By Roy Thomas, Harlan Ellison, Gary Friedrich, Herb Trimpe, Sal Buscema, Dick Ayers, John Severin & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-6668-9 (HB)
As the 1970s opened the Incredible Hulk had settled into a comfortable – if always excessively and spectacularly destructive – niche. The globe-trotting formula saw tragic Bruce Banner hiding and seeking cures for his gamma-transformative curse, alternately aided or hunted by prospective father-in-law US General “Thunderbolt†Ross and a variety of guest-star heroes and villains.
Herb Trimpe had made the character his own, displaying a penchant for explosive action and an unparalleled facility for drawing technology – especially honking great ordnance and vehicles. Scripter Roy Thomas – unofficial custodian of Marvel’s burgeoning shared-universe continuity – played the afflicted Jekyll/Hyde card for maximum angst and ironic heartbreak even as he continually injected the Jade Juggernaut into the lives of other stalwarts of Marvel’s growing pantheon…
This chronologically-curated hardback and eBook compendium re-presents issues #135-144 plus a crossover tale from Avengers #88 and a delightful surprise from Marvel Super-Heroes #16 (September 1968), encompassing cover-dates January to October 1971 and opens – after Thomas’ Introduction shares a few more intimate behind-the-scenes secrets – with Incredible Hulk #122.
Inked by Sal Buscema, one of the strangest Marvel team-ups occurred in ‘Descent into the Time-Storm!’ as Kang the Conqueror dispatches the Jade Juggernaut to the dog-days of World War I to prevent the Avengers’ ancestors from being born, only to fall foul of the enigmatic masked aviator known as the Phantom Eagle.
Apparently as the result of a Gerry Conway suggestion, Moby Dick (among other cross-media classics) was then homaged in ‘Klattu! The Behemoth From Beyond Space!’ and ‘The Stars, Mine Enemy!’ (this last inked by Mike Esposito) as a vengeance-crazed starship captain pursues the Brobdingnagian alien beast that had maimed him, consequently press-ganging the Hulk in the process and pitting him against old foe the Abomination.
It was back to Earth and another old enemy in ‘…Sincerely, the Sandman!’ (inked by Sam Grainger) as the vicious villain turns Banner’s true love Betty Ross to brittle, fragile glass, whilst #139’s ‘Many Foes Has the Hulk!’ looks in on the Leader‘s latest attempt to kill his brutish nemesis: by exhaustion, with seemingly hundreds of old villains attacking the man-monster all at once…
A most impressive crossover follows as Harlan Ellison, Thomas, Sal Buscema & Jim Mooney craft ‘The Summons of Psyklop!’ for Avengers #88 (May 1971) wherein an insectoid servant of the Elder Gods abducts the Hulk to fuel their resurrection… This leads directly into Incredible Hulk #140 and landmark yarn ‘The Brute that Shouted Love at the Heart of the Atom’ (pencilled & inked by Grainger over Trimpe’s layouts). Trapped on a sub-atomic world, Banner’s intellect and the Hulk’s body are reconciled, and he becomes a barbarian hero to an appreciative populace, and the lover of the perfect princess Jarella, only to be snatched away by Psyklop at the moment of his greatest happiness.
The sudden return to full-sized savagery is the insectoid’s undoing and the Hulk resumes his ghastly existence… at least until #141 when an experimental psychologist provides a means to drain the Hulk’s gamma-energy and utilise it to restore the crystalline Betty.
He even uses the remaining gamma force to turn himself into a superhero in ‘His Name is … Samson!’ (with the wonderful John Severin inking).
Next comes a satirical poke at “Radical Chic†and the return of the “feminist†villain Valkyrie when the Hulk is made a media cause celebre by Manhattan’s effete elite in the oddly charming ‘They Shoot Hulks, Don’t They?’
But don’t fret, there’s plenty of monumental mayhem as well…
This titanic tome terminates with an inevitable but long-delayed clash as the Green Goliath battles Doctor Doom in a two-part epic begun by Thomas, Dick Ayers & Severin wherein the hunted Banner finds ‘Sanctuary!’ in New York City’s Latverian Embassy. The deal is a bad one, however, since the Iron Dictator proceeds to enslave the Gamma scientist for his bomb-making knowledge in an attempt to make his awesome alter ego into an unstoppable war machine…
The scheme goes awry in ‘The Monster and the Madman!’ (scripted by Gary Friedrich over Thomas’ plot) as the brainwashed Banner shucks his mind-warped conditioning – thanks to Doom’s conflicted consort Valeria – just in time for the Hulk to deliver a salutary lesson in mayhem throughout the dictator’s domain.
Did I say it was all over? Not so as wrapping up is the cover to Hulk Annual #3 and original artwork by Ayers & Severin as well as the debut tale of ‘The Phantom Eagle’ by Friedrich & Trimpe as seen in Marvel Super-Heroes #16.
It’s March 1917 and barnstorming aviator Karl Kaufman chafes at his inability to enlist in the US Army Air Corps. America is not in the Great War yet, but everyone knows it’s coming and Karl’s best friend cannot understand his pal’s reticence. Despite a crash-created infirmity, Rex Griffin signed up immediately but doesn’t realise that Karl can’t be an allied air warrior until he has smuggled his German parents out of the Fatherland and beyond the reach of reprisals…
All too suddenly the war comes to Karl as, while testing his new super-plane, he encounters a gigantic Fokker-carrying zeppelin over Long Island Sound, and realizes the Kaiser has launched an invasion of America…
Mobilising his meagre resources and masked as a Phantom Eagle, Karl takes to the skies but his sortie, although successful, will cost him dearly…
The Hulk is one of the most well-known comic characters on Earth, and these stories, as much as the movies, TV shows and action figures, are the reason why. For an uncomplicated, honestly vicarious experience of Might actually being Right, you can’t do better than these yarns so why not Go Green.
© 1970, 1971, 2018 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.