Hulk and Banner are back on Earth but Hulk is mad at Banner for having mentally locked him up for so long. And if there’s one thing you wouldn’t like Hulk to be, it’s… y’know. Meanwhile, an ancient evil is resurrected and with it awakens a new Age of Monsters. Their sights are set on the biggest monster of all:
Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Nic Klein take over Hulk from Donny Cates and Ryan Ottley and their first book is actually pretty decent, though more for the art than anything else.
The first issue is absolutely cracking. Really fast-paced, exciting set-up issue where the premise, characters, and threats are well established with Klein really impressing with the art. I had low expectations going into this one because I haven’t enjoyed anything Johnson’s written to date but he wrote the hell out of that issue - great stuff.
Then… the not-so-great stuff, ie. the rest of the book, which doesn’t live up to the opener. The story of the undead Bible-bashers in an abandoned mining town sees Johnson emulating the worst traits of Tom King’s writing by copying out song lyrics in lieu of a script, in what wasn’t all that compelling a story either. But, again, Klein’s art is so damn strong that even if the words did nothing, the visuals definitely held the attention. The way he draws Hulk bursting out of Banner’s body is really something.
Travel Foreman takes over the art for the next story, which is a good choice given that he’s a talented horror artist and Johnson’s Hulk is ostensibly a horror book. Man-Thing cameos in this one, which is nice to see as he’s very much a fringe Marvel character, but the story is again no great shakes with Hulk and Man-Thing teaming up to fight a giant crab. None of these monsters are real threats to Hulk, so it’s not exciting to see him fight them as we know he’ll easily smash them (and does).
The final story is the annual, written by David Pepose with art from Caio Majado. It’s a found-footage story where a film crew sets out to do a Blair Witch-style doc about the Hulk. It has that “footage hasn’t been edited” disclaimer at the start but the chronology is very much in the style of a superhero comic which immediately shatters the already-feeble illusion. It’s also not much of a story - Hulk fights what looks to be Giganto - with Majado’s art failing to measure up to the heights of Klein or even Foreman’s that preceded it.
Banner’s new sidekick, the angry teen runaway Charlie, who idolises the Hulk but not Banner, is an intriguing new addition, mainly to see what role she’ll play in Hulk’s revenge on Banner. The monsters after Hulk are less so as they just don’t seem like a viable threat. And though I love me some horror, I’d’ve much preferred if the focus of this book had been on the conflict between Banner and Hulk, which is vastly more compelling than seeing Hulk effortlessly topple one contrived monster after another. Hopefully we see more of that in future books and less monster-of-the-week action.
The Incredible Hulk, Volume 1: Age of Monsters has some of the best art in a Hulk book I’ve seen for some time courtesy of Nic Klein, and Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s story has some promising excitement to it, like how Hulk and Banner resolve their current beef. A lot of the book though has too much blah Hulk/monster action that simply isn’t interesting enough, making this first book more of a visual treat than a storytelling one. Not a bad start to this new Hulk series though and I’ll keep an eye out for the next one.
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