of the Abomination from way back in the 1970s — probably thanks to reading his sick origin from 1967’s Tales to Astonish #90 as reprinted in 1976’s Bring on the Bad Guys — but this story beats them all. He is so remorselesly evil, and the role of his wife in all this is a brilliant way to inject new life into the old monster!
With all the grim, teeth-gritting, monster muscle-flexing freakouts, Jones and Deodato take a quiet two-page sequence that more subtly captures the evil of the Abomination. What kind of sick, twisted bastard does what happened to the Hulk to himself, on purpose, just so he can be bigger and meaner to everyone else on the planet? Emil Blonsky, scumbag scientist — that’s what kind! Let’s join him for this brief journey of malevolence across the plains.
Deodato doesn’t finish the entire run with Jones, but he does stick around to draw hordes of nasty little beasties in the Split Decisions chapter and continues to provide stellar covers for most of the run.
Crusher Creel: the Absorbing Man. He can absorb the properties of anything he touches. Since it’s a divine power, he can still function rather than turn into — for example — a brainless carrot or a lump of steel. Instead, he gets their properties like strength, resistance to damage, and… lots of Vitamin A?
Jones and Leandro Fernandez take us on a ride with this big, mean creep, and it has its moments, but not quite as grand as what came before. Toward the end of Jones’ run, the series exhausts its awesomeness. Iron Man and Hulk stories usually turn out well, but the crime/spy feeling of the book gives way to more “superhero” style stories.
Perhaps Hulk got smashed by editorial decisions as Marvel rolled out their Marvel Knights imprint in 2004, or maybe Jones merely paved the way for Peter David to return to scripting Hulk. We don’t know! But we do get a resolution as to how the Hulk became a fugitive at the beginning, and Jones nicely wraps up all the plot threads. Great run!
Collectors Guide: Find it as issues #34-76 of The Incredible Hulk (1999 Series) or as the eight-volume Incredible Hulk trade paperbacks (2002-2004).
07 Friday Mar 2014
Posted in superhero
Tags
Adam Warlock, Counter Earth, Gerry Conway, Herb Trimpe, High Evolutionary, Hulk, Inhumans, Marvel Comics, marvel treasury edition, Rampaging Hulk, Roy Thomas, Warlock
Marvel collected some of the Hulk’s adventures in two Marvel Treasury Editions. #24, with the staggeringly low cover price of $2, finds Hulk playing a major role in the early development of Adam Warlock. Warlock here is in transition. Fantastic Four #67 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby gave us the origin of Warlock, though he had not even a name back then. (It’s reprinted in Marvel’s Greatest Comics #50 if you want to own the issue without spending an arm and a leg on it.) After this story, Jim Starlin would take on Warlock and make the fledgling character truly great. Starlin’s first issue recalls some of the key plot points from the issues presented here.
In the opening chapter, Hulk tangles with the Inhumans and gets shot into space where (hopefully) he can’t hurt anyone. Greg Pak ran with this same idea in recent years, landing Hulk on a distant planet where he becomes a great warrior and leader, Gladiator-style. Gerry Conway sets Hulk on “Counter-Earth” instead, where the High Evolutionary has created some anthropomorphic Ani-Men (animal + men) that have become caught up in a war. It seems that these “furries” have many of the same conflicts we do!
This conflict brings Warlock and the Hulk together, and our lumbering green Goliath finds one of the few friends he will ever make in comics. Hulk’s love and dedication for his new friend take on an innocent, childlike tone that gives us another side of his character, while Warlock plays out a Christ story in his capture, death, and heroic resurrection.
Along the way we get some glorious Herb Trimpe splash pages, and a giant-sized two-page spread designed for this edition. Trimpe’s art really sings in this large format. Though the political and religious themes of the story seem aimed at a more adult reader, the writing is geared for young readers, too. Trimpe’s artwork embraces the childlike silliness of comics while delivering some fairly intense pathos and drama at the same time.
We read this Treasury Edition several times as a kid in the early 1980s, just after it came out in 1979. It was fun to pick up and read again, even if the story wasn’t quite as fresh these days as it was back then. Trimpe just kills it, as you can see on many of the pages in this post.
You can usually find Marvel Treasury Edition #4: Rampaging Hulk in stock for a reasonable price. It’s perfect for fans of the classic Bronze-Age Hulk as well as Warlock collectors.
22 Saturday Feb 2014
Posted in first issue, superhero
Tags
1978, collection, Herb Trimpe, Hulk, Incredible Hulk, Incredible Hulk Pocket Book, Jack Kirby, paperback, Pocket Book, Pocket Books, reprint, Stan Lee
This handy paperback has most recently proven useful in settling questions about Hulk history. Often these stories get forgotten in the vast expanses of Hulk lore, with his origin retold so many times that any two people probably have a different version in their heads. Here, Hulk remains more a man than a monster — a sullen and irritable man with a limited vocabulary, but far from the dim-witted “Hulk Smash” of the 1970s. In these stories, Banner hulks out at night, not simply from rage.
Stan Lee provides a brief but entertaining introduction as he did with all the Pocket Books we’ve seen from the 1970s. These books were great fun to own then, and we read these stories until we had them memorized. Ditko’s artwork — featured in one story here and in the similar Spider-man paperback — and Kirby’s artwork entertained us to no end.
These days, they seem a bit dated. Hulk is always fighting Commies, the art is far more simplistic than Kirby’s later style, and the plots seem kind of goofy. Stan and Jack probably hit the nail right on the head for their audience: boys and young men who enjoy action stories full of conflict and gadgets, at a particular time in history. Today they are curious beasts, an odd lot from a simpler time of comics where pulp horror and science fiction met in the mainstream to create superheroes.
Stan and Jack had no idea how big this thing would blow up, and readers fifty years later would seek out these stories for reference and entertainment. The charm in these first six Hulk tales lies in that very lack of self-consciousness, innocently dashed out in a few days or weeks. Just look at the utter disregard for backgrounds and ornamentation on these pages: direct, economical, focused entirely on figures and dialogue.
This little volume from Pocket Books in 1978 held up remarkably well. Even as a mass-market paperback, it enjoys very solid production: durable pages with clear art and color, a firm binding more than thirty-five years later, and a tight, glossy cover.
It even comes with a bonus two-page spread of “Hulk’s life in a single image” by Herb Trimpe. Trimpe had put his unmistakable stamp on the Hulk by the time this reprint book arrived in 1978, visually defining the Hulk for a generation of fans.
07 Thursday Feb 2013
Tags
Avengers, Bryan Hitch, Hulk, Iron Man, Mark Millar, Thor, Ultimates, Ultimates 2
For Mark Millar‘s re-imagining of The Avengers as The Ultimates, Bryan Hitch produced some truly over-the-top battle scenes. Let’s take a look at how Hitch uses two-page spreads in Ultimates 2, #12. Here we see Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, and a whole mess of heroes kicking major butt! If you love a good superhero double-splash, this one’s for you!
Collector’s Guide: From Ultimates 2 #12; Marvel, 2006. Available in trade, single issues, or Ultimate Collection format.
03 Monday Oct 2011
Posted in superhero
Prepare yourselves for the most brutal battle in the history of comics as Wolverine returns — and unleashes a tidal wave of bloody revenge! It’s Wolverine versus the Hulk Gang to the death! Don’t miss the flesh-rending final chapter to the greatest Wolverine story ever told by the peerless Mark Millar and Steve McNiven!
Collector’s Guide: From Wolverine Giant Size Old Man Logan #1.
Mars Will Send No More 