A new creative team brings a new number one for the Hulk and it looks like Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Nic Klein are going to make a suitably big impact. Klein’s cover shows a very sad Bruce Banner in the shadow of the looming Hulk, with a smattering of bad beasties ready to strike. ‘The Age of Monsters has begun’ says the blurb, and after reading this issue I believe it.
The book opens with a flashback to a year previously, when a spot of tomb raiding in Iraq results in an amazing discovery – though not necessarily a positive one for the treasure hunters.
Today in Kentucky, Bruce Banner visits a diner, but it’s not the quality of the food that has him feeling green.
Nearby, a young girl finds the strength to fight back against her abusive father.
If you like intense Hulk experiences, this is the debut issue for you, with the green giant far from jolly. He’s truly terrifying even before he emerges from Bruce’s brow like the ugliest of Athenas. If that isn’t enough there’s a decidedly dodgy Hulkbusting crew, the mother of all threats and a call to action to some of Marvel’s creepiest creations.
And goodness me, Klein’s Hulk is a horror, dominating every page on which he appears. And the new monster brought along by the leader of the clean-up crew which arrives when word gets out that Bruce is in town is a freak show on legs. Poor Bruce, though, I’m used to him looking stoic but here he’s thoroughly defeated, with his hideous hair the capper. The storytelling works very well indeed, with easy passage granted from the intriguing opening through to the cliffhanger.
Mathew Wilson’s colours are winning, adding to the drama, and the same can be said of Cory Petit’s lettering… that word balloon transitioning from waitress chat to Hulk talk is typically terrific.
Kennedy Johnson is a master of narrative mood, conjuring up the sense of oppression and fear Bruce lives with. He connects the series to recent runs with references to the Green Door which was a big part of Al Ewing’s Immortal Hulk, and references the subsequent run written by Donny Cates.
Cards on the table. I’m not a massive fan of modern Hulk; once the dissociative identity disorder and abuse was added to the origin a lot of the fun of the character went away – I like oddball supervillains, baked beans and Bambi. I’ve tried runs since then, such as the Bruce Jones series. I got quite a way into the acclaimed Ewing epic, but that lost me with issue 25, which read like a prog rock album – unintelligible. So keeping the link to the Green Door is something I could live without… I can’t even see the phrase without hearing Shakin’ Stevens sing.
I suspect this run, with its promise of unrelenting horror, won’t be for me, but the craft of this opening is sky high so I’ll try a few issues…. the Marvel monsters we see towards the end could prove a good time.
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 
I can read prose horror where my imagination limits what I visualize but comic, movie, and TV horror is a no go so thanks. I also am neutral leaning towards negative on Kennedy’s DC work so I was gonna skip this anyway. I do dislike not reading a Super title besides Conner’s (Williamson’s Flash turned me off so bad he’s on my list of writers that not even Carol Danvers, Power Girl, or Ilyana Rasputin could get me to read unless Colleen Doran illustrated it). Part of my turn off is the wildly different takes on Banner’s curse with every volume. Would they have genre hopping for Captain America or Iron Man? Makes me appreciate PAD’s long run even more now. Wonky things like Ewing’s Green Door (which sounded as ludicrous as his Defenders garbage when I’ve seen people try to explain it online) or Cates’ ‘I’m gonna write stuff that sounded cool to me when I was fourteen’ style of writing just has to be hurting the brand.
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OK, I’m convinced this comic won’t be for you. BUT, you believed me on Scooby and Batman, take my word for it, you are almost certain to enjoy Williamson and Campbell’s Superman. It’s their best DC work by miles.
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I forgot that I did try the first issue with great trepidation. Disliked it enough that I don’t even read reviews of subsequent issues and I’ve at least read reviews of the Superman The Lesser series.
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Sounds downright grim. I know Bruce Banner is a tragic figure, but I never took him for a defeated one. Not sure if this interests me. Great review!
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Thanks. It really does hit a certain mood.
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Really like the art here, and I like PJK’s writing a lot. That said, I’ll probably read the Immortal Hulk run first on Marvel Unlimited before I give this one a try (likely also on Marvel Unlimited), since the Green Door is important to it.
But you never know! Maybe I’ll follow Kennedy here, and then that will get me to finally read the Ewing run!
That said, the Hulk has never been a favorite of mine; the only run I ever really went for was Peter David’s long tenure on the title.
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I have Marvel Unlimited and couldn’t say how soon comics show up… six months? Anyway, do report back when you get a look!
Right now, though, check out the Ewing run. I think you’ve a better chance than me of getting to the end of #25… I tried three times.
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I’ll get to it eventually! Right now I’m burning through Chip Zdarsky’s run on Daredevil, which is 100% my type of book. (But then again, Daredevil has always been one of my favorite Marvel characters, whereas the Hulk is much lower on that list.)
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(Although strangely enough, I love She-Hulk! Go figure.)
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I need to catch up on She-Hulk. So far as buying it day and date went, the horrible fill-in art did for me.
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It’s not Rowell’s best work. Either she or editorial screwed up thinking we wanted a She-Hulk rom com. The best I can say is at least it undoes the ungodly mess Aaron tried inflicting on the character.
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Martin! You beat me to the Shakin’ Stevens reference! Ha! It was either that or the once-famous 1970s XXX movie, either one preferable to the Hulk Green Door. I liked some of Al Ewing’s Hulk run,altho’ it was rather grindingly depressing, but introducing the green door concept seemed like an unnecessary weight on the character much like the bricks in the pockets and down the fly of the Vatican banker who “committed suicide” by “hanging himself/throwing himself off” Blackfriars Bridge (another masterpiece of investigation, if those guys had been around in the 1880s they’d have probably claimed that Jack the Ripper’s victims did themselves in, even the one who was all but decapitated…). Seeing the notion turn up here in what appears to be a tonal clone of Ewing gets a huge groan from me. As brainless as Donny Whatsitz’s Smashtronaut (Urk!) concept was at least it wasn’t another horror take (it was horrible not “horror”) at least until it kind of *was*. This does NOT seem like a good idea. Alas, I hate Nic Klein’s scratchy art too (Having Olivier Couple do the covers on Coates’s similarly – to his Hulk – truncated Thor run made the interior art all the more disappointing). And will someone give Marvel AND DC a slap to stop them renumbering series. Idiotic and self-defeating are the words that spring to mind. (In reality the words that spring to mind are unprintable in this forum!)
Poor Robert Bruce Banner looks ridiculous with that hairstyle too. Klein also draws him in some panels to look like an old man with the hair of Rick Jones. It makes me pine for the days of Sal Buscema, John Byrne, Dale Keown, Gary Frank, John Romita Jr, Jeff Purvis, and even Todd McFarlane (that isn’t fair, I liked McFarlane’s work at the time).
I don’t agree with you about modern Hulk, if by “modern Hulk” we mean Peter David’s Hulk (thirty-five years or so old) because that was great at it’s best, and is the greatest Incredible Hulk there has ever been. Certainly the 1970s/very early 1980s Hulk was played out by the time David worked his magic on the title, as much as I love the Hulk of the Defenders. David managed to take the Hulk in more directions in his run than virtually all the previous writers put together. Even Bill Mantlo had realized that Hulk was stuck in stodgeville so had attempted in his (alas, mediocre) way to work changes on the (then) Green Goliath. I would totally agree that later post-David writers and sometimes Peter David himself too often mired the Hulk in rather too depressing a milieu. “Realism” is often not a boon in superhero comic books and film (certainly overdone “realism” isn’t). Never forget, Hulk loves beans. PFFFFRRRRTTTTT!
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So, this version of the Hulk may not be for you either! I did read a lot of the PAD Hulk, and enjoyed it. Not the grey Hulk business, but the Pantheon period was huge fun. What a shame for Marlo, though, given the attention span of a romantic gnat. Who’s she married to this week? Or is she dead again? So yeah, I liked PAD Hulk more than not, but the innocence of the early Seventies Hulk just hits me where I live, man.
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I loved the Grey Hulk period but there’s nothing wrong with liking the supertraditional early Seventies Hulk!
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