COMICS: Wed 1/5/05

Superman: Strength: Really like the story, really don't like the art. I especially like that Pa Kent isn't portrayed as the shining beacon of pure goodness that he usually is. He's still good... but he's only human. I liked that the criminals actually had a well-conceived plan to handle Superman, and even got the drop on him face-to-face. I mean, Superman's head is in a fishbowl! You can't beat that. This book is crazy fun. But the art.... You know, it's funny, at one point I was thinking the art looked closer to an old Mad magazine parody of Superman than to a serious comic Superman -- and then one of the characters said "fershlugginer". Maybe the Mad-looking art was intentional! Potrzebie!

Incredible Hulk: Man oh man, am I glad Peter David is back. Since I gave up on Bruce Jones' run on the book a long time ago, I'm not sure if David is picking up where Jones left off, or just ignoring his run entirely. (I'd prefer the latter.) Interesting new ability (or mutation) for the Hulk -- rather than holding his breath to stay underwater for extended periods, he can actually breathe underwater now (though it isn't pretty how). And the Hulk seems even more savage than usual. I felt a little adrift with this first issue; no idea why, or how, the Hulk is where he is, if this is following up from the previous issue or a fresh start. But I'm hooked, that's for sure.

New Avengers: Who the hell is Sentry? Seriously, this is a character I should have heard of before? Okay, if you say so. Things are a little darker here than I'd expected; was the close-up of Spider-Man's arm snapping strictly necessary? Man, lately everybody wants to take the fun out of Spider-Man. It's bumming me out, dude!

Jubilee: I'm trying to come to terms with my shame for really liking this book. And Dorian isn't helping any! At the comic shop this week, he took delight in calling loudly across the room, "Hey, Tom, the new issue of Jubilee is in!" Yeah, thanks, pal. Well, you know what? It was another good issue! So there! As opposed to New Avengers, this book stands with She-Hulk and Fantastic Four as about the only Marvel titles trying to keep the grim & gritty from taking over completely.

There's always one comic I forget. I know I got five comics this week. I didn't get Brubaker's second issue of Captain America, or Kirkman's Fantastic Four: Foes, although I had both of them in my hand at one point... I liked the first issue of Captain America, and the FF:F book looked all right, but I think I'll wait for the trades on both those titles. (Take that, comics industry!)

Oh! I know. Flaming Carrot Comics. Mike is clearly a big fan; in the store, he gleefully pointed out the new issue to me. So I thought I'd give it a try. About my only previous exposure to this character was through his appearance in Cerebus a million years ago. I think I paged through some of the regular Carrot comics back then, and didn't care for them. Too weird, didn't like the art. I did like this issue, but Burden's art hasn't improved a great deal since then; a lot of it really looks rough, especially the women characters. But I enjoyed the insanity I found so off-putting years ago. The Flaming Carrot is basically a madman, spouting non sequiturs while assaulting his enemies with a baloney gun. Funny stuff. I laughed a number of times, enough to get me past some of the weaknesses in the book.

COMICS: The comics I didn't buy

I gave up on The Punisher this week. I had it in my hand, and finally forced myself to put it back on the shelf. I hate this stupid, meandering, boring storyline! Why should I stick around for three more issues of it, other than a foolish, masochistic desire to be a "completist"? I'll be back when you're done with this one, Ennis.

And as I've recently mentioned (more than once, I believe), I gave up on the Bruce Jones Incredible Hulk ages ago. But I had to page through issue #75 at the store, because it actually looked like a Hulk comic, with the Hulk clearly pictured on the cover and everything. And the Hulk even appears inside! It's a Christmas miracle!

It's far too late for me to want to jump back in now, even if this looked like a good issue (which, aside from the Hulk actually appearing in a Hulk comic, it doesn't), but at least this should clear up some questions from Sean Collins (no relation) (that makes sense if you know my last name is also Collins). He recently posted some questions about Jones' run (in response to one of my posts, hooray for me), and I'm guessing this issue holds some answers for him. Well, I know it holds one answer, at least (the answer he already guessed), but as for his other question, whether Jones will finish his big conspiracy storyline before he leaves the title -- this issue certainly looks like it's wrapping things up. Which is good for Marvel. If I'd been following that story for as long as it's been going on, and it abruptly ended without resolving anything, I do believe I'd storm the Marvel offices with pitchfork and torch in hand.

Also didn't buy X-Force #1, which was a no-brainer on my part. Man, it looks exactly like the first X-Force #1, from, like, twelve years ago, when I actually had no brain, and purchased multiple copies, because comics will make you rich! Idiot.

Mike pointed out some choice artistic crimes within the covers (one panel in particular, in which one character appears to be 18 feet tall in comparison to the woman kneeling in front of him -- ew, not kneeling like that! Get your minds out of the gutter), and then added that he had asked the owner of his shop if he could punch anyone who bought it. Permission granted, soldier!

COMICS: Hulk is coolest one there is!

You know what I like? The Incredible Hulk.

I've always liked him. Ever since my first comic reading days as a kid, I liked how he was different. He wasn't like all those other superheroes, who went around looking for someone to help -- looking for trouble, basically. The Hulk didn't want trouble. The Hulk just wanted to be left alone. I loved that. The Hulk just wanted to kick back in the forest, away from all the puny humans, feed grass to an innocent deer who didn't know to be afraid of the green monster, compose some haikus, I don't know -- and then some dumbass supervillain would always come along and drop a building on the Hulk's head. And so the Hulk would have no choice but to GRRRAAAARRRRRR HULK SMASH!! and whale the holy living shit out of the bad guy. The Hulk didn't go looking for supervillains. The Hulk didn't give a gamma-irradiated rat's ass about supervillains. He wasn't proactive, he was purely reactive. Mess with Hulk, Hulk smash.

Also, the Hulk was the strongest one there was. And you knew because he would tell you: "Hulk is strongest one there is!!" There wasn't anybody who could beat the Hulk in a straight-up fight. Even Thor -- who's a god, for crying out loud -- could only fight him to a draw, at best. How sweet is that?

And best of all: half the time he was puny Banner, so nobody would see it coming. The element of surprise, turning the tables on the assholes -- that was great. I mean, you see a giant pile of orange rocks walking down the street, you go, "Hey, it's the Thing." But not the Hulk. He's just this meek little rocket scientist -- and then some hooligans start thinking they can get tough with him, or maybe they just won't stop talking on their cell phones in a movie theater. Next thing you know, they're standing in the shadow of (if I may quote) "7 feet, 1,000 pounds of unfettered fury!" and crying for their mommies. Now that's comedy.

Then, of course, came the TV show. The Incredible Hulk TV series changed a ton of stuff from the comic -- from the main character's name ("Bruce" was deemed too effeminate for a hero, so they called him "David" instead), to his backstory (adding a wife who died in a car accident) to how he became the Hulk (self-administered dose of radiation, rather than accidental exposure), to the Hulk's strength (bullets could actually hurt him, rather than just bouncing off) and speech (rather than childish language, the Hulk never spoke at all), to who was tracking him down (not the obsessed General "Thunderbolt" Ross and Ross's daughter, Betty, who loved Banner, but some reporter named McGee). But it was still great. Where else could a nine-year-old see primetime superhero live-action on TV? (Well, Wonder Woman, I guess, but that was fun for an entirely different reason, even at that age.) "Mr. McGee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." So true, so true.

The Hulk is even what got me back into comics. In 1988, my freshman year of college, down at the Student Union there were these guys handing out "welcome packages" -- little boxes with various crap from local merchants inside, like shaving cream or scotch tape or whatever. And there were some comic books, too. I hadn't collected or even read comics for about 8 years, but when I read that issue of The Incredible Hulk in my welcome package, I was instantly hooked again. Because the Hulk was... he was grey! And he was smart! And a little bit... bad, too. He was cunning, devious. Banner was on a mission, and the Hulk was cooperating with him, but for his own selfish reasons. And the art was very new and striking, stylized in a way that was totally different from the comics I had read as a kid, much more dynamic, and grittier, too -- drawn by some guy named Todd McFarlane (who has done little of note since then).

It was all wrong! And totally compelling. I bought a slew of back issues (all written by the fantastically entertaining Peter David, who would stay with the series for about 13 years, an amazing run from beginning to end), and I was suddenly a comic book fan again.

The there's the movie. I liked Hulk (not The Hulk, for some strange reason) more than I know many people did. It had the handicap of a CGI-created main character to overcome, which turned out to look better that I thought it would, but still, it's hard to invest yourself in a bunch of 1s and 0s on the movie screen. And I think it made a mistake in not having the Hulk speak; that left him as a personality-less destruction machine. The destruction was pretty awesome, true, but I'd have liked to hear him say "Hulk smash" at least once. I mean, throw me a frickin' bone. And where's Rick Jones?

But I liked Eric Bana as Bruce Banner, I love Jennifer Connelly in anything, and I appreciated both the slower, more subtle character moments as well as the inventive visual "comic book" style of the movie. I liked that the film spent time developing Banner's repressed psychological scars, which helped to create the Hulk persona bottled up inside him -- and that it showed Banner enjoys releasing that rage. And that tank fight: come on, that was kick-ass.

Right now, though, I'm having a tough time liking the Hulk. Because all I've got to go by is the comic book, by current writer Bruce Jones... and the comic sucks. I flat-out hate it. For one thing, it suffers from Marvel-itis, in which a two-issue story is painfully stretched out to a trade paperback-friendly five or six issues. For another, it's all X-Files-type conspiracies and mysterious covert agencies and that's all fine and good in the beginning, but eventually you have to start coming up with some resolutions to those mysteries, and, like The X-Files, for what few questions it did supply (before I finally dropped the book), it fell far short of the expectations it had created. And worst of all, a capital crime for an Incredible Hulk comic: it doesn't feature the Incredible Hulk!! Bruce Jones got the bright idea of using the Hulk in a very limited capacity only. Which meant that for a good number of issues, the Hulk only appeared in brief flashbacks, or by implication (gang of toughs threatens Banner, cut straight to gang of toughs with their asses kicked, with no sight of the Hulk in between), if he even appeared at all. That might be fine once or twice, as a change of pace, but when I buy a Hulk comic, I want to see the goddam Hulk. I don't buy a Superman comic for 22 pages of Clark Kent reading internet jokes from his mom at work, and if I wanted 22 pages of Bruce Banner, then I'd buy a goddam comic called Bruce Banner, not one called The Incredible Goddam Hulk!!

But. It appears Jones is out. He's signed an exclusive deal with DC, which means his run on the Hulk will soon be over. And good riddance. The buzz in the fan world is that Peter David is a possible candidate to take over from him, which couldn't make me happier. Problem is, according to his website, nobody's offered David the job yet (although if anybody has a brain at Marvel -- which you may debate amongst yourselves -- they will soon), and what's more, he speculates that the Hulk might not even continue in an ongoing series. Which would be terrible. Why a bevy of A-list writers aren't clamoring for this gig is beyond me. Peter David, among others, has shown that the Hulk can be so much more than a one-note "Hulk smash" character. Hell, at this point, returning the Hulk to all "Hulk smash" all the time would be a daring new direction in itself.

Bottom line is, Marvel had better get someone up to the task of helming a monthly Hulk comic, and they had better do it fast. He's one of their most popular, interesting, challenging creations ever, and I want to see someone who can bring the comic back up to a consistently entertaining level. Forget all this men-in-black crap.

Or Hulk will smash.