Hulk “died” recently, he’s back (that title’s accurate - he’ll never be “dead” for long!) and he’s now wandering the Earth, righting wrongs, but only on a small scale for some reason. He takes out drug dealing bikers, a mad scientist experimenting with gamma radiation, and tangles with Sasquatch, the strongman from nobody’s favourite superhero team, Alpha Flight!
Eh… it’s ok. And that immediately makes it noteworthy as most Hulk books are utter rubbish! I guess Al Ewing’s kinda aiming for a horror angle with his take on Hulk but he doesn’t quite pull it off. Hulk looks scarier than usual - hat tip to artist Joe Bennett - and the motif of the monster emerging at night (a la werewolves and vampires) recurs, and the mad scientist story felt very EC Comics.
But it’s essentially just an average Hulk book. The first couple episodes are kinda interesting, the latter aren’t, but Ewing’s not doing anything groundbreaking or amazing here. The longest story, featuring Sasquatch, builds up to the same tedious and pointless punch-up between characters you’ve seen in a hundred Hulk stories before.
I felt as ambivalent about Bennett’s art as I did Ewing’s writing - it’s fine. I was pleasantly surprised though to see obscure indie artist Paul Hornschemeier draw a handful of pages in one of the stories - that dude is very underrated.
And that’s The Immortal Hulk, Volume 1: Or Is He Both? - a series of mediocre stories and decent art that mildly entertained and bored in equal amounts!
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