By Mark Waid, Mahmud Asrar, Clayton Mann & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-620-5
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, any undue stress could cause him to transform into a gigantic green monster of unimaginable strength and fury.
As both occasional hero and bombastic brute he rampaged across the landscape for decades, becoming one of comics’ most popular characters and most enduring multi-media titans.
Over the years he has undergone numerous radical changes in scope, character and format to keep his stories fresh and his exploits explosively compelling whilst 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…
In a world of numerous Hulks, She-Hulks, Abominations and every kind of ancillary colour-swatched atomic berserker, the MarvelNOW! event saw the Jade Giant reinvented in a stripped-down, back-to-basics but startlingly original manner which energised new and old fans alike.
The big change in his 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 devastated 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 his future headlines as a scientist, not a shattering force of nature – for as long as he could possible manage – rather than fruitlessly seek to cure his affliction. Additionally, in return for S.H.I.E.L.D. science labs and trained assistants, the beleaguered boffin would give the spy agency first use of his discoveries and inventions…
This volume details the final days of this cataclysmic chapter in the ever-eventful life of Dr. Banner and his angry green alter ego (collecting Indestructible Hulk #16, 17.INH, 18.INH, 19.INH, 20 and Indestructible Hulk Annual #1, spanning January-March 2014) with scripter Mark Waid going out on a unforgettable high.
These days comics are all about the next Big Publishing Event and this latest Hulk collection capitalises on the tide of Inhumanity to bring this particular iteration to a spectacular climax …
During earlier mega-blockbuster Infinity, mad Titan Thanos invaded Earth and battled the Inhumans’ ruler Black Bolt to a standstill. As a last resort the embattled king released the Hidden People’s mutagenic Terrigen Mist into the atmosphere where it triggered mutation in millions, proving that human and Inhuman were not necessarily different races…
After being marooned in mystical ice-hell Jotunheim and then having to outwit Zarrko the Tomorrow Man and repair the fracturing time-stream, Banner and his team are way behind the greenly envious genius’ schedule to prove himself smarter than Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Hank Pym and all the other assorted big-brains who have outshone and pitied him over the years of his affliction…
Thus in ‘Humanity Bomb: Prelude’ (by Waid & Mahmud Asrar)Banner is prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to get back on track. After blackmailing the Military-Industrial complex for “black bag†funds, the inventor goes on a spree of tinkering only to be beaten to the patent office post over and over again by his oblivious intellectual rivals.
With his temper fraying, only calm, cool assistant Randall Jessup seems able to keep him from “Hulking Outâ€, so it’s with some relief that Banner hears of a rushed – and highly suspect – S.H.I.E.L.D. mission to an ancient Meso-American pyramid in Mexico where he can exorcise some pent-up frustration…
They only want Renewable Energy expert Jessup on-site, but Banner is not a man to take “no†for an answer anymore – which is lucky considering the original purpose of the monolith and the things waiting inside…
Indestructible Hulk Annual #1 then offers a look into Banner’s – and Tony Stark’s – boyhood via a ‘Journey into Science’ (Jeff Parker & Asrar) as Dr. Derenik Zadian – the charismatic but mercenary scientific genius who taught and then advised the two prodigies to go into weapons research – returns as a threat to the entire world. Iron Man and the Hulk must reluctantly invade the monster-stuffed island their renegade mentor is now literally part-and-parcel of…
‘Humanity Bomb’ (by Waid, Clay Mann, Seth Mann, Miguel Sepulveda, Jheremy Raapack, Tom Grummett, Joe Bennett, Karl Kesel, Ruy José, Andrew Hennessy & Scott Hanna) then opens as Stark and Pym meddle with Banner’s proposed solution for the still-propagating clouds of airborne Terrigen Mist…
Already under relentless, self-induced pressure to succeed, the unwelcome intervention stresses Banner, but not as much as the S.H.I.E.L.D. edict that his entire research team are to be held in “lock-down†since one of them has tested positive for the genes that react to Terrigen exposure…
Thus, when Iron Man, Giant-Man and The Beast arrive, insultingly demanding to check his work before proceeding, Banner goes ballistic. To be fair though, his quick fix is a bomb and everybody is painfully aware of how well his last radical radioactive explosive device turned out…
When the physicist goes green and crazy the assembled Avengers are unable to stop him stealing the bomb and escaping into the unsuspecting world…
The resulting chase and cataclysmic clash causes the bomb to detonate over Tulsa, Oklahoma with horrific and astounding results. In the aftermath the now pacified physicist’s solution is deconstructed and the reason for its failure to end the spread of “Terrigenesis†determined.
Banner is blithely unaware that his team have broken out of custody and flown after him. They are unaware that the cure hasn’t worked – until one of them suddenly turns into a monster that feeds on rage…
Inevitably the fresh new travesty of nature clashes spectacularly with the Hulk but, even after a seeming solution reverses the Terrigen transformation, the danger is not over. Elsewhere, maverick scientist Ted Goodrich has rebuilt and reactivated the rogue think tank dubbed The Enclave (which numbered growing the first artificial godling Him/Adam Warlock amongst its numerous wonders and breakthroughs) and has targeted Banner’s recently reverted aide…
That bombastic battle apparently goes the Good Guys’ way but after reporting back to Maria Hill one more shock and another impossible tragedy awaits the understandably at-the-end-of-his tether Bruce Banner…
Sporting a stack of AR icons (Marvel’s Augmented Reality App featuring printed portals to online story bonuses and extras for everyone who downloaded the free software from marvel.com onto a smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet) and a stunning cover gallery by Asrar & Dave McCaig, this sharp, action-packed and astonishingly compelling read offers a fun-filled, fury-fuelled shocking end to the epic 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.
™ & © 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.