The Neverending Reboot: Indestructible Hulk #1 Review

One thing I have learned over 36 years of reading comic book is that, for a character who has been a linchpin of Marvel Comics and who has had some of the greatest crossover success of any comic book character, appearing in cartoons, a prime time television show and three major motion pictures just in my lifetime… nobody ever seems to like The Hulk all that much at any given time.

There is no other major comic character that I can think of that has been rebooted, retrofitted and overhauled more often than The Hulk. Just off the top of my head, Hulk has been green and stupid, grey and stupid, grey and smart, grey and smart and a mafia enforcer, green again and a genius, green and stupid again, green and a gladiator, green and a world conqueror, and one time, green in white clown makeup getting his ass kicked by Batman. And when it comes to Bruce Banner, he has been Bruce Banner, David Banner, a wimpy genius, a tactical master, an abused child, a mad scientist, an itinerant wandering hobo, and the leader of government agencies. If a creator came into, say, Superman and said, “You know what would make Superman better? If Clark Kent was a street hustler, and if Superman wore doilies and shit napalm,” there would be nerd riots in the streets around every comic store… but when it comes to The Hulk, the attitude seems to be, “Fuck it. Can’t be any worse than what the last guy did.”

It seems that every time a new creator gets his hands on The Hulk, his or her first action is to look at what came before, boldly state, “Nah, that ain’t right,” and start slapping together a new current status quo. Just a month or so ago, Jason Aaron finished a run where Banner had been separated from Hulk, Banner went nuts and spent a while doing fruitless genetic experiments, a reasonably intelligent Hulk boned Red She-Hulk, Banner and Hulk reunited to fight Dr. Doom, all in a storyline that was packed with big, goofy action and fun. But that was a month and a creator ago, which in Hulk terms means it might as well have never happened.

So yes, the new creative team on Indestructible Hulk #1 has, indeed, looked at Aaron’s run and seemingly said, “Nah, that ain’t right,” and is taking Banner and Hulk in a different direction. Normally, this would be so much the norm it almost wouldn’t register; just another case of a new guy fucking around until he gets bored or sales tank and the next guy comes into to fuck around. However, this time around the writer is Mark Waid – you know, the guy who looked at 25 years of noir stories in Daredevil and said, “Nah, that ain’t right,” and turned the book in a direction that has generally been as entertaining as any Daredevil story since Frank Miller made Daredevil a noir character.

So while this is yet another reboot for Hulk, whether we needed it or not, Waid gives us an interesting new start, with a fresh take on Banner and some of his motivations, a good take on the tension that being around Banner can cause straight out of the Avengers movie, and a fresh “relationship” between Banner and The Hulk… not that it doesn’t have some problems.

S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill is in a diner in Alabama, either waiting for the go time for an assault on the Mad Thinker or because she is being punished for some sin, when she is unexpectedly visited at her table by Bruce Banner, bearing the gift of a water treatment machine he whipped together as a gesture of good faith, and an offer: hire him, get miracles like the machine on a regular basis… and have access to The Hulk when they need muscle. Hill decides to agree on a provisional basis during the currently-planned attack on the Thinker, and lets Banner know by way of a 2-by-6 to the back of the head. Hulk handles the attack admirably – demonstrating by way of the resistance he faces that S.H.I.E.L.D. would have been taint-kicked had Hulk not been there – and Hill then accepts Banner’s deal, knowing all the while that she has made a deal with a ticking time bomb.

Waid does some interesting stuff with Banner’s characterization here, most prominently by establishing Banner’s deep-seated jealousy and resentment toward more obvious Marvel Universe geniuses like Tony Start and Reed Richards. It’s not something I recall seeing before, and yet at the same time is so obvious it just feels right. Particularly since Marvel’s writers have gone to such lengths in recent years to rehab even wife-beater Hank Pym’s reputation, having Banner feel odd man out in the egghead ranks, and being bitter over it, makes a lot of sense.

What further works is Banner’s new attitude that The Hulk is not something to be cured, but instead is a chronic condition that needs to be managed, and Banner turning his scientific knowledge to create technology and methods to help maintain himself. It’s another take on the relationship between Banner and Hulk that’s so obvious once someone presents it that feels new and interesting. Combine that with the idea that Banner’s first instinct in how to fund his new enthusiasm for revenge science by approaching S.H.I.E.L.D. – a military organization – and what Waid has done is combine a bunch of character and plot points that are so Goddamned obvious once you think about them that it makes you sit up and take notice.

Further, one of the most effective parts of the Avengers movie (and yes, I got drunk and watched the Blu-Ray again last night) was how director Joss Whedon used a variety of methods to build tension around Banner to demonstrate just how dangerous he really was. Here, Waid uses a couple of gimmicks to call back to that, most effectively a repeating image of a ticking clock, to demonstrate that no matter how in control and confident Banner seems to be, it is only a matter of time before he Hulks out and causes some real damage. The second method to call back to the emotions of the Avengers movie is, well… let’s just say that if the death of Agent Coulson in that movie broke your heart? You’re gonna want to pick this issue up.

Where this issue, frankly, falls down is in the action sequences where Hulk attacks the Mad Thinker, and the responsibility for that falls squarely on artist Leinil Yu. For most of the issue, Yu’s style is much as it always is: generally realistic, with normally-built figures and expressive faces… with enough fine detail lines to make Rob Liefeld say, “Damn, that’s over the top.” There are panels in the initial discussion between Hill and Banner where it looks like they both just came from a working over by Freddy Kreuger. Which is fine, if not a style of art that I tend to favor… but when the book moves to action, Yu really loses his way. He goes from a reasonably simple panel layout to weirdly angled, smaller panels to jack up the pacing, but in a lot of those panels, it is just difficult to tell what the hell is going on. One panel shows the Hulk as nothing but green speed lines, and several others are extreme close-ups where it’s just Goddamned hard to tell who’s doing what. If you like Yu’s art, you might be okay with this, but for me, the action scenes were just a storytelling problem, and a damn big one at that.

One one hand, Indestructible Hulk #1 is a case of yet another creator deciding that what came before with The Hulk wasn’t up to snuff, and tacking in yet another new direction. However, Mark Waid makes a lot of choices here that make so much logical sense that it doesn’t feel like a creator deciding that the past doesn’t matter, but that applying logic to the character could make things feel grounded and more real. It generally works in a satisfying and entertaining way that makes me want more (particularly since Waid also subtly lays the groundwork that this new arrangement is destined to go wrong in time)… but Yu’s art throws a real spanner in the works. The action sequences in this book are simply not up to storytelling snuff, and rob the scene of the excitement and danger that a Hulk attack should have in spades. If the action art can become clearer, this issue might be a harbinger for a real exciting take on The Hulk…

…at least until Waid leaves and a new guy comes in and says, “Nah, that ain’t right.” You know it will happen.