What was the first comic book you bought on your own with your own money? Do you remember? I do. I don’t mean when you were with your parents and you asked them for money or asked them to buy something for you. I mean when you had an actual dollar (or maybe just 50 cents) in your pocket and were with some of your friends or even by yourself. You were staring at that spinning comic rack trying to decide which comic to choose, all those covers beckoning and overwhelming you with their colorful capes and tights. I remember that moment very distinctly. I was up visiting my cousins in Montreal and one day we all walked to a comic shop nearby on our own. I was a tiny runt of a kid with a bowl haircut and big eyes and was thrilled to tag along. They were huge Richie Rich fans and might have had every single Richie Rich or derivative title that had ever been published with the character. When we got to the shop they went straight for those but I had other ideas. At first I thought Batman but then I saw this cover that just stood out from all the rest. I’m not sure why but I had to have it, didn’t even flip through the pages, rushed to the cashier and tinkled out some change on the counter; I had just bought my first comic book. It was this:
Since that day I became a bonafide Hulk fanatic. Made sense. The idea of a nerdy smart guy who was bullied and picked on by macho army people could just turn into a green ball of fists and fury spoke to kids like me who had to look up at everyone in the world:
‘Yeah, mess with me and maybe I’ll turn into a whirling dervish of slaps, kicks and rippling earth fist pounds’.
The Incredible Hulk became the real start of my comic book collection. It was the first comic I ever subscribed to. It was the comic title I looked for the moment I walked into a comic shop with back issues. I loved it. I would say that all the issues in the 70s and 80s were pure gold. The basic storylines were: The Hulk is misunderstood. Humans always react with anger and guns. Now you’re in trouble because you messed with the Jade Giant. The Hulk just wants to be left alone. What’s not to love? The Hulk was different than other Marvel heroes in that he didn’t want to be a hero in his own title, he just wanted peace and quiet and could leap from zip code to zip code in order to find it.
Nuff said? Look, I own over 400 issues of the Hulk. I should own more but I’ve not been inclined to pick up any of the issues of the past decade or so. I’m always reading every single ‘First Issue’ that Marvisney poops out when they start with a new premise or new creative team. The recent reboots were mnyeh for me. I was there for the ‘Immortal Hulk’ horror type run which everyone seemed to love, not me. It felt like an abysmal distortion of the Hulk. I was there for the Cates run which started off quite decently then descended into gore and ridiculousness. And yes, I’m here for this one. I’d like to go on the record as saying that I want to love this book. I want to get excited for a new Hulk comic every month. I want to feel giddy every time I peel open an issue of the Hulk. Same goes for Bats or any of the Marvisney Properties that have gone to shit. I’m not looking to be upset. I want to be wowed.
Well, I’m not wowed.
Sigh. Deep exhale. Sigh.
Yeah, so, this new Hulk comic sucks like Hunter Biden’s nostrils being tased in front of a mound of coke. This is pure and utter Hulk trash. What. The Actual. Fuck. Could the Buscema Brothers storm the Marvisney Offices and Hulk Smash their way into extracting this property out of the demonic clutches of this corporate death cult?
We start off with what looks like a bunch of college kids raiding an archaeological tomb site for jewels in Iraq where a sound effect of a scrape and a poom gets them into a wide open area with an enormous realistic looking muscular idol with a frieze above him and a half dozen mummies underneath him. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that if this much amazingness was found and in clear view the Iraqi government would have armed guards stationed everywhere and there’d be no way for a bunch of Jinkies Scooby Doo kids to easily scrape poom their way in. Of course one of the kids looks at a skull and gets possessed as her eyes glow and her head twists 180 degrees. The idol comes to life and then eats a kid. This ain’t your Leader/Doc Samson/Jarella comic with the Hulk, this is the new trend of horrific gross nasty twisted gore that seems to have overtaken our culture. Oh, it gets worse.
First, Banner looks like he was drawn by Jeff Lemire. Look at him:
Is that not Lemire-esque or what? I wish Jeff Lemire was writing this. Is Fraction available? Too many anal beads up his bum for him to write? How about Ta-Nehisi Coates? Bendis? Anybody worth their salt wanna write for Marvisney again? Oy. So Banner is doing his ‘I’m roaming the earth to prevent people from interacting with the Hulk’ bit, okay, great. Love it. So after freaking out in a café and seeing people possessed he runs and then wakes up in a forest half-naked – with what looks like a half eaten dog near him. What. The Actual. Fuck. Are you implying The Hulk ate a fucking dog??? Should I pay the $39.95 to the online ‘Find this guy’ site so I can locate P.K. Johnson’s address and shove some kibble up his ass? Are you kidding me?
Next we get a couple of kids working on their Hillbilly Dad’s old beater car. For some reason that sets Hillbilly Dad off to the point where he has to drive after one of the kids and attempt to run them over…for working on his car? So, Daddy’s asleep, kids work on his car, he then gets in said car, which wouldn’t have worked had kids not worked on it and chases them down. Hillbilly Dad crashes the car, gets pummeled by the little kid like she’s George Foreman. Hillbilly Dad then gets possessed and eats – another dog or animal of some kind??? So that’s two animal meals, a couple of possessions and an Alien type chest burst.
Oh yeah, three random adults who are apparently affiliated with the FBI go into the forest to look for the Hulk and then one of them has a possessed dead skull animal burst out of his chest which then goes to chase down the Hulk. I think this dead skull animal is what gets eaten by the Hillbilly Dad and whatever possessed the animal now possesses the Hillbilly. Dude. C’mon. Like, seriously, do you need therapy? Are you not getting laid? This is all so fucking gross and disgusting, like, what was the pitch meeting like?
PKJ: So then an animal bursts out of the guy’s chest
Marvisney: Who eats the animal?
PKJ: Huh?
Marvisney: We’ve done our research and if you get two animal chow downs in an issue it boosts sales by 37%.
PKJ: Oh, cool, well maybe the –
Marvisney: The little girl! She eats the animal and turns into a pop star in leopard prints!
PKJ: Hmm, maybe the dad –
Marvisney: Then she comes to my house and makes me pasta in her underwear while –
PKJ: I’ll get the Dad to eat the animal thingy, I’m on it.
I think the worst part of the entire book, which is saying something, is when Banner transforms into the Hulk. It’s so grotesque and goofy. Look at one of the panels:
It’s like straight out of the Simpsons right? Then the Hulk says ‘This body’s mine’. Yuck. That line just rankled me to the core. It’s demonic, as if the Hulk is reveling over the fact that he can take Banner over which has never been what the Hulk is and should be about. I’m seriously about to hurl at this point. What an absolute crock of shite. I suppose this entire dung pile of pages is justified by the Author’s letter at the end of the comic when he goes on to say:
This story you’re about to read – sees Hulk walking through our world, unearthing ancient terrors and mysteries to which most of us are blind. It’s rage, violence and all the dark, profane things that watch us from watery graves, condemned laboratories, potters fields and cosmic hellscapes.
Blecch. Seriously, if you want the Hulk to unearth ancient terrors and dark profane things to which most of us are blind why don’t you send him to the Marvisney Offices? I mean, it probably won’t get more gross and nasty than that. Here PKJ, lemme help you, just send him to Buena Vista Street in Burbank and have him start smashing any cars that have Disney Parking Passes hanging from their rearview. That’ll get the Minions running outside and then you can have him smash through the gates and have him smash down to the 13th circle of Hell which lies underneath their main building. Do you know what the 13th circle is? Look it up. Hulk would do wonders down there.
So how long do I have to wait now until this new Mega Yuck Monsters Event
is over? A year? Another year for another Hulk reboot? Longer? I have a bunch
of missing old school Hulk issues in the 110-130 range that I need to get to
finish my collection, maybe I’ll just save up for them instead. Lots of comic geeks seem to have loved this issue. I can only say that makes me really sad that something like this is resonating with so many.
I reject the entire notion of the entertainment industry where it feels that if it makes something dark, gory, gritty, violent and ugly that it's somehow more realistic and edgy. That can work for some art, some projects, sure, but for the most part it's just depravity for depravity's sake. We have become horrified by our world and broken down over and over by the horrors that we are slowly uncovering in our world. One could say that this book is a reflection of that; fair enough. Yet ultimately this is a 'Hero Book', or anti-hero if you will. There is nothing heroic about the essence of this tale or the proclamation of our anti-hero of conquering the body of it's host to just destroy whatever comes into its path. The Hulk used to smash because of his desire to be left alone. He was provoked. He warned you. Then it was game on.
I saw a video recently of a guy who was talking about his son finally standing up to a bully. He said that he told his son that it is noble to defend oneself. His son took out the bully but as the bully's head was about to hit the ground he reached down and held his head back from cracking on the pavement. That is a hero. That kid deserves a cape. Somehow I feel this Hulk would just smash that bully into the ground - and then watch as the corpse of a lamb burst out of his chest.
I wanted this to be great. I wanted to buy a monthly Green Goliath book.
But this comic just made me really really angry.
And you wouldn’t it like it when I’m angry –
About the Hulk.
RATING: 2.2
VERDICT: Drop. Burn. Do not feed to an Animal.
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