#Red Menace villain counter: 0->2. Mood -3

[hautsreadsmarvel]

“The Incredible Hulk” (1962, issues 1-2)

It's time to start putting multiple stories in a single post. Why?

Cause these ones SUCK. You could not force me to pay 12 cents in the modern day to obtain these.

The Hulk is grey or blue in his first issue, which isn’t really a problem but does deserve attention. Also, Bruce Banner’s face reminds me slightly of Hank Hill’s, so to me he sounds like Hank Hill.

More pressing is like - the Hulk is just as eloquent as Banner! The transformation triggers not when Banner is enraged, but during nighttime, and it reverts at day! This feels wrong.

At least Banner has a character - he’s very kind and willing to help anyone. And he’s a rather subdued individual. The Hulk is the antithesis of Banner. That’s about it, though, and everyone else is even flatter. Betty Ross only exists to be a dame in distress and to fawn over the mild-mannered Doc, contrasting with her constantly-yelling father who himself is essentially little more than a caricature.

Bruce Banner’s initial transformation is famously triggered by saturation with a lethal dose of gamma-rays, because while testing his new “G-bomb” he sees a teen delinquent has driven into the testing zone and runs out to save him. This leads to our next problem…

The Hulk. Has. A sidekick. This feels wrong. Rick Jones is a fierce teen who refuses to leave Banner’s side, even when he turns into the Hulk, because Banner is the first person in all existence to show kindness to him.

The Hulk’s very first villain is a commie spy who attempts to steal his gamma-bomb formula by letting the bomb kill Banner. Thus begins our Red Menace villain counter, which will actually jump to 2 in this double-issue, because our next villain… is “the Gargoyle”, a USSR super-genius who uses a mind-control pistol to abduct the Hulk (and the kid too). This is how he is defeated:

Pssh, and they say comics used to not be political. Damn, but this one’s rancid!

Say, won’t there be a Hulk villain later who is mutated into having a large head and super-powerful brain by gamma ray exposure? Is that just a more successful redux of this guy?

I like these pieces of art, especially since the color of Banner's face in shadow is rendered close to the tone of Hulk's flesh.

Second issue: not better in any way. Aliens use “magnetic grapplers” and a “magnetic mind-detector” to find “the most brilliant scientific mind on Earth”, which is… Bruce Banner? I guess this must have been before they really decided to commit to a unified continuity. Also, if those technologies use magnetism to accomplish their effects, does that mean Magneto has an intelligence-sense?

The only cool thing in the second issue is that, once abducted by the aliens, Banner transforms because the craft passes to the dark side of the Earth, making it night. Despite how cool that is (WEREWOLF IN SPACE!!!!), that doesn’t save this issue. I’m not even going to bother detailing the last 50% of the plot, it’s so stinks.