COMICS PORTAL: A Great Hulk!

Phillip Kennedy Johnson has been writing an excellent Superman for DC, and he recently turned his attention to Marvel’s Incredible Hulk! I like what he’s doing with the Big Green Guy!

In the past, I’ve wondered out loud just what you should do with the Hulk. I mean, he’s been a genius, a brute, an impaired guy, a superhero, a grey Mr. Fix-it, and lots of other variations.

See, when you are green and gargantuan, what is a writer to do with you?

Peter David used to vary things up on the Hulk when he discovered sales were dipping, or so the story goes. I found it hard to keep track of just who or even what the Hulk was from month to month.

I enjoyed the first five issues of Al Ewing’s recent Hulk run before he went back to encountering the Avengers. It lost its way after that, in my opinion, although sales seemed to continue to do well even until the following series ended rather unceremoniously.

When I heard that Mr. Johnson was taking the reins of the Hulk, I was curious. One thing he’s done with the characters he’s been writing is exploring exactly who a hero or an anti-hero is. (I recently learned he was taking on Batman and Robin, which makes sense to me since he is raising a son as part of his family. I’m anxious for that to happen, actually!)

So, how do you solve a problem like the Hulk? Johnson basically rediscovered the Hulk’s original horrific roots and expanded on them. I mean, after all, someone who is massive and has interpersonal conflict like he does will not fit in as “one of the guys,” which seems to be something creators of previous versions of the Hulk wanted, particularly when it came to the Avengers.

When Gamma radiation washed over Bruce Banner, it turned him into… a monster. There, I said it! So often, the Hulk has been kind of your “big, green brother” to many creators. Now, he has embraced the monster he truly is, and it feels right!

And he’s dealing with other monsters, and that also feels right! Be they supernatural or mystical or whatever, the Hulk needs to be interacting with equals or those who are “more equal,” seems to me!

I also like the way the inner conflict between Bruce Banner and the Hulk has been ratcheted up. It’s a battle for existence between the two, and I expect that Bruce must lose that struggle eventually.

It’s a fight of brains versus brawn, and it is taking place on an unusual level. The winner must remove the loser from the equation! I would be curious just to see how Hulk would function without Banner for a time, at least! I mean, if he could actually take on external foes instead of an internal one, that would be a curious change for the Hulk. Banner is always that nagging voice Hulk can’t get rid of even when fighting bad guys in the physical world.

This all leads to the question I’d love to see answered: Is the Hulk a good guy or a bad guy? I suspect the answer is somewhere in between. He literally is a “gray” area himself!

Hulk is himself odd and out of place, so he should travel in similar circles. He puts the “freak” back in “freak show.”

This is a golden opportunity to explore the weird and bizarre areas of the Marvel Universe! This makes much more sense to me than the Hulk being a ruler over a world as we have seen in the past. He’s just not stable enough for that scenario!

So, for now, the swamps and the darkest, weirder corners are where the Hulk should exist. He should not be an Avenger, wearing an Avengers uniform or anything else that indicates being heroic or even stable! He is a wild card, and he should make the other odd MCU characters seems normal by comparison!

I look forward to Johnson having the Hulk explore more dark and different Marvel realms. No Avengers for now! The big, green monster needs to be peeking into areas even stranger than he is! Yeah, I’m looking forward to that each month!

What do you think? Is this version of the Hulk one that we can expect to explore for a good amount of time to come? What aspects of the MCU should the Hulk venture into? And should Banner lose the internal battle with the Hulk, at least for a while?