Hulk Wins

Back in 2010, on another blog that had more to do with comics in general and not just Hulk, I started a weekly column called "HULK IS THE STRONGEST ONE THERE IS!!!!!!" that was just about the green-sometimes-gray-NEVER-RED goliath. 
Considering the subject of the column, and the fact that it would be helpful in padding my blog with posts while I work of newer material, I've decided to post my favorite of these older columns here at Needs More Hulk. 
This was the first installment, which at the time was titled "Why Hulk Is the Strongest One There Is" and was posted here. I reproduce it here with some gentle editing.
Enjoy.

Versus Debates. They're brutal. They're ugly. Sometimes, if not usually, they're surprisingly complex with the debaters providing extensive evidence to prove who-would-beat-who. They take up a sizable chunk of the Internet discussion on comics, and they are all, all of them, utterly useless.
And I'm not just being dismissive. I'm not just using the geekery of others to somehow de-geek myself. I'm not saying they're useless just because comic book Versus Debates don't cure cancer. I mean. They don't. But that's not the point.



What I mean to say here is that Versus Debates are more useless than most useless things. For example, I would argue Versus Debates are more useless than, say, this blog which, like Versus debates, is useless in the sense that it can't cure cancer. It's useless in a Dwight-Schrute-tinted glasses kind of way. You can't use my blog to warm your house, fill your belly, impregnate a mate, or profit financially. I don't make any money from it, so few people read it that the comics I review probably don't make any money from it, the last time I received a review copy they were still talking to Tom Cruise about doing Iron Man.

But Versus Debates are even more useless than my blog, mainly because they're not just useless. They're wrong. The whole concept is wrong. The whole idea is wrong. And whatever answers reached at the end of any Versus Debate are inherently, stupidly, wrong.



The reasons for their wrongness are legion. They're wrong because of the vulgar importance they place upon pure fisticuffs. They're wrong because their debates are based on the idea that, if Hero A fights Hero B, the outcome will never vary. They're wrong because their understanding of violence is based on numbers, as if a fistfight were determined by equations. They're wrong because who wins or loses any particular super battle is determined solely by what will best serve the plot. They're wrong because they are debates about hypothetical battles between people who don't exist. They're wrong because often the fictional battles of the fictional people being cast against each other in the Versus Debate have already occurred in the comics, and yet the debaters will VIOLENTLY claim that the writers at the helms of the respective stories are wrong. Thor wouldn't beat Silver Surfer they'll argue, or Spider-Man couldn't beat Firelord. No, of course they couldn't, because neither the victor nor the defeated exist. But even in the context of the cooperative universes which we, as comic book readers of those continuities, have already given our stamps of approval, the debaters refuse to acquiesce. They argue that the make-believe outcome of the make-believe battle between the make-believe people can't be believed.

But more than any other reason, they are wrong because there is one aspect of superhero stories these Versus Debaters never take into account: CHARACTER. Oh, sure, they'll acknowledge it on its thinnest level. They'll recognize the most blatant BS the writers have shoved down their throats. They will recognize, of course, that Batman is a master strategist. But it never goes any further than that. They never ask themselves what this hero or that hero would do, but what they could do. If the handbooks tell them Spider-Man is stronger than Luke Cage, they assume Spider-Man will hit harder than Luke Cage. They never take into account the fact that if Spider-Man ever fought at full-strength, he would have a trail of bodies following him for a thousand miles. Another perfect example is the Hulk vs. Superman debate. The arguments in the Superman camp are usually surprisingly lethal. They argue Superman would melt the Hulk's brain by firing his heat vision into the Hulk's ear. Or he'd grab the Hulk, fly into space, and hurl the green goliath into the Sun. Really? Would Superman throw the Hulk into the Sun? Why the hell would he do that? Is Superman on coke now? He just throws people into the Sun? Sure, I know folks could come up with a hypothetical situation like Superman-possessed-by-demon or Superman-mind-controlled. But that's just a contrived means to the desired end of Superman suddenly and inexplicably hurling people into heavenly bodies for the sake of proving he would beat the Hulk. Superman doesn't do that. He just doesn't. That's a big part of who he is. If it wasn't, there'd have been a Lex-Luthor-shaped crater in the Sea of Tranquility ages ago.



Of course as the preceding example implies, as well as the title of this little rant, what I'm getting at here is the Hulk. The way the Hulk is mistreated in who-would-beat-who discussions doesn't necessarily say anything about the intelligence of the debaters, but it does say something about their understanding of character. The Hulk is, and this is something that has been stated with a certain amount of redundancy, the strongest one there is.

Now, I'm not going to try to impress you with my knowledge of what Earth's Mightiest Mortal is capable of. I won't remind you of the mountains he's held on his shoulders, the Texas-sized asteroids he's beaten to dust, the godlike creatures (some of them being, in fact, gods) he's laid low, his ability to breathe underwater, his ability to breathe in space, the thermonuclear explosions he's survived, the healing factor so ridiculous that his dystopic-future-self - the Maestro - was resurrected after being reduced to nothing but a windswept pile of bones, or the simple fact that there has never been a ceiling to his ever-growing strength and power. It's not impressive and it isn't the point.

The point is that if any of the Versus Debaters understood character, they would know that there is only one answer to the subject of ANY versus debate. It doesn't even matter who the contestants are. Thor vs. Superman. Hulk vs. Orion. Thanos vs. Darkseid. Dr. Strange vs. Dr. Fate. Spider-Man vs. Wolverine. Obi-wan Kenobi vs. Batman. Liono vs. Tigra. Optimus Prime vs. Howard the Duck. Galactus vs. Glen Danzig. Perry Farrel vs. Harry Potter. Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters vs. Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Power Man and Iron Fist vs. the survivors of Hiroshima.

Doesn't matter. There's only one answer. Ever.



Hulk.

There's something important. Something that has nothing to do with power levels or what tonnage can be lifted about the Hulk that transcends what you can or cannot find in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. And most people don't get it. It makes them mad. It makes them frustrated.

Some friends, who don't read comics all that much, asked my opinion about whether or not a jedi could kill the Hulk. "The lightsaber would cut through him like butter!" they argued, and I pointed out that in Empire Strikes Back, Luke's laser-sword couldn't even get through Darth Vader's arm and that the Hulk's skin - which has withstood bullets, tank shells, missiles, lasers, and Hulk knows what else - was certainly made of sturdier stuff that Darth's bicep. "They could use the force to throw him into space!" they claimed. I explained that the Hulk can breathe in space. "The Hulk's stupid! They could order him to kill himself!" I explained that certain versions of the Hulk are anything but stupid. I told them that even when it comes to the less intelligent versions of the green guy, certain psychic bad guys have a tougher time using their hypno-crap on the Hulk because of his thick skull - see the furry Xemnu's failure to mindhump the Hulk in Marvel Feature #3. In other cases, the Hulk's fractured psyche proved a significant stumbling block to psychic dominance - see Cable's difficulty with the Hulk in Incredible Hulk #444. Not to mention that while jedi might be masters of suggestion, there's a big difference between convincing a clone that he needs to keep window-shopping before he finds the right robots, and convincing a green-skinned force of goddamn nature to take himself out like Hemingway. My karate-kid-esque block to each of the jedi fans' attacks frustrated them. They grew angry and one of them finally broke. He whined about how this was why comics book suck! They don't play by the rules! They just keep making the shit up! As opposed to George Lucas, who culled his material purely from the History Channel.



The thing that was important, the important thing about the Hulk, he didn't get it.

Of course, this reaction is not unique in those unfamiliar to funnybooks. In the cases when I and other disciples of the Hulk proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to some fan of Thor or Wolverine or Superman exactly how the source material we have all agreed to hold sacred proves the Hulk's emerald dominance, they eventually react just like the Star Wars fan mentioned above. Finding themselves soundly defeated in the Versus Debate, they turn to a debate they think they can get some ground in - the quality of the stories, and hence the character himself. If the Hulk just "automatically" heals whatever hurts, can break whatever blocks, can lift whatever needs to be lifted, can live without breath or light or food or water, then isn't the character just a big, stupid fake? Isn't he just a big, dumb brute who beats whatever is in his path without challenge or suspense? And doesn't that make anyone who reads his comics a big, dumb brute for doing so?

There's something important about the Hulk. Something these guys don't get.

My ex-girlfriend, curious about the favorite target of my geek-adoration, read World War Hulk and she didn't get it. She is a voracious reader. She brings shopping bags to the library. She has a different bookmarked tome for every other room in the apartment. And she, understandably, didn't understand the appeal of a hero who simply beat the ever-living crap out of everyone. There was no clever twist to Hulk's photo-finish victory over the crazed Sentry. There was no secret tactic he used to survive Black Bolt's sonic assault or to pound Reed Richards into a giant, bruised rubber band. He endured and he smashed. And when you thought he was about to be met by something he couldn't endure or smash, well. He did. No explanation. No trick. He was just strong. Where's the suspense? Where's the worry that the hero won't win? Where's the surprise?



Do you want to get it? The important thing about the Hulk? Here's the important thing about the Hulk. The important thing has to do with a somewhat vague memory I have of my childhood.

I know I'm maybe somewhere around 6 or 7 or 8, and I know my parents promised to bring me somewhere. It may actually be the comic shop, but I'm not sure. It might be a movie. It might be an amusement park. I don't know. Regardless, the promise is broken. Something comes up. They can't take me, and I am in my bedroom, belly down on my bed, throwing a goddamn fit. I am crying, I am sobbing, I am punching my pillow as hard as I can and then stuffing my face in the pillow to muffle the wet, pathetic scream. This goes on for hours. Occasionally I jump up and perform a silent, red-faced tantrum dance. I punch at nothing. I glare daggers at the closed bedroom door as if I'm about to burst through it and tell those lying bastards what they can go do with their broken promise. Inevitably, I will belly-flop back onto the bed. This goes on until the afternoon sun is gone and the sky outside my window is a darkening blue. My face is still damp, but my breathing is even. There are no tears, only the occasional snuffle to remind me of the storm I just endured. I feel tired. The offense that triggered my tantrum feels far away. The sting is not as sharp. The pillows and sheets I had been pounding and tossing around I now gather to me, under and over me, and before I succumb to the sweet sleep I have angrily earned, something occurs to me. Earlier, the world had not been right. The world was wrong. I had been promised something and it was not given. In response, I cried and wailed as I never had before. I screamed the wrongness of it as loudly as I could. Regardless, the world did not change. My anger changed nothing. That seems new to me. Horribly new.

Now here's another story. In Incredible Hulk #126, the Hulk fought a creature called the Night-Crawler in a distant dimension (not the blue elf from the X-Men, different guy). I forget why, but it has something to do with Dr. Strange and the very beginnings of what would later become The Defenders. The Hulk is in this other dimension fighting the Night-Crawler, and he doesn't want to be there. He doesn't like it. He probably only has the barest sliver of an idea of why he's there in the first place. Night-Crawler unleashes a sonic barrage from his crazy helmet and the Hulk responds with one of those earth-shattering claps of his (which, depending on who's writing, either creates a sonic boom or is just really windy), and the resulting clash between the Hulk's completely venereal disease free clap and Night-Crawler's wall of sound is a shockwave that rips Night-Crawler's dimension apart.



Are you getting it now? Maybe? Put Superman in that situation. He'd probably come up with some nifty combination of his different super powers to find a way out of Night-Crawler's dimension. Reed Richards or Iron Man would probably figure out some superhero-correct science answer to get back home. Someone more cunning like Batman might figure a way to trick Night-Crawler into sending him back.

The Hulk, on the other hand, found himself in a world he didn't want to be in. He didn't make any equations. He didn't solve any riddles. He didn't find any time-travel treadmills. He just grabbed hold of the world in which he was prisoner, and he motherfucking DESTROYED it.



This is the Hulk. The Hulk is not a bench-pressable tonnage listed on a fan-site. He is not a list of stats on your Heroclix. He isn't his secret button combos in Marvel Vs. Capcom.

The Hulk is the impossible personified. The Hulk destroys what cannot be destroyed, endures what cannot be endured, and defeats what cannot be defeated. The Hulk smashes whatever and whoever is in his way whether they ride lightning or lift mountains or eat planets or flood the whole world with fire because that's what he does. That's who he is. His precise powers are tools, if he didn't have them he would have other tools, and no matter what they were he would use them to pound anything in his way into the dust. His complete and utter dominance over every other superhero and supervillain is not something to brag about, or for fans of other heroes to feel shame for. It isn't a contest. It's hardwired into his character. Arguing that the Hulk cannot defeat everyone and everything in his way would be like arguing that Batman doesn't wear dark colors or that Spider-Man has no sense of humor. If you dig past the anger, the strength, the repressed memories, the fractured psyche, and everything else what you get to is that the Hulk's primary function is this - when the Hulk has his red-faced tantrums, when the Hulk pounds his fists and screams into the pillow, the world does change. The Hulk is the Impossible even in a world defined by impossibility. The Hulk is Hell freezing over. The Hulk is the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

Who wins?



Hulk wins. Dumb ass.

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.