HULK: Return of the Monster (Marvel 2002)

 

The monster "returns" in this visionary, revitalizing run from Bruce Jones and John Romita Jr.! 

By Bruce Jones, John Romita Jr., Tom Palmer, Studio F, and Comiccraft's Wes Abbott. Edited by John Miesegaes (Asst.) and Alex Alonso. Editor in Chief Joe Quesada, President Bill Jemas

(This post was originally featured on the Uncanny X-Cerpts Patreon and may be subject to formatting issues)

In 2001, I was less interested in reading comics than I was in reading about comics. While I had a hoard of comics from my brother's manic accumulator phase in the 90's, and a cousin who was always up on comics and was happy to share them with me, nothing much held my interest. But for whatever reason, I continued to read and enjoy Wizard Magazine. Every month I would go to the comic shop in town, buy the latest issue, and enjoy comics by proxy. Then that fall, as I was entering high school, they covered a handful of new and upcoming comics that I found so intriguing that I absolutely had to be a part of them. Chief among them was Incredible Hulk #34, the debut of the new creative team of writer Bruce Jones (previously of HBO's The Hitchhiker, and earlier co-creator of Belasco in Marvel's Ka-Zar) and penciller John Romita Jr., dubbed "The Return of the Monster" -- a wryly ironic name for a story in which the Hulk doesn't even appear on panel.

The story itself is tantalizingly simple: Bruce Banner is on the run -- as usual -- hiding out from the authorities after one of his Hulking Stupors resulted in the death of a little tyke named Ricky Myers. In the first issue, the only thing that "happens" is that Banner advises a young Black kid who is caught up with some "gang bangers" in a somewhat broad depiction of street life. Bruce doesn't have much practical wisdom for the kid (although he tries his darnedest) and doesn't stay in his life for long. 

As far as the death of little Ricky that's set the media world on fire, we know nothing about the event itself besides what is shown on numerous broadcasts glimpsed throughout the issue. It happened before the narrative. Is the Hulk responsible? It's plausible, although rarely in the character's history has attention been drawn to the collateral damage he causes. If he did it, he probably has our forgiveness as a reader, but we suspect he might not have. In any case, it gives The Man a renewed cause to hunt Banner down -- a patently familiar scenario, tackled unusually.

For this first six-issue phrase of story, Banner is on the run, aided by his mysterious online acquaintance Mr. Blue to keep ahead of his pursuers and his guided meditation techniques to keep him from Hulking out. Romita Jr. is provided space and time to really settle in the mood of a scene, so that every little movement of his enemies engenders suspense. Pursuing him are a pair of agents from a shadowy organization that wants its hands on The Hulk, and have so engineered this manhunt, right down to fabricating Ricky's death (in reality, Ricky died years ago.)

The agents are hired mercenaries Jink Slater, a hotshot who works alone, and Sandra Verdugo, your typical femme fatale who uses her sexuality and her smarts to wend her way to her prey. Naturally, theirs is an uneasy partnership, forced on them by their mysterious overlords, who have also wrangled in numerous agents of their own, and former Hulk supporting player Doc Samson, all as insurance (Doc isn't tempted and manages to help Bruce escape a tight corner.) Verdugo and Slater are established as highly elite but not likely to be any kind of ultimate foes. Their deployment lets us know exactly the kind of towering forces our hero is up against.

What happens in the first six issues of Jones' run could, theoretically, have been accomplished in two issues of a more standard comic, and they wouldn't even feel particularly monumental. What the story arc does is dunk us headfirst into the new vision for Hulk comics: slow, creeping, methodical, airy -- whatever moments are, breathe. Dialogue, which in the early 2000's was still usually free-flowing bubbles of exposition spanning whole pages and panels interspersed with narration filling you in so that nothing is left uncertain, is instead clipped and minimal. It actually feels, for the most part, like characters are talking to each other and conversing, rather than sharing exposition for our benefit.

The Hulk is conspicuous by his absence, as the book has a habit of cutting away when it looks like Bruce is about to transform, effectively teasing the audience and letting them know the focus is on the human. The book is so "quiet" that one barely notices that the second issue is part of "'Nuff Said" month, where every book Marvel published featured zero text. At the end of the six issues, Verdugo and Slater are done away with (in a suitably action-oriented climax) and we have only just begun to learn how deep this conspiracy against the Hulk may go. It is clear that we are in for a long ride.

The effect is that we, as readers, become very attuned to Banner. Every close call, every shadowy corner that may have an agent lurking in it, every near-Hulkout is meant to get our blood pumping in a way that the full release of smashing action never could. It puts us in the shoes of one of the previously least-accessible Marvel alter egos, Dr. Bruce Banner.

The book was divisive by design: either you thought it was brilliant or you wondered how the hell people could be suckered into buying a "Hulk" book with no Hulk in it. True to Marvel tradition, they printed plenty of both perspectives in the letters columns, with some praising the new direction and some decrying it as a betrayal of first principles (that being: Hulk Smash.) What the angry letter writers may not have gleaned was that their missives represented validation for the new concept: not everyone was going to love it, but it was a chance being taken on a book that had been stagnant for quite some time.

As a brainy 14-year-old who enjoyed Christopher Nolan's Memento and Twin Peaks reruns, I loved it. It really engaged me, and I thought I may have been looking at the future of comics. In a way, I was -- taking six months to do much of anything would quickly become the norm at Marvel Comics, spurred on by the success of the Ultimate Universe and the prominence of the Trade Paperback format. Here is where "decompression" spread to the main line of comics, for good or ill. And yes, it could be that one person's pacing is another's padding, but I've been at this a while, trust me to know the difference.

"Decompression" did become the dominant style but no Marvel comic that I've read since quite attempted this same craft, the halting pace and air of constant suspense and withholding from its reader that puts you right in the reading experience. That's because comics like this aren't suitable for the continuous grind of event comics that defined Marvel in the later half of the decade. You couldn't wall an iconic character off in an ongoing, methodically-built game of cat and mouse because they needed to be ready, at a moment's notice, to jump into the next Secret Infinite War.

It wasn't going to be the most popular book on the racks or the most essential to the ongoing mythology of Marvel Comics, but it was a singular publication that carried its own distinct flavour, and those who liked it, liked it a lot. In the past decade some Marvel comics have carried the legacy of truly being their own thing, but they're usually outliers like the Matt Fraction Hawkeye title, featuring a character who is not fully essential to the Marvel master plan. The legacy of this book is seen more in the plethora of independent comics of the past 20 years that aren't designed to emulate the Big-Two template of following the hero through myriad adventures, but to spin one long yarn as much as possible, often using the same distant, relaxed, premium cable style of pacing.

After four years of mounting tension -- and an eventual payoff -- Jones exited the book for an exclusive contract with DC Comics. Longtime Hulk steward Peter David papered over most of what had been done and directed our attention back to what Marvel comics are supposed to be, and incoming scribe Greg Pak ushered in the run that would define the Hulk for the next decade-plus, sending him to Sakaar and back as the Worldbreaker of Planet Hulk and later World War Hulk -- a compelling, but very much more conventional take on the character (which was also drawn in part by Romita Jr, a man of many talents) which had more of a place in the pantheon of Marvel heroes and villains. That story informed his portrayal in the blockbuster action movie Thor: Ragnarok, while elements of this story were incorporated, if superficially, into the 2007 Incredible Hulk film that is largely forgotten.

Okay, you've waited this long, you can have a little Hulk as a treat.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing or that the Bruce Jones Hulk run should have continued indefinitely. It probably got exactly the time it needed. Only that I really appreciate when someone is in a position to do something unusual with the normally convention-bound medium of superhero comics. In this particular case it drew me back into comics and made me fall in love with the medium when I had only ever liked it as a way to access characters. Jones and Romita -- along with the later artists who took up the thread -- have a place in my comics-loving heart for that.

You could launch a comic with Image featuring your own characters and scenario using this same languid pace and not be any kind of iconoclast. But slipping a character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby into it? Now that's a trick.

A note on the title: Although "Incredible" appears on the cover, this volume was simply published under the name HULK for its duration; that is how it is filed on Marvel Unlimited and the title of this article reflects that. I guess at different times he was occasionally credible and they wanted to capture that.