World War Hulk, a review

The most thumbed collection on my toilet is World War Hulk.

World War Hulk is, for many reasons, the perfect bathroom book in my home. Upon finding themselves in that gutteral need and wanting some reading material to pass the time, some people might prefer to just bring whatever book they’re progressing through at that particular moment, but I find that dangerous. If I bring whatever book I’m intensely caring about with me to my throne in the restroom, then my time on the seat will likely be longer than makes sense. Rather than the mental white noise I seek while on the toilet, the book will actually engage me and demand my attention. I will lose myself in the words and/or art and before you know it a half hour will have passed with my world eroding beyond the door. But World War Hulk offers the perfect prescription. I have already read the book, so all that is there for me are the massive clashes between the Hulk, his otherworldly allies, and the cringing pantheon of Marvel’s heroes. It’s a book of punches like meteor strikes and shockwaves that end worlds. There’s no need for me to read through the dialogue that lets me know why the Hulk and his Warbound are facing off with the Avengers. I can just skip ahead and enjoy the blood and flying rubble as a gladiator-clad Hulk smashes the earth-bound Greek god of war into the pavement with one irresistible fist. And if that were the only reason why it was perfect for the restroom, that might be enough, but on top of everything else it is the Hulk. It is the Hulk in a story that – while not particularly complex or nuanced – is unique to the Marvel Universe and to superhero comics in general in that it is a revenge story and the revenge is that of a superhero on a world of superheroes. It is my childhood hero finally delivering on the promise every Hulk fan infers the moment he recognizes the green goliath as his favorite: an apocalyptic war between the Hulk and the rest of Marvel’s super-people, a war that the Hulk will rightly win, and a war that will not only cement Hulk as the Alpha Male of Marvel but one that will redeem him. When the heroes fall to him, it won’t just be because he’s the strongest one there is. It will be because they deserve it. And so every time I bring World War Hulk with me to the toilet I am entertained without investment, and yet I am emotionally uplifted. When it’s all done and my business completed, I hear the same thing I heard right after the Hulk slammed Tony Stark and his Hulkbuster suit from head-to-toe of Avengers tower, the same thing I heard after watching Hulk pound Reed Richards into a limp human rubber band, and the same thing I heard after watching Hulk and his alien companions rip the combined New and Mighty Avengers a whole gaggle of New and Mighty new buttholes: I heard the flush of a toilet.

While the rest of the Marvel Universe was bickering over whether or not it was okay to turn all of its costumed heroes into indentured servants, the Hulk was fighting for his life on the planet Sakaar. He had been tricked into a space vessel by four members of the Illuminati – a group of super-heroes who had been secretly influencing events behind the scenes in the MU for years and who decided the Hulk was too much of a liability to remain on Earth – and sent spinning into the void. The Hulk found himself on Sakaar where he was first a gladiator, then a commander of a rebel army, and finally the king. He had a queen who was pregnant with his son and he finally had the peace he wanted. But the spaceship that brought Hulk to Sakaar exploded, rocking Sakaar and killing millions including Caiera, the Hulk’s queen. Convinced the explosion was from a bomb the Illuminati planted on the shuttle meant for him, the Hulk gathered together the last remnants of his people and his loyal Warbound – former gladiators who had fought at Hulk’s side both in the arena and on the battlefield – to return to Earth and claim vengeance. After a quick stop on the Moon to beat up and imprison Black Bolt – one of the four who exiled Hulk – the massive stone ship carrying the Hulk and his invading army arrived in New York City with an ultimatum that the rest of the Illuminati – Iron Man, Mister Fantastic, and Doctor Strange – appear before Hulk, or else he’d crack their world in half over his knee. The heroes of Marvel, fugitive and Uncle Tom alike, hurried to evacuate the city in preparation for the battle.

The action of World War Hulk is big. It’s huge. When the heroes clash, there is a cinematic grandeur to it. Every time a green fist connects you feel shockwaves, you hear windows all across Manhattan exploding. The fisticuffs are not as drawn out as they used to be. Any old-school comic book fistfight has more punches thrown than any tussle in World War Hulk, but the difference is you feel the ground shake in this one. The sheer, unbelievable, godly power of the combatants hits your face like hurricane wind.

John Romita, Jr.’s art is wonderful, and while I usually enjoy his work, his success here surprised me. When the series was first released, he was touted as a “fan-favorite” Hulk artist in Marvel ads. The reality is that before World War Hulk, Romita’s work on the green guy wasn’t particularly extensive. He penciled a few issues toward the end of the Paul Jenkins run of Incredible Hulk. But most of his work on the title was during Bruce Jones’s tenure as writer, which was anything but a “fan favorite.” The run alienated many old school Hulk fans for – among other things – going multiple issues without even featuring the actual Hulk, opting instead to focus on Bruce Banner. Romita’s work was good during the run, but considering that run featured so little of the Hulk, tapping Romita for a Hulk series in which Bruce Banner hardly shows up (only twice in five issues) seemed strange. But as usual when it comes to things like this, I was happy to be proven wrong.

In many of my favorite moments, Romita’s choices for what he shows what he doesn’t are perfect. For example, in the second chapter when the standoff between the Warbound and the Avengers finally breaks, Ares swings an axe at Hulk; the Hulk sidesteps it, slams Ares into the ground, turns menacingly toward the rest of the Avengers, and when we turn the page we get a two-page splash of the clash between all the combatants including the Hulk charging literally headfirst into the doomed Doc Samson. Though we only get static snapshots, the dance is as clear to see as if it were on a movie screen.

Later, after the Avengers are trounced, the inevitable Hulk/Thing battle comes. Ben Grimm is so utterly, heroically outmatched. He seems so futile and even out of place with his Li’l Orphan Annie eyes and his cartoon forehead. There is a great character moment at the beginning of the fight. Grimm belts out his clobberin’ catch phrase and cracks Hulk across the jaw. The Hulk’s response speaks volumes. He smirks, looks at Grimm and says simply “Hmp.” In that look is so much. In that look is the entire history of their rivalry. There is a grudging respect Hulk gives no one else in this war. No matter how hard they might fight him, the Hulk has no respect for Stark, Richards, Strange, or Black Bolt; only hatred. Grimm holds a minor, but unique position in the larger conflict. While he is Richards’s protector, he had nothing to do with Hulk’s banishment and the Hulk knows this. Still, as an ally of Richards and a rival of Hulk since the dawn of Marvel, Ben Grimm is a soldier who couldn’t sit this one out. That’s all there in that look. But also there’s the joy of the fight to come; the fight and the outcome as inevitable as it is devastating. Because of all this, and the simple fact that Grimm is one of the few combatants in this war who can survive more than five seconds against the Hulk, the fight with Grimm may very well be the only fight in World War Hulk that the Hulk genuinely enjoys. Rather than spend space he doesn’t have on the kind of long, earth-shaking battle these two usually wage, Romita gives us a double page splash of the battle with a handful of panels of green blood and orange rock flying around, and along the bottom are quick shots of members of the Fantastic Four and the Warbound, each shot representing a different, crashing moment of the battle that we can’t see, not bringing us back until Grimm is seconds away from passing out.

Then there’s that moment in chapter 3 when, finally breaking free of Doctor Strange’s psychic trap, the Hulk emerges from the Warbound to rip Thunderbolt Ross’s military forces to pieces. It’s the kind of fight that used to be a dime-a-dozen back in the days of Herb Trimpe and Sal Buscema, but it’s exactly the kind of Hulk fight we haven’t seen in years. There is something deliciously rhythmic about the battle. For four pages we get almost no dialogue at all; not until Ross enters the fray himself. We just get the Hulk at his army-stompin’ best, tearing through tanks and helicopters like Godzilla. Towards the end of the fight, there is a tiny detail I love. In one panel we see the Hulk turn his head toward soldiers who have just started firing at him. There are no motion lines. We only know Hulk is turning his head because of the green blood spraying from his face as his head whips around.

Even more than he did in Planet Hulk – the story that made him a true Hulk fan favorite almost instantly - Greg Pak proves with World War Hulk that he understands the Hulk in a way that most writers just don’t. Pak has a better understanding of the Hulk’s relationship with the rest of the Marvel Universe than most writers before or since. Moments like his reunion with Rick Jones, the aforementioned battle with Ben Grimm, his confrontations with Thunderbolt Ross and Doctor Strange show us that. And as a Hulk fan himself, Pak understands the gravity of this conflict. After he’s finally captured all four Illuminati members who banished him and made them listen to Hulk-sympathizers angry at the four for past transgressions (including Bill Foster’s nephew who blames Stark and Richards for his uncle’s death), the Hulk says to them “Don’t like it, do you? It’s not fair. Not the whole story. You have excuses. Explanations. You’re innocent. These people don’t know what really happened. They don’t know what’s in your heart. Now you know how it feels.” As a Hulk fan like me and the rest of us rowdy, geeky Hulk-nuts, Pak knows how much those words mean, he knows how long we’ve waited for them. Through every imprisonment, every attempt at a “cure,” every exile, every false accusation, we’ve been waiting for the Hulk to get this moment. It’d be like seeing Peter Parker save his Uncle Ben.

No. No, that’s wrong. It would be like Uncle Ben still dying, and Peter Parker shooting Uncle Ben’s killer in the face.

The Hulk of WWH is familiar but different. He’s a Hulk who has matured, who understands his duality, and who ironically has used his state of constant warfare to make a kind of passionate peace with Bruce Banner. It isn’t just Hulk, after all, who wants the Illuminati brought to justice. When the Hulk shatters Doctor Strange’s hands, it’s Bruce who lures the good doctor into a position where he can do it.

The Hulk of WWH is a harkening back to the legendary run of Peter David. It was David who first pointed out in the storyline “Countdown” that to think of the Hulk as something Bruce Banner occasionally turned into was a mistake. The gamma bomb transformed Banner. The mystery wasn’t, as Phil Sterns (a.k.a. the too-rarely used villain Madman) said, wasn’t the question of why Banner turned into Hulk. The mystery was why the Hulk ever turned back into Banner. Here, David laid the groundwork for the merged version of the Hulk (or what Paul Jenkins would later name the “Professor” Hulk). This is echoed in the fourth chapter when Rick Jones reminds Hulk “You are Banner.” The Hulk responds, “No. Banner is me.” This is not some obtuse claim of superiority over Banner. The Hulk is what Banner, for better or worse, turned into. It is who he is.

The maturity of the Hulk in WWH comes through in startling ways. When She-Hulk assures the Avengers things will be fine as long as they don’t throw the first punch, the Hulk surprises her by doing it for them. Later, we see a Hulk who seems either mired in despair or just utterly apathetic in regards to the death and destruction around him. When Miek threatens to murder Rick Jones, and moments later when a demonified Doctor Strange slaps Hiroim around at the Hulk’s feet, the Hulk hardly seems to care, regarding each situation with distant interest. It is only when Strange takes one of Hiroim’s arms that the Hulk seems to finally wake up.

One of the most interesting questions I have about World War Hulk – a question part of me would love to ask Greg Pak, but another part would never want to ask him because the uncertainty adds to my enjoyment of the story – is whether or not the Hulk knows more than he’s saying. His justification for his assault on Earth is his apparent belief that the explosion of the ship that brought him to Sakaar was a purposeful attack on the part of the Illuminati. We learn at the end of the story that it was an alien terrorist group who caused the explosion to protest the Hulk’s ascendance to Sakaar’s throne, and that Hulk’s Warbound ally Miek knew the group had done it and allowed it to occur. The thing is, when Doctor Strange enters the Hulk’s mind, giving us the first chance to see the Hulk and any one of the four who banished him the chance to speak about what happened, I get the impression that the Hulk knows damn well that the explosion wasn’t from an Illuminati-planted bomb. When Strange explains to Bruce that, yes, he voted to exile him, but that he did not try to kill him, maybe it’s just part of Banner’s ruse - his luring of Strange closer so he can transform into Hulk and shatter Strange’s hands - but I get the sense that Banner knows. He knows the explosion of the ship wasn’t a purposeful act on the part of the Illuminati, but he doesn’t care, because he needs someone to smash. And after all, if they hadn’t banished him, it never would’ve happened anyway, so who cares if they meant it or not?

Another moment that piques my curiosity is the battle with the Avengers. When the talking finally stops, the Hulk grabs She-Hulk’s face and slams her into the pavement, creating a crater that She-Hulk presumably stays in for the rest of the battle. Could it be – especially considering the Incredible Hulk tie-in issue to WWH that suggested the Hulk’s violence was much more calculated than most people assumed – that the Hulk specifically did that to keep She-Hulk safe during the rest of the battle? Sure, he, you know, hits her pretty damn hard. But he also knows there’s more fight to come. Is it possible he hit her that way just so she would remain safe in the crater, so none of the Warbound could hurt her purposely or otherwise?

World War Hulk has its weaknesses, even when regarded purely as Hulk-fan-porn. Chief among them is the handling of the Sentry. While it’s difficult, as a lifelong Hulk fan, to complain about Hulk’s victory over the Sentry, the outcome of Sentry’s involvement seems so utterly convenient. From the beginning of the series, he’s seen as the only single hero capable of defeating the Hulk. He resists urgings throughout the series from Tony Stark, Reed Richards, Sue Richards, and even the President to overcome his agoraphobia in order to join the battle. Finally, he leaves his living room and attacks the Hulk in the final chapter, but almost as soon as the fight begins, he’s lost his marbles. Because the Hulk is, in Sentry’s words, “the only one I can hit…like THIS,” the Sentry unleashes in a way he apparently never has before, threatening the world with his power. It seems too convenient a way for the Hulk to shift from villain to hero in the eyes of the other heroes he’s been fighting, especially since to those of us cheering him on, he’s been the hero every step of the way.

Coming up with an ending to World War Hulk couldn’t have been easy because of the demands of the Marvel universe. Hulk had to win, but so did the heroes he was fighting. Somehow, even though he was trying to do anything but, the Hulk had to save the world. At the same time, WWH needed to lead into the nonsense Jeph Loeb had planned for what came after. So it’s tough to fault Pak for the convenience with which he used Sentry. If he could’ve found a way to involve the schizophrenic hero more heavily earlier on, it might have helped protect the story’s integrity.

I’m also not sure I love how Pak worked the Hulk’s vocabulary into other characters’ dialogue. For example, as the Fantastic Four prepares for his assault, Storm tells Reed, “And now the Hulk’s smashed the Avengers.” It’s a minor complaint.

World War Hulk will be remembered in no one’s top 100 graphic novels of all time. But it’s the closest a Hulk fan can get to the fulfillment of the wish he’s harbored for years.

But more than that, World War Hulk was something of an answer to a particular interpretation of the Hulk I sometimes consider. I see the Hulk as kind of a proto-super-hero. Sure, he’s not even close to being the first super-hero. I don’t mean it chronologically. But in many ways, the Hulk is much closer to the mythic heroes of antiquity upon which super-heroes were based. It’s been said many times that the idea of Superman was conceived as a hybrid of Heracles and Samson, but one of Superman’s defining qualities is a righteous morality that neither of those ancient heroes shared. And that dogged dedication to morality is one of the things that separates the Hulk from the larger community of super-heroes. Even when he isn’t swearing vengeance on the Earth, the Hulk, for the most part, doesn’t fight for the world or for humanity or for peace, justice, or fair hiring policies. The Hulk fights for himself, for his own freedom to exist. To not be hounded. To not be cured. To be left alone.

World War Hulk came hot on the heels of Civil War, a crossover event that was about as high-minded as a Big Two crossover event could be. It brought the Marvel Universe just a teeny, tiny bit closer to the real world, by tackling issues of personal freedom along with addressing the pretty obvious question of why the hell anyone would allow all these costumed psychos to run around, unchecked, anonymously beating justice into the rest of the world. Clad in gladiator garb that looked it could have very well been lifted from the wardrobe of Heracles, the Hulk – the world’s proto-super-hero – returned home not to narratively explore political and social issues, but to punish rebel hero and government stooge alike for trying to turn the pugilist porn of super-hero comics into pseudo-intellectual horsecrap. He reminded us what this whole thing is really all about. He smashed and he smashed and he smashed and he smashed and he howled victory at the void while gripping more bloody capes than in the final scenes of 300. That’s World War Hulk.