Resuming our look at the Marvel comic universe from start to present (with many, many stories and issues missed for the sake of my sanity) it’s time to look at the debut of the Incredible Hulk, all… six issues of it. Yeah, Hulk didn’t really take off to start with and was cancelled, being moved into “Tales to Astonish” until eventually gaining popularity later. So it’s an odd thing to look at retrospectively, but to be fair to fans at the time, there isn’t much going on here… Let’s take a look!
The first three parts of the first issue show Dr. Bruce Banner save the life of teenager Rick Jones when the latter wonders onto the staging area for a test explosion of the new “Gamma Bomb” Bruce and his fellow scientists created but this act of bravery ends up exposing Bruce to massive amounts of Gamma Radiation. This happened because Igor, a defector from the Soviet Union, was actually a SPY from the Soviet Union and decided not to halt the countdown of the bomb so the US would lose its top nuclear physicist. General “Thunderbolt” Ross was present at the test with his daughter Betty Ross, who is relieved when Bruce is seemingly unharmed, that is until a few hours later when he transforms into the (grey) Hulk (without her around, obviously) and goes on a rampage. Rick tries to follow him and calm him down with little success, at least until they find Igor and expose his plans, Hulk changing back to Bruce in time for Ross and co. to arrive and arrest Igor, with Betty thankful that Bruce missed “the Hulk”. Then oddly parts 4 and 5 of Issue 1 deal with a large-headed Soviet agent called “The Gargoyle” who is swiftly defeated when Bruce changes into the Hulk again, though Gargoyle actually reverts to a regular human again and commits suicide to take out his fellow Soviets in the last few panels in frankly an unexpectedly mature end to the story (well, mature for a 60s comic about a large grey man punching a man with red skin and a giant head anyway…)
Should probably have both jumped in together rather than one after the other…
Issue 2 sees Earth invaded by “The Toad Men” and has the now green-skinned Hulk beamed on board one of their ships only to escape, leading to Ross finding Banner in the alien ship and accusing him of treason and throwing him in a cell. Later that night (because the sun setting seems to be triggering Banner’s transformation rather than anger at this point) he breaks free and tries to attack Ross out of revenge and scares Betty for good measure, but after fighting off a tank or two and running it’s Bruce Banner who then saves Earth from the Toad Man space fleet (there’s a sentence) and therefore is cleared of all charges, though Ross suspects Banner isn’t as innocent as his daughter claims he is. The next issue sees The Hulk locked in a cave overnight thanks to Banner sleeping in said cell, but Rick Jones frees the Hulk because Ross asked him to bring the Hulk to the base because he needs his help to test a special type of plane that low and beyond turns out to be a rocket ship as Ross just wanted to fire The Hulk into space. Jones, realising he’s an idiot, tries to bring him back but only gets a dose of cosmic radiation via some sort of feedback from the rocket and when Hulk returns to Earth (and is rampaging during the day! *Gasp!*) Rick finds out he can now command the Hulk so tells him to go back into his cell. Pfft. Alright. Then there’s a quick recap of Hulk’s origin (already?!) and then a single part story where Hulk and Rick face an evil circus trope.
Poor Toad Man, he had no idea what he was getting himself into!
Issue 4 has Rick use his mental control over the Hulk to send him away, then send him back to him when he’s arrested and interrogated by Ross, then Hulk reverts to Banner who tries to rig a machine to give him control of the Hulk but instead just gives the Hulk rudimentary intelligence and little else. Then in the next part of the issue an alien named Mongu arrives and Bruce uses a Gamma radiation blaster to force himself to turn into the Hulk and fight Mongu only to find out that the alien was a “commie agent” from the Soviet Union in a battle suit… of course! It’s so obvious! This does at least give us the first “thunderclap” usage, if nothing else. Issue 5 has an evil… non-human person who lives deep in the Earth called Tyrannus kidnap Betty and give her father the ultimatum of “allow me to conquer America with no opposition from the US military or your daughter will be harmed!”… Yeeeeah. Not 100% sure that would succeed… doesn’t matter though as Bruce and Rick followed Betty to Tyrannus’ lair and after some good old fashioned forced gladiatorial combat Tyrannus is defeated and buried in his own base. The other half of the issue has Banner see the plight of a village called Llhasa under the thumb of “General Fang” and changes into the Hulk to defeat him, but does so BEFORE he gets on the plane, so the Hulk has to try and hide his appearance behind regular clothes… Yeah. Anyway, Hulk arrives, pretends to be a Yeti and then defeats Fang and saves the village…
Hulk nearly kills Rick as he bursts through a wall… Damn, if only…
The final issue then is one long story where an alien who can control metal, dubbed “The Metal Master” arrives and easily deals with the military and their metal guns and vehicles, while at the same time Hulk uses the Gamma gun to transform back into Banner but he finds his human form still muscular. In order to stop Metal Master Bruce transforms back into the Hulk but to the big green monster’s shock his head is that of Bruce so he dons a latex Hulk mask and heads off to confront the alien, but fails. Hulk, who luckily fully transformed before he’s de-masked, is captured by Ross as Metal Master causes havoc across the world and Rick Jones… *sigh* uses a ham radio to create the “Teen Brigade” to come to hero’s assistance whenever needed. Ugh, not super-exciting, especially if you’re a teen frankly… Anyway, Hulk escapes, turns back into Banner and is assisted by the Teen Brigade who bring together a bunch of items needed to create a fake rocket launcher made of non-metal substances which he then uses to lull Metal Master in close when the alien gets angry over not being able to control it and then grab him. So scared of the Hulk is Metal Master than he returns to his spaceship and buggers off, and that’s the end of that! Bruce returns to Betty and Thunderbolt, explaining his absence by saying he took a holiday to Bermuda, but now even Betty begins to worry that there might be a connection between Banner and The Hulk…
Basically more 60s cheese, plenty of narrative blocks of text and inner monologues to make sure readers know exactly what’s going on with zero room for letting the pictures do the talking, that sort of thing. It’s why these reviews are so spaced out, I have to be in the right mood to read 60s and 70s comics, they can be, at times, frustratingly heavy-handed with all the exposition. Still though, I do love the more innocent time when you can just throw “alien Toad Men” into a story without fear of it being stupid, and the struggle of Bruce to try and control his alter ego is good, but obviously done much better later when the medium allowed a bit more maturity so the concept could be fully explored…
Overall Thoughts:
This is actually the cover of Issue 6, but you know… there was only so many good scans of the early Hulk issues I’m afraid…
The Incredible Hulk gets off to a rather mundane start. There are some funny villains and artwork that managed to keep me going but there was also a hell of a lot of narrative and monologue text boxes and Rick Jones was frankly annoying more than he was endearing, especially in the last issue where he multiplied via the “Teen Brigade”. The Banner/Hulk-Betty-Thunderbolt Ross dynamic was also entertaining and was established right from the off, but the series ended before either Ross could find out Bruce’s secret, and that’s when things get really interesting from a writing standpoint. Overall, not shocked it didn’t immediately hook readers at the time, but happy he was given another chance to grow and shine down the road…
Hogan Reviews 