Incredible Hulk in the 2000s
After the utter-shit show that was Jim Byrne’s run on the Hulk, Marvel passed the torch over to Jerry Ordway to wrap things up. Bryne’s run was mostly focused on the Hulk appearing to go on murderous rampages. Ordway’s solution was to blame it all on Tyrannus and close the book on this rather embarrassingly bad Hulk run. The series was next handed over to Paul Jenkins who worked with a rotating group of artists on an Hulk storyline that ran from Hulk #12 through 32. The title by that point was being called Incredible Hulk again and is considered the “second volume” of the series (even though it’s technically the third.)
Jenkins was juggling two storylines, one involving the Hulk being sought after by a new military foe, General Ryker who wanted to obtain a sample of the Hulk’s blood in order to try and save his dying wife. Not exactly the most original of ideas, but it was certainly better from where we came from. The second, and frankly more interesting plot, was the revelation that Bruce Banner was dying of ALS. Needless to say, there weren’t many people who were dumping buckets of ice on their heads for the Hulk over this one. Jenkin’s took this opportunity to delve into the Banner’s past — particularly his past relationship with a neurologist named Angela Lipscombe — as well as explore the different versions of the Hulk and their psychological aspects since, as Jenkins tells it, each incarnation of the Hulk was actually a fragment of Banner’s damaged mind. It’s the sort of material that originally had Marvel yank Peter David from the book. More on Peter David in a bit.
Jenkins took the pre-established mental health issues of Bruce Banner and went the next step. It was revealed the “Professor Hulk” (from David’s run) wasn’t actually a merged psyches of Bruce, and the green and grey Hulk, but yet another personality. In fact, there were a lot of potentials rattling around in his brain. The most deadly of them all was the so-called “Devil Hulk” which was the personification (or should I say mentalification?) of the ALS that was ravaging Bruce Banner’s mind. This led to some interesting plot angles, particularly since Banner’s deteriorating mind led to some inconsistent transformations, sometimes he turned into the grey Hulk, sometimes he was the savage green Hulk, other times he was the professor. There was also a more satisfying clash between the Hulk and Abomination in issue #24 and 25. This was a bit of gratification since the Abomination was the reason Betty Ross died during Peter David’s run and no writer bothered to have a revenge match between the two rivals. Speaking of Betty, even though Marvel forced Betty’s death being temporary, Jenkins did not take that genie out of the bottle. Any appearances of Betty was he (supposedly) dead body that has been in cryogenic stasis since the end of Peter David’s run on the book. In typical Marvel fashion, they couldn’t let something permanent happen to one of their flagship characters and ultimately, the end of Peter Jenkins’ run ended with Banner managing to cure himself with some help from his old foe the Leader. Sadly, the Devil Hulk has not been seen since, and it seems like this could have been a new version of the Hulk that could have been interesting to explore in the physical world instead of just being a figment inside Banner’s head. If you want to see what I am talking about check out issues #27 and 28. You’ll note that I’m paying close attention to issues that specifically feature art by John Romita, Jr. While this run of the Hulk had some notable artists, I always feel that if there is anybody who can really capture the brutality of the Hulk, it’s Romita.
The next run on the Hulk is a fucking whopper though. Issues #34 through 76 were all written by Brian Jones and it featured some great artists, John Romita, Jr., Lee Weeks, Stuart Immonen, Mike Deodato, Jr., and Dougie Brathwaite. I love all of their work — well I’m not that big of a fan of Immonen, but he’s still pretty solid. The story however…. Is a lot to take in and unless you read the entire run it doesn’t make sense, and even then, it doesn’t make total sense. It had a heavy conspiratorial tone with Bruce Banner on the run from a secret agency called Home Base that wants a sample of his blood. To makes matters worse, the Hulk is framed for murdering a child making all law enforcement go on a manhunt for Bruce Banner. Helping him along the way is the mysterious hacker named Mister Blue, who infiltrated Home Base. As it turns out, Mister Blue is actually Betty Ross, who is suddenly alive again and had a facelift to disguise her true identity and infiltrate Home Base. Also she’s dying of cancer. Also helping him is Nadia Dornova, the ex-wife of the Abomination, which creates romantic tension between Bruce, Betty, and Nadia. Sales of the Hulk went through the roof, partially due to the fact that the Ang Lee Hulk movie came out around the time. Still, it was overly complicated and Brian Jones says he was pulled from the title. Peter David (there’s that name again) would later to on to say that this run on the Hulk was a mix between “The Prisoner” and the “X-Files”, but again, we’ll get into Peter David soon.
Looking back at Jones’ run on the Hulk, like I said, it’s really long, and the only way you can really understand what the fuck is going on is by reading the whole damn thing. It can be a bit tedious, particularly with characters that go unnamed for many issues, bizarre plot twists (like immortal Hulk clones), and the conspiracy-on-top-of-conspiracy building. It’s easy to see why it could be whitewashed as being heavily inspired by the X-Files. I can see how that could be so, the series was fairly popular and it’s a final season (at the time) aired the year Jones was a writer on the Hulk. I think that’s really being uncharitable to Jones’ work.
Still, it was far from perfect and some characters acted in very uncharacteristic ways. Particularly Betty Ross, the only job she’s ever depicted having was working on a suicide hotline. Outside of that, she was either the porcelain doll daughter of a gruff military man and the tortured wife of a man with gamma-irradiated mental illness. Yet somehow we are supposed to believe that she somehow had enough training and skill in espionage to get a facelift and infiltrate a shadow organization run by the Leader (who is also a telepath when the writers bother to remember). On top of all that, when we last saw her, Betty was a popsicle in cryostasis and they don’t really explain how she got out. So her portrayal here is very out of character.
On the other hand, fans didn’t understand how the Abomination’s ex-wife, Nadia, went from being a Russian ballerina to being a covert agent in her own rights. I guess they forgot that the Black Widow was also able to juggle those two demanding professions because Russian women are as tough as nails. So her drastic change from a frightened sometimes hostage of her ex-husband to a super-spy is at least halfway plausible. Also, the revelation that the Home Base was not a secret government organization, but a group founded by the Leader is kind of a letdown, but I think that was a matter of a simple solution since Brian Jones was being yanked from the title. It seems really silly that the Leader would go to all of this trouble to get a sample of the Hulk’s blood, but whatever.
The fact that this Hulk run has been more-or-less forgotten these days, it’s funny to think that a lot of the plot elements to the Incredible Hulk movie (that is the MCU one with Edward Norton, not the Ang Lee film) Granted, the Hulk MCU film is not nearly as convoluted but it takes all the beats from Brian’s work. Must be a real kick in the ass when a large body of work (that you were fired for) ends up being the inspiration for a film, but that’s the comic book industry for you.
Anyway, so yeah, Brian Jones was pulled from the title, so who did they hire to take over? Peter. Fucking. David.
Issues #77-81 was a story arc titled “Tempus Fugit”, which features the Hulk being stranded on an island where the dream demon Nightmare has crossed over into the waking world. Now, Peter David has this habit of, when he returns to writing a character he particularly likes working on, will go out of his way to come up a way to try and ignore or get around what other people had done with the character between stints. A great example is when he started writing Spider-Man 2099 again in the 2010s and basically ignored everything other writers had done with the character. To be fair, in that instance it was with a character he created himself. Still, he had the same level of protectiveness when it comes to the Hulk and Tempus Fugit was his way of “taking back” the character he wrote for over a decade previously. In this run it is revealed that 9/11 created enough sorrow for Nightmare to breach the barrier between the dream domain and the waking world and he used this opportunity to fuck with the Hulk some more (you’ll remember Nightmare made the Hulk go completely savage in Incredible Hulk #300). Peter David then took this opportunity to try and dismiss Brian Jones’ entire arc as some grand manipulation created by Nightmare and was all basically a dream. David did that previously with the Hulk (on a much smaller scale) when he didn’t like a crossover issue in Amazing Spider-Man, but to do something on this massive level is in my mind pretty disrespectful to the work of others. Sure, Brian Jones run on the Hulk was vastly different than anything David ever did, but it’s still an interesting read.
Anyway, David’s attempt at walking back all the other Hulk writers work didn’t really work out that way, it just made things even more god damn confusing. It took the people writing the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe to flesh out the plot holes and dangling threads to make sense of it all. Betty Ross alive? That was her dream form made real. Everything else? Totally happened? A story arc where the Hulk battled Absorbing Man when the character was also used (in different ways) in Captain Marvel (also written by Peter David)? There was a reality warp that temporarily made two Absorbing Mans. It’s such a god damn mess.
It would be great if Peter David actually did something interesting with the character. However, Peter David’s second run on the Hulk stunk pretty bad. Tempus Fugit was an excuse to have a temper tantrum about other writer’s plot, a sob ghost story, then it was doing a House of M story arc which had no bearing on the Marvel Universe that ran from Hulk #83 to 87 and then an issue where the Hulk battles the then-new female Scorpion. David was pulled a second time and the book was given to Daniel Way who wrote the book for issues #88 through 91. This arc ultimately was used to set up a bunch of long con story arcs that Marvel was working into all of their books. In this case, Way was just around to write a story explaining how the Illuminati exile the Hulk into space.
This all leads up to Greg Pak’s epic Planet Hulk storyline which ran from Incredible Hulk (Vol. 2) #92 to 105. It is by far the best Hulk story that was written that entire decade, if not the best Hulk storyline that was written up to that point. Pak, along with Carlo Pagulayan told a story about Hulk being trapped on an alien world and being forced to become a gladiator. However, he eventually gathers an army and overthrows the tyrannical king and becomes the planet’s savior. The story takes some beats from the movie Gladiator, especially visually, but it is a great story. Of course, the Hulk never gets to be happy and an explosion caused by the ship that brought Hulk to planet Sakaar. This blast nearly kills everyone including the Hulk’s newlywed wife and his unborn child (or so he thinks) Blaming the Illuminati, the Hulk gathers the sole survivors of Sakaar and goes after.
This led into World War Hulk, where the Hulk returns to Earth to get his revenge. The main story is told in its own limited series, but Incredible Hulk is involved in the crossover. This runs from Incredible Hulk #107 through 111. This mostly follows Amadeus Cho, who gathers a gang of heroes who support the Hulk and quickly realize that perhaps this time the Hulk takes things too far. With the end of World War Hulks, Incredible Hulk ended its second volume run. The title was replaced with the Incredible Hercules, which continued the numbering from Incredible Hulk Volume 2. The Hulk’s story continued in the second volume of Hulk.
An Incredible Hulk title did not see print again until 2009 when the series was brought back with issue #600, taking on its legacy numbering. This takes place in the middle of the Fall of the Hulks and World War Hulks story arcs. If you though. Greg Pak was still writer on the book but it was inundated with so many Hulks. Not only did you have Bruce Banner (who couldn’t turn into the Hulk, at least for a little while), but you had the Hulk’s son, Skaar, on Earth as well as a Red Hulk, a Red She-Hulk, and Rick Jones was turned into a Blue Hulk called A-Bomb. Banner and his “Hulk Family” were all pawns in a game called the Intelligencia, a group of genius-level supervillains led by the Leader who was attempting to create an army of cosmic powered Hulks they could use to conquer the universe. It was full of mysteries, namely who was the Red Hulk and who was the Red She-Hulk. It turns out that they were Thaddeus Ross and his daughter Betty, as Marvel writers found a way to get Betty out of the deep freeze. If you’re thinking this is way too many Hulks to juggle, don’t worry, most of these Hulks are all depowered by the middle of the next decade.
