Incredible Hulk in the 2010
In the 2010s, Greg Pak’s run on the Incredible Hulk continued on from issue 604 through 635. With the end of the Fall of Hulk/World War Hulks storyline, the title was renamed Incredible Hulks but continued the Incredible Hulk’s legacy numbering. The reason for the change was obvious, Bruce Banner wasn’t the only Hulk in the title. By this point, the Hulk had a family of sorts which included the Warbound, his son Skaar, his cousin She-Hulk, his daughter Lyra, his ex-wife the Red She-Hulk, and best friend Rick Jones was still A-Bomb.
Pak’s first story major story arc after Fall of the Hulks was Dark Son, which wrapped up the saga of Hiro-Kala, the Hulk’s second son who had been running amok across the universe in the pages of Son of Hulk. This was followed up by a Chaos War tie-in which ran from issues #618 to 620. This story saw the Hulk and his allies battling previously deceased characters including Bruce Banner’s own father, Brian Banner, who was now the powerful Devil Hulk. From there there were a few fun story arcs, “God Smash” had Hulk square off against the gods of Olympus while “Planet Savage” (Hulks #623-625) had the Hulk and Co. defending the Savage Land from Miek, the Hulk’s former loyal follower from Planet Hulk. Issues #626 through 629 featured an unlikely spy story where the Hulk was preventing the Red She-Hulk and Tyrannus from obtaining the legendary Pandora’s Box. This led to the final six-parter “Heart of the Monster” which ran from Incredible Hulks #630 through 635 that saw the Hulk going up against Umar, Fin Fang Foom, Tyrannus, and the Red She-Hulk.
After that arc, Incredible Hulk was relaunched with a new series. All fifteen issues were written by Jason Aaron and included a rotating cast of artists including Marc Silvestri and the late Steve Dillon. The majority of the series had the Hulk clashing with the Mad Squad, a group of mad scientists led by Amanda Von Doom, a blood relative of the Fantastic Four’s most deadly enemy, Doctor Doom. The only really interesting part of this run is the first 7 issues that have the Hulk going to war against Bruce Banner. At first, you’re led to believe that the Hulk and Banner had been separated again, but in reality, this is actually a clone of Bruce Banner created by Doctor Doom who wanted to experiment with gamma-ray mutation.
There’s not a whole lot else I can really say about this series. Following issue #15, the Hulk was relaunched yet again, this time under the title Indestructible Hulk. The Incredible Hulk title would not return until 2017 when the series returned under its legacy numbering for 9 issues. Although the title has since been rebranded as Immortal Hulk with new numbering, the series still denotes the legacy numbering for Incredible Hulk as well.
The 2017 and 2018 issues of Incredible Hulk have not been added to this index as I am doing every relevant Marvel book prior to 2015s Secret Wars. This will give current series enough time to have their plots realized and will make for better indexing, description, and notations.
