Never Say Die: Immortal Hulk #8 pieces together a fascinating series

IMMORTAL HULK #8: Victory in his cold, dissected hands!

The Hulk's survival crosses a line that dissolves any feel-good simplicity of the gamma giant-as-superhero. I recommend you see for yourself how his vengeance comes together, just as his predicament- one I never saw before, for any character!-verges on becoming insurmountable. For this Hulk and his dizzying powers, what seems like ultimate defeat, physically, just plays into his cold, dissected hands!

I don’t keep up with every very good comic series or individual work in the genre. The day I bought my wonderful What If? Comic, I also realized the sun was setting on our local store- What If? Comics and Collectibles. Here I am, reliable vehicle secured, savings, best job yet and freelance articles- I’m ready to get some comics! Are you ready to get some comics, too? Well, when the sun goes down, if you want at least one monthly comic that touches upon rich Marvel history, superhero suspense in a horror-fix atmosphere in visceral stories, one gives new meaning to 'never say die'! It's this year's THE IMMORTAL HULK series.

There's something different about this Hulk, if I could just put my finger on it...ARt: Joe Bennett inks by Ruy José

The pencils by Joe Bennett (inked by Superman's Ruy José) depict a gruesome take on the gamma-irradiated adventures of fugitive Bruce Banner. Like the classic TV series, the creature is pursued by an investigative reporter named McGee (a woman working for an Arizona paper). Yes, the world knows Bruce Banner’s dead: he’d conspired with Clint Barton, his friend the Avengers marksman Hawkeye, to put an arrow through his vulnerable human brain stem. Great zombie Hulks! His Other resurrects in the night. He points this loaded weapon, the Hulk’s ruthless vengeance, at injustices he discovers along the way.

Writer Al Ewing’s realized a post-mortal-damage Banner who cannot touch the ethereal heights of his own former intellect as yet. Moreover, he’s resigned to the fact that his objective, scientific mind is not quite so smart as the intuitive cunning of the Hulk. Now is the trigger: when Bruce loses his life, he returns as the unstoppable creature, who embraces an identity as a sort of ‘Devil Hulk.’ But there’s something more fearsome yet, capable of reducing him to a scared child...and it takes the face of the man who hated him first, his father Brian.

Beneath it all is the mystery of The Green Door, a link to the spawning of Marvel’s gamma-powered beings. Behind that door may well lie what Shaman of Alpha Flight knows as a deep and abiding evil beyond even the terror of the Great Beasts of the Northlands. It’s here we get Walter Langkowski involved- that’s Sasquatch to you longtime Marvelites- at least, it WAS Sasquatch until Immortal Hulk #5. Walt’s a supporting cast regular. The unconventional thing about this initial supporting cast? They have very little contact with the dual-identity lead. It’s a staple of old-time Hulk adventures, these lives parallel to the elusive monster. The impressive Carol Danvers Captain Marvel leads the superhero end of the search for the Hulk. What can she do but work with the forces of Shadow Base to find and secure this national security threat?

It hasn't the comedy of the Peter David era, but the unpredictability, mystery and fugitive status of those initial Grey Hulk days is matched by art as gnarly as Todd McFarlane’s, but amped to gruesome proportions, and frankly, with better depictions of day-to-day life than early McFarlane. Not to say it lacks witticisms, but the humor’s very dark. Issue eight is both funny and mind-blowingly horrific at once, as Doctor Clive morbidly examines the living, dissected pieces of the gamma giant. He really gets consumed in his work.

Shadow Base itself is on the run in this one, thanks to Captain Marvel’s anonymous press leak via McGee to pressure the government on the missing Hulk’s whereabouts. Her struggle to hand over the Hulk peacefully resulted in an issue seven battle royale with the present incarnation of Avengers- very core, familiar members, with the somewhat incidental inclusion now of a badass old muscle car-driving Ghost Rider. There’s a personal dimension when the She-Hulk is unleashed. She now embodies the brute Hulk who was so long a mainstay. I’m impressed how this offbeat horror book has embraced Hulk history, a composite of its most successful approaches, kept the pulse of its contemporary superhero scenarios and its mainstream, even given a home to the present space station incarnation of a slimmed-down Alpha Flight affiliated with Colonel Danvers as her cinema turn approaches.

Issues one and two tied more nicely to the classic television series than anything at least since Bruce Jones’ run. They refer to the gamma-irradiated scientist whose experiments killed his son “The First” and even made him a “Frye Hulk”- a callback to easily one of the most intriguing and cool Incredible Hulk television stories, the famous two-parter about the terror of an earlier gamma spawn. I don’t want to spoil it, but the issue’s predicament at his son’s graveside makes an awesome dark reflection of the present Hulk’s status.
Dark psychological reflections have been the bread-and-butter of Hulk stories for most of the character’s existence. I love the literary quotes that open on the black splashes of each issue. Without resorting to a didactic reading, we get that fine intellectual line embracing Jungian philosophy in its dichotomy of science (as science fiction) and mysticism, a discussion pondered often by the introspective Banner. Paul Jenkins’ Hellblazer-style psychology, valuable details of the present legacy of the MU- I can’t say enough how skilled a composite of all things echoing from the original sinister Gamma Bomb blast this is! That special something that made Hulk perhaps an odd fit in the original launch of Marvel in the 1960s- that sense of an anti-heroic, self-serving menace and potential for wickedness and mayhem, embedded in the suppressed scientist- has been resurrected. “Is he a man? Is he a monster? Or – is he both” : Indeed.


I wanted to say more, yet, it seemed important to try to recommend Immortal #8 while it’s still fresh off the press, and that means no spoilers. What a wild comeback scenario!
I'm sorry my local comics shop had to die for my love of new comics to return so monstrously.