Month: December 2010

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Incredible Hulk: Return of the Monster


By Bruce Jones, John Romita Jr. & Tom Palmer (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-0943-3

Bruce Banner was a military scientist accidentally caught in a gamma bomb blast of his own devising. As a result he would unexpectedly transform into a giant green monster of unstoppable strength and fury when distressed or surprised. As both occasional hero and mindless monster he rampaged across the Marvel Universe for years, finally finding his size 700 feet and a format that worked, becoming one of young Marvel’s most resilient features.

An incredibly popular character both in comics and more global media beyond, he has often undergone radical changes in scope and direction to keep his stories fresh and his exploits explosively compelling…

One of the most impressive runs of recent vintage was by noted thriller and horror writer Bruce Jones (see especially his impressive Hitchcock pastiche Somerset Holmes) who injected some long-neglected suspense and pure menace back into the saga. This slim volume (re-presenting issues #34-39 of The Incredible Hulk comicbook from 2001) combines his moody, humanistic writing with the ponderously powerful pencilling of John Romita Jr. and the slickly realistic inking of Tom Palmer to stunning effect.

Always running from the authorities and himself, Banner has finally lost all hope in the aftermath of one of the Hulk’s bouts of mindless destruction which devastated Chicago and resulted in the death of a little boy, Ricky Myers. This book opens with ‘The Morning After’ as a cold and emotionally dead Banner hides in a sleazy hotel where he encounters Jerome, a kid so smart that he knows joining a gang is the only thing that can keep someone with his kind of brains alive.

The desperate lad gets a glimpse at another option after he tries to burglarize the skinny, repressed white guy down the hall and when Jerome gets in over his head it is Banner not the Hulk who is the solution…

Incognito, restlessly wandering but with a mysterious ally keeping him one step ahead of his myriad pursuers Banner is slowly reconnecting with the humanity he has avoided ever since the monster was first created. In the wordless, deeply moving ‘Silent Running’ the fugitive narrowly escapes capture at a diner due to the inadvertent assistance of an autistic child, whilst ‘The Gang’s All Here!’ introduces a mismatched pair of assassins hired by the secret organisation actually behind the current manhunt for Banner and the Hulk.

Both the lethal killer Slater and his rival/partner Sandra Verdugo have been co-opted by a cabal of Men in Black with an unspecified interest in ramping up anti-Hulk hysteria and they definitely want Banner. They also appear to have the literal power of life and death over their unwilling agents…

With Banner’s old friend Doc Samson lured into the pursuit the cabal makes its move in ‘You Must Remember This…’ but when the gamma-fuelled psychologist is distracted by a small child’s experience of school bullying the Hulk-hunters converge and generate a colossal amount of collateral damage at the ‘Last Chance Café’, before events get totally out of hand and terrifyingly weird in the concluding ‘Tag… You’re Dead!’

Using the theme of troubled childhoods and imagery based on the classic Frankenstein films that were such an integral part of the Jade Giant’s conceptual genesis, these tales focus on Banner and judiciously limit the use of his emerald alter ego to the point where the monster almost becomes a ghost. Ever-present but never seen (the monster is only on 21 of the 144 pages of this collection and that includes covers, dream-sequences, flashbacks and spot illustrations) like a catastrophic Rebecca haunting a Midwestern Manderley, the Hulk is a oppressive force of calculated salvation and last resort rather than mere reader-friendly graphic destruction and gratuitous gratification.

Like all great monsters he lurks in the shadows, waiting for his moment…

One of the most beguiling and impressive Hulk yarns of all, this book is the first of three self-contained volumes which utterly reinvigorated the character and completely refocused the series for the 21st century. If you’re new to the series or looking for an excuse to jump back on, this is the book for you…
© 2001, 2002 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved.

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Fables volume 8: Wolves


By Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham & others (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-388-6

Fables is one of those blessed delights that makes a reviewers job almost impossible. Series of matchless quality that still improve with each volume are rare and most welcome but you soon run out of superlatives to express your enthusiasm, so unless the reviewer wants to cross the border into Spoiler Territory (giving away a plot to a potential fan ought to be a Capital Offence) you really have nothing to offer: therefore I’m repeating my standard short review: Best One Yet – Get Them All.

Still and all you might want a little more, so…

The monthly comicbook Fables details the exploits of fairytale and storybook characters that we humans regard as fictional, living secret immortal lives among us, refugees from a monstrous all-consuming Adversary who had conquered their original otherworldly homelands.

Allow me to elucidate. Keeping their true nature hidden from humanity the Fables have created enclaves where their magic and sheer strangeness (all the talking animals are sequestered on a remote farm in upstate New York, for example) keep them luxuriously safe. Many characters do wander the human world, but always under strict injunction not to draw attention. These magical, perfect, cynical yet perversely human creatures dream of one day returning to their own homes and interrupted lives.

They used to live with the constant threat that their all-consuming foe would one day find them…

However their nemesis has been revealed as the puppeteer Geppetto, who used his ability to carve living, sentient beings out of wood to build all-powerful armies, soon supplemented with goblins, monsters and collaborators who joined rather than die when his unstoppable marionette forces came marching in. ruling in anonymity from behind his greatest creation the Emperor. Geppetto has almost conquered all of Reality, but now with his secret revealed the indomitable refugees of Fabletown are planning to retaliate…

Collecting issues # 48-51 of the monthly comic this volume brings everybody up to speed with the handy ‘Who’s Who in Fabletown’ featurette before the eponymous two-parter ‘Wolves’ (illustrated by Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha & Andrew Pepoy) finds the eternally young Mowgli prowling the Arctic hinterlands attempting to track down absent friend – and experienced warrior – Bigby; shape-changing Big Bad Wolf and son of the storm god known alternately as Mr. North and the Great North Wind.

When the mortals of Siberia prove useless the Jungle Boy turns to the wolves and soon discovers what he needs. Meanwhile back in America on the farm Bigby’s cubs are growing increasingly hard to handle…

Of course Mowgli is eventually successful and Bigby returns to Fabletown, although not without some pretty conniving convincing, just in time for the celebratory 50th issue extravaganza which opens with ‘Secret Agent Man’ as Bigby undertakes an covert mission deep into the Adversary’s territory, reviews the Fables indescribably unique war-resources in ‘Castles in the Sky’ before dropping ‘Behind Enemy Lines’ to set up a spectacular confrontation and coup.

Breathtaking in its audacity ‘The Israel Analogy’ establishes a new relationship between Geppetto and the refugee Fables before Bigby returns to Earth in ‘Home is the Hunter’ for a different kind of confrontation and unexpected revelation with Snow White (long-abandoned mother of his cubs) in ‘Restoration’ leading to a reconciliation in ‘The Big Valley’ and ending, as proper stories should, in ‘The Wedding’. There’s even a pithy little epilogue ‘Mr. and Mrs. Wolf’ for all us helpless romantics…

Shawn McManus then illustrates ‘Big and Small’ wherein special emissary Cinderella goes to extraordinary lengths to maintain allies amongst both giants and mouse governments, which ends the narrative portion of this splendid tome but there are still treats in store beginning with assorted ‘Maps of the Fable Territories’ and ending with the complete script to Fables #50, illustrated by cover illustrator James Jean.

There is nothing around today that can touch this series for imagination, style and quality, and you’ll never know the real meaning of “happy ever after” until you turn on to this magnificent saga.

© 2006 Bill Willingham and DC Comics. All rights reserved.