By Greg Pak, Ron Garney, Jackson Guice & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851- (hb)Â Â 978-0-7851-2714-7 (tpb)
Once upon a time, Bruce Banner was a military scientist accidentally caught in a gamma bomb blast of his own devising. As a result, stress or other factors caused him to regularly transform into a gigantic green monster of unstoppable strength and fury. As both occasional hero and mindless monster he has rampaged across the Marvel Universe for decades, becoming one of Marvel’s most popular comicbook features and multi-media titans.
As such, he has often undergone radical changes in scope and format to keep his stories fresh and his exploits explosively compelling…
In recent years the number of Gamma-mutated monsters rampaging across the Marvel landscape has proliferated to inconceivable proportions. The days of Banner getting angry and going Green at the drop of a hat are long gone, so anybody taking their cues from the TV or movie incarnations will be wise to assume a level of unavoidable confusion. There are now numerous assorted Hulks, She-Hulks, Abominations and all kinds of ancillary atomic berserkers roaming the planet, so be prepared to experience a little confusion if you’re coming to this particular character cold. Nevertheless these always epic stories are generally worth the effort so persist if you can.
During the more than year-long ‘Planet Hulk’ storyline of 2006-2007, the Jade Juggernaut was exiled in space and crashed on the distant, brutally primitive world Sakarr, where he was enslaved as a gladiator before rising to briefly become messiah-king of the entire place by defeating the terrifying Red King.
He married an incredibly powerful once-enemy with ancient, ancestral tectonic gifts dubbed Caiera the Oldstrong, unknowingly spawned a son, and lost his new wife when the ship that brought him to Sakaar exploded…
Bereft and enraged he returned to Earth, oblivious of what he had left behind…
This collection gathers the first six issues of the spin-off series Skaar, Son of Hulk, the one -shot Savage World of Sakaar and a short piece from the anthology Hulk Family: Green Genes covering August 2008 – February 2009, written in its entirety by film director and screenwriter Greg Pak. Each issue of Son of Hulk was divided into a main feature illustrated by Ron Garney and/or Jackson “Butch†Guice and an ancillary back-up ‘Shadow Tales’ with Guice supplying all the drawing, and everything was lavishly coloured by Paul Mounts.
The blockbusting barbarian action begins with a quick and ominous recap before the gestating egg of the interplanetary lovers, left to quicken in a lake of fire when the shuttle exploded, gives violent birth to a monstrous green child that easily defeats the myriad horrors and beasts of the burning swamps. Already fast, tough and durable, the bestial boy screams its name and can apparently hear the voice of his deceased Oldstrong mother as he battles his way out of his ‘Cradle of Fire’…
Within a month, the rapidly maturing waif he has saved a group of survivors from the Red King’s successor, Axeman Bone, who has ordered his armies to kill every newborn they can find, acting on prophecies offered by the enigmatic shadow-priests he has enslaved…
A year later the Son of Hulk is finally assassinated by the dragon-riding Bone and a messianic movement begun by the re-enslaved masses falters. But if Skaar is dead then who or what is the approximately teen-aged, mute, green-skinned youth who attacks the bloody tyrant’s camp..?
Elderly ex-slave Old Sam claims that it’s only a beast from the swamps, but he’s been secretly educating the creature for his own ends. When Skaar crushes Bone and his cohort of war-reptiles, the dictator’s imperial rival Princess Omaka senses a potential threat – or ally – in ‘Blood of the Dragon’…
‘Shadow Tales part 1’ takes a sidebar look at Bones’ defeat from the tyrant’s camp and through the eyes of slaves who have survived three different rulers in short succession, but although long gone, the Hulk’s unique legacy remains. As the Green King he freed the different peoples of Sakaar and his blood even reinvigorated new plant growth in arid deserts. Of course those fresh and sustaining vines now consume anybody who comes near them…
‘The Princess and the Beast’ finds Omaka and Old Sam discussing their plans for the brutish boy before Bone attacks again and the Princess decides to kill the emerald distraction. However as the armies and deadly cybernetic wildebots close in, Skaar reveals his greatest secret: he is both smart and able to talk, as he proves when routing Bones’ forces with strength of arm and savage strategy…
The sorely wounded Axeman takes centre stage in ‘Shadow Tales part 2’ remembering when he was merely chief general in the armies of the ruthless potentates Omaka and the Red King, after which Savage World of Sakaar provides a selection of short tales fleshing out the ferocious history and culture of Planet Hulk.
With art from Carlo Pagulayan, Timothy Truman, Timothy Green II, Gabriel Hardman & Jason Paz, campfire stories told by the wandering rebels reveal the birth and childhood of Axeman Bone, Omaka’s defeat by Skaar’s mother Caiera whilst they both served the Red King, and how the still-infant Son of Hulk befriended the giant swamp-bugs and won his characteristic battle tattoos, before closing with a Moses-like miracle as the Green Teen leads the salvation-hungry hordes who follow him through the deadly garden grown from his father’s spilled blood…
And at every turn Skaar tells them he is not their messiah, he just wants the Old Power…
Skaar, Son of Hulk #4 finds the Boy Behemoth still following Old Sam’s guidance and millennial footsteps as he retraces ‘The Prophet’s Walk’, overcoming elemental weather and appalling monsters – with his unwelcome followers more than ever convinced that he is the Second Coming – before confronting one of Bones’ Shadow Priest slaves, as steeped in the ancient Oldstrong power as his mother Caiera had been; a phenomenon expanded upon in ‘Shadow Tales part 3’…
‘Fall of the Prophet’ sees the Green Pretender on the edge of defeat against Oldstrong Hiro-Amin – even despite the unwanted aid of Omaka – until Old Sam reveals the astonishing true history and nature of the world-shaking genetic gifts Skaar has inherited, and ghostly advice from Caiera enables her embattled son to defeat the Axeman’s unbeatable, fanatical living weapon…
‘Shadow Tales part 4’ focuses on the broken Hiro-Amin as he reveals the story behind the boy passed off as Skaar and long-ago executed by Bones. His audience is a child-slave named Hiro-Kala – a boy with an unsuspected connection to both Skaar and the Incredible Hulk…
This saga rushes to a cataclysmic cliffhanger in ‘Heroes and Monsters’ as Skaar marches to a final confrontation with Axeman Bone whilst the planet reels from the devastating disturbances caused by his battle with the Oldstrong slave. With the Jade Juvenile’s followers unable to decide if he is saviour Sakaarson or ultimate destroyer Worldbreaker, Old Sam finally discloses the origins of all that savage world’s myths and legends just as a revitalised Red King and Skaar meet face to face…
With the Old Power in his grasp Skaar then turns to see herald of planetary disaster, the Silver Surfer, waiting to confront him…
The comicbook carnage concludes with a glimpse of Skaar’s early days with Old Sam in ‘School for Savages’ (from Hulk Family: Green Genes and illustrated by Jheremy Raapack & Greg Adams),wherein the untutored wild-child displays the first hints of his destiny by routing a barbarian cannibal horde and finally mastering the wearing of pants all in one day…
This collection also includes a cover and variant gallery by Garney, Carlo Pagulayan, Julie Bell, David Yardin & Francis Tsai, plus character designs and cover sketches and pencils by Pagulayan and Garney.
Although painfully short on plot, depending too much on a working familiarity with what’s come before and insufferably ending on a trenchant cliffhanger which means you’d be well advised to have the sequel at hand before you start, there’s still a lot to recommend this blistering, all-action rollercoaster if you’re a fan of magnificent mindless graphic mayhem – and what follower of the Hulk isn’t?
© 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.