The Incredible Herc, Part 3: Walls of Troy

Troy, 1264 BC

King Laomedon of Troy has cheated Hercules out of payment after he rescued his daughters. The king is confident that the impenetrable walls of the city will keep Hercules out. However, he does not anticipate how badly the demigod wanted the magical horses promised to him. Hercules stormed the gates of Troy on his own, fought past the wall and through the soldiers demanding payment….

Now

After being shot with bullets full of Hydra’s blood, Hercules has been sent into a berserker rage. This has caused him to hallucinate moments from his past. This has been exploited by his companion, the boy genius Amadeus Cho. Wanting to take down SHIELD, Cho has unleashed the maddened Hercules on the secure facility where the spy agency has taken the Hulk’s stone ship after his recent attack on Earth.[1] While the SHIELD agents on site are busy with Hercules, Amadeus enters the ship with his pet coyote pup.[2] But, before Cho can commandeer the ship he is ambushed by the Black Widow (Natasha Romanov).

With the boy down, Natasha radios her fellow Avengers — Ares (Hercules’ half-brother) and Wonder Man (Simon Williams) — who are having trouble getting transport to her location. Simon tells her how Herc has been enraged by Hydra’s blood, no thanks to Ares, and to keep him busy until they arrive. Ares warns his comrades that the last time Hercules was this enraged he killed King Laomedon and wiped out his entire family all save one son for cheating him out of magical horses.[3] That’s when Wonder Man puts two-and-two together and realizes that Ares did this intentionally so he could bring down his step-brother. However, Simon’s accusations are interrupted when a passing driver stops to gush about how much of a fan of his movies she is. While Simon is pre-occupied talking about the movie Arkon IV, he is smashed over the head with a cement cinder so Ares can commandeer the woman’s car and get to the battle.[4]

By this time, Hercules has defeated all of the SHIELD agents at the base, leaving only the Black Widow standing in his way. When he sees Natasha, Hercules starts hallucinating memories from back when the two of them were part of the Champions of Los Angeles.[5] Realizing that Herc is reliving their first battle against Ares, she tricks him into thinking that there are enemies holed up in some highly flammable fuel tanks on the site. While she blows up the tank, Amadeus Cho wakes up from being knocked out and finds that Kirby was hurt as well. This makes him remember what he overheard Athena telling Herc about how Amadeus is at a crossroads between good and evil and that only dumb luck will nudge him in one direction or the other.

Meanwhile, the exploding fuel tanks burn the Hydra venom out of Hercules’ system, restoring his sanity. This is not unlike when Iolaus used a funeral pyre to do the same thing the last time he was enraged by the tainted blood.[6] The Black Widow reveals that, back in their Champions days, she studied up on Greek mythology to better understand her teammate. She did so to better understand such an awe inspiring being. He thanks Natasha for her help and her kind words, but tells her that in this upside down world he will continue to fight as a renegade. Romanov understands and tells him to knock her out to cover his escape. After he does so, Amadeus calls to Herc from a commandeered helicarrier and he climbs aboard from a rope ladder dropped down to him. As the massive ship flies away, neither of their occupants see Ares speed his car off a ramp, sending the car crashing through the windows of one of the observation decks.

Inside the helicarrier, Hercules finds Amadeus who has placed Kirby in a medical pod that he stole from the Hulk’s ship. Cho has also wired up his laptop so that it can transmit a neo-virus onto the SHIELD database. This will give him full control of all of SHIELD’s facilities and allow him to make every helicarrier fall out of the sky and free everyone locked up in the Negative Zone prison, and wipe out every bit of data from the spy agency’s database. When Hercules suggests they think this over, Amadeus tells him it is too late as he has already sent the virus.

Recurring Characters

Hercules, Amadeus Cho, Mighty Avengers (Ares, Black Widow, Wonder Man), SHIELD, “Kirby”, (in flashback) Priam

Continuity Notes

1. Between Incredible Hulk (vol. 2) #91 and 105, the Hulk was exiled in space. He returned to get revenge in World War Hulk #1-5. Herc and Cho fought on the side of the Hulk in Incredible Hulk (vol. 2) #106-112. This made them fugitives from the law for the past two issues.

2. Amadeus’ pet coyote doesn’t have a name at the time of this story. He is given the name Kirby in Incredible Hercules #118. As revealed in Incredible Hercules #119, Kirby was killed and replaced with a Skrull spy in issue #112. This is ahead of a planned invasion of Earth that will primarily take place in Secret Invasion #1-8.

3. This surviving son of Laomedon would late become King Priam of Troy. Who is historically known as the ruler of the city when it was at war with the Trojans. We saw this conflict in the fiction circa Thor Annual #8.

4. Wonder Man was indeed in a film called Arkon IV, which is based on Arkon of Polemachus. We saw him acting in this movie back in West Coast Avengers (vol. 2) #6.

5. The Champions consisted of Herc, the Black Widow, Angel, Iceman, and Ghost Rider. They first formed to defend LA from Ares back in Champions #1-3. The team was rife with in-fighting and shoddy equipment leading to their ultimate disbanding as seen in Spectacular Spider-Man #17-18.

6. This story was told last issue (and there are variations of the tale, but check out the index for that issue for details). However, the fire wasn’t what saved Hercules. As detailed in Incredible Hulk: Hercules Unleashed #1, Hercules was a mortal at the time and he died by being set aflame. It was actually Zeus who saved him by making him a demigod. Hercules immolating himself was more to end his agony through death more than anything. However, Hercules was just blown up when he makes reference to this, I’m sure we can excuse his lack of clarity, right?

Topical References

• When Ares relates the story of King Laomedon, Wonder Man quips “Enough with the Edith Hamilton for one day, huh?” Hamilton was a famous American educator who lived between 1867 to 1963. She was a notable classicist (the study of Greek and Roman antiquity) of her time. As this is a historically significant person who has long since been dead, Wonder Man’s reference here would not be considered topical.