By Mark Waid, Matteo Scalera, Kim Jacinto & Mahmud Asrar (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-574-1
Once upon a time, Bruce Banner was merely a military scientist accidentally caught in a Gamma-bomb blast of his own devising. As a result, undue stress could cause him to transform into a gigantic green monster of unimaginable strength and fury. As both occasional hero and blockbusting brute he rampaged across the landscape for decades, becoming one of comics’ most popular characters and most enduring multi-media titans.
He has, inescapably, then undergone numerous radical changes in scope, character and format to keep his stories fresh and his exploits explosively compelling…
In recent years the number of Gamma-galvanised grotesqueries crashing about the Marvel Universe has proliferated to inconceivable proportions. The days of Bruce going green with anger at the drop of a hat are long gone, so anybody taking their cues from TV or movie incarnations would be wise to anticipate a smidgen of unavoidable confusion…
By the time of the game-changing Avengers versus X-Men mega-crossover relaunch, there were numerous Hulks, She-Hulks, Abominations and all kinds of ancillary rainbow-hued atomic berserkers roaming around, and in the aftermath of that house-cleaning exercise, the MarvelNOW! event saw the Jade Giant return in a stripped-down, back-to-basics version which energised new and old fans alike.
Modern comics are all about the next Big Event and throughout 2013 numerous Marvel titles experienced a few temporal troubles. This latest Hulk collection also tenuously ties in to those ongoing time travel travails, which all ostensibly arose from the after-effects of dramatic disruptions in the (Marvel) universes’ conjoined time-streams. The root cause was The Avengers unmaking of the Age of Ultron, but don’t fret as the stories here stand well enough on their own…
The big change in the Hulk’s fortunes occurred after S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill was persuaded to provide perennial fugitive Banner with resources and funding in order to sanitise his scientific reputation. In return Hill could call on the Hulk as a living weapon of last resort…
One of the smartest men on Earth, Banner had lost years of success, progress and peer renown whilst trying to cure himself of the Hulk. Concerned about his legacy, the fugitive genius had at last decided to make future headlines as a scientist, not a devastating force of nature.
For the foreseeable future and as long as possible he would manage – rather than seek cures for – his affliction. Additionally, in return for S.H.I.E.L.D. science labs and trained assistants – generally in the isolated facility of Nuclear Springs, Nevada (AKA “Bannervilleâ€) – the bombastic boffin would also give the agency first use of many of his discoveries and inventions…
This guest-star packed third volume details the next cataclysmic chapter in the ever-eventful life of Dr. Banner and his mean green alter ego (collecting Indestructible Hulk #11-15, cover-dated September 2013 to January 2014) with scripter Mark Waid letting the emerald engine of destruction loose on a multiplicity of Marvel’s genre-adventures roots…
Banner and his team are just getting back to business (after a agonising sojourn in Jotunheim, realm of Asgardian Frost Giants) when the irascible genius is summoned to an ultra-secret division of S.H.I.E.L.D. to apply his unique gifts to a cataclysmic situation. Even before seeing the Temporal Irregularity Management and Eradication site Banner knows something big is up: the Hulk’s last mission had included a surprise attack by a brand spanking new 75-year-old American bomber packed with ancient skeletons in flight suits…
The 5-part ‘Agent of T.I.M.E.’ (illustrated by Matteo Scalera, Kim Jacinto & Mahmud Asrar) continues as Banner meets the secret project’s prize prisoner. Zarrko the Tomorrow Man, has been an inmate of the facility for two decades – even though for that entire period he has been continually battling Thor, Iron Man, Spider-Man on the outside in a variety of centuries.
He explains the impossible paradox by describing – as he has continually for over twenty years – how, thanks to constant meddling, the Timestream is broken and all of reality is in imminent danger of shattering.
Thanks to recent events the S.H.I.E.L.D. higher-ups are at last prepared to believe him…
Stuck in his cell, helplessly emitting time-warping radiations, Zarrko again repeats his warnings: even with the armour and screening technologies he has provided, mere mortals cannot survive in the roaring chronal currents. Only the Hulk can be sent to key time points to fix the escalating chaos.
It’s pretty urgent he goes soon, too, since Chronarchists from beyond now are targeting weak spots in time, intent on overwriting the past to cement their own futures…
Banner is dead set against the idea until Zarrko reminds him that people and places are dropping out of reality every moment: people like Betty Ross, Banner’s ex-wife and now the riotous Red She-Hulk.
In the crowded lab only he and the Tomorrow Man remember her… and even Bruce is having trouble recalling her name…
The Chronarchists are also the reason the Hulk’s intellect is so mutable: his Gamma-charged existence is a threat to their victory so they have been tampering with his personal history…
Resigned to his task Banner acquiesces, allowing Zarrko and the T.I.M.E. technologists to set him up for the trip. Since he’ll need to stay “Hulked†for the duration Banner’s personality is duplicated in a free-floating, self-powered Recording Observation Bot, which effectively means the scientist and savage who have always despised each other will be working as a team…
The first stop is Arizona in 1873 where the Big Green Galoot and his floating metal sidekick/brain join Western legends Kid Colt, Rawhide Kid and Two-Gun Kid in battling dinosaurs and the Chronarchist Tok Baltusar who has enslaved a town and tried to turn the local silver mine into his personal factory for producing time-warping nano-alloys…
The bizarre aggregation of heroes eventually overcomes the temporal infiltrator but the Hulk is explosively propelled back to the sixth century and another heroic crisis: the too-early fall of Camelot…
Expelled from his citadel by Chronarchist Valdar Ahd (employing a legion of warriors from all ages), King Arthur even welcomes the assistance of a gross green ogre and its talking, flying box as he, Merlin and the puissant Black Knight lead the surviving paladins of the Table Round in a battle to restore honour and save the right and proper future…
After spectacularly and destructively dealing with the chronal iconoclast, R.O.B./Banner and the ferociously fluctuating Hulk are rather at a loss to track down the final temporal tamperer.
Following a host of false trails only leads into a procession of clashes with old foes such as the Abomination, Sandman and Fin Fang Foom, all cunningly placed in time-ambushes throughout a rapidly and constantly revising history to delay interference in a hidden mastermind’s true scheme…
Each subtle distraction further diminishes Hulk and the recording of Banner before, as time is literally about to run out, the answer occurs to the rapidly failing brainbox in a box…
At an atomic test site R.O.B. can barely remember, a scientist named Banner argues with his assistant Igor, his girlfriend Betty and her father – military martinet General Thunderbolt Ross – about the imminent detonation of the world’s first Gamma-bomb. Then when a kid drives onto Ground Zero, the Banner dashes out to save him, only to be caught in the blast…
This time though, a monolithic green giant pushes him aside and takes the full hit of raging radiation…
The rapidly failing Banner/R.O.B. has deduced their quarry’s when-&-whereabouts seconds too late, blinking in to the event just in time for the Hulk to be bombarded with a second dose of mutative energy – exactly as his time-bending opponents had intended…
With all his programs failing, the robot rapidly downloads his remaining memories into his pre-radiated organic self, leaving a horrified, physically powerless but utterly up-to-speed Bruce Banner to face the enraged atrocious monstrosity of a “Hulk-Squaredâ€â€¦
Or not.
Finally freed of the curse of the Hulk before he ever carried it, Banner is tempted to let the new status quo stand… until he realises that the last Chronarchist’s tampering has also deleted his beloved Betty from the timeline…
The heartbroken savant has only one chance to put things right: defeat the last time-bender Khotto – and the now-obvious Machiavellian mastermind behind the entire audacious history-warping scheme – no matter the cost…
And when the dust of centuries finally settles, Banner’s world is back the way it should be, although the weary savant cannot help but feel that something, somewhere, somehow has changed in a way he cannot yet fathom…
Packed with the now-standard AR icons (Marvel’s Augmented Reality App: printed portals giving access to story bonuses and extras for everyone who downloaded the free software from marvel.com onto a smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet whatsit) and a stunning cover-&-variants gallery by Mukesh Singh, Michael Del Mundo & Leonel Castellani, this is a smart, comfortingly convoluted and amazingly compelling read: a fun-filled, fury-fuelled saga which brilliantly mixes incredible adventure with clever characterisation and an addictive excess of furious Fights ‘n’ Tights action that no comics fan could possibly resist.
™ & © 2013 and 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.