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Underground > Comic Books >

Hulk 475, or 75, or whatever the issue is since they've changed the numbering again and again

04:37 / 14.09.04

Alright. anyone else read this piece of trash? Bruce Jones' run has been great until recently (specifically me thinks since the title became a Marvel Knight) but this was just shit. I know his run is coming to an end soon and he has an exclusive contract with DC or someone else, but has anyone heard whether he's had a falling out with his editor or something? Might he be throwing the conclusion to his several year storyline on purpose? Or maybe its a way of writing that is supposed to stylistically show that the passage of the story can be better than the ending. I mean this was just sooooooo fucking bad.
Thoughts?
Cheers

18:07 / 14.09.04

Hulkie is a hard character to write. Only the best of Peter David's run really told terrific Hulk stories, I think -- and of course, Stan & Jack for a while and then maybe some of the 70s Hulks (Hulk & Jarella, the dude underground who has his own kingdom, crazy psychedelic fucked up shit like that)...

I haven't been keeping up very closely with Jones' run - mostly just skimming it in the store. Although I did buy his first 2 story arcs. It started off ok but got really convoluted and too X-Files soap opera/conspiracy theory for my tastes.

So I say good riddance to both HULK and THOR (also discontinued for a while) until they get creators who can really tell good stories for these characters.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

02:26 / 15.09.04

I think that Jones had a great new way of looking at the character (horror rather than super-hero), but quickly ran out of steam and kept going because it was selling rather than because he had a conclusion in mind.

His bringing back Betty Brant was the moment when I dropped the book because it just didn't fit what he was trying to do.

15:27 / 15.09.04

They kinda had to bring her back eventually, one figures...and they wanted her back in the comics around the time the movie came out, which Jones accomplished. I bet the return of Betty was editorially mandated, not Bruce Jones-mandated. Plus, what are Hulk comics without Betty? It's like Clark without Lois...Peter without Mary Jane...peanut butter without jelly...ok I'm rambling now...

19:34 / 17.09.04

I agree here on both sides. I honestly knew the whole time that those enigmatic lips on the view screen were the Leader's. I mean, it would have, I'm sad to say, been disappointed if it hadn't been. At the same time though, thats just the nostalgia-whore in my ego, planted by the Peter David's awesome handling of the character as Hulk's arch-nemisis. And when Jones revealed that it was Beatty, I just did not see that shit coming. But now I wish it had just gotten canceled in the middle of his run or something. You know, the legend by way of being incomplete, like Jenny Finn. Because you never get to see where its going its a shatterglass of speculation and possiblities in Your imagination and that makes it untouchable...like Twin Peaks.
Well, Peter David is supposed to be writing some new miniseries of Hulk but I don't know, as Claremont has repeatedly shown by going back to the Xmen years after his legendary run was left in the hands of feebs, you can't go home again.
Cheers

14:48 / 23.09.04

I think it ran out of steam very early on. Started out great, man on the run and Doc Samson was very well written, but the zombie crap and super-killers nonsense just didn't sit well with what seemed to be an attempt to make the Hulk more real. Just got silly after a while.

17:45 / 04.10.04

Peter David is doing a 5-issue story arc (was going to be a miniseries but they decided to make it part of the regular book and just pick up the numbering where they left off; I think 476 was the last issue) called Tempest Fugit -- he said it would be something like Hulk fighting lots of monsters on an island like the Godzilla Monster Island movie. Or something like that.

As for David being back on Hulk, he hasn't become an absolutely embrassing hack like Claremont and Byrne. Although I think his skills have dulled a bit, he's still a decent writer (the first issue of his Madrox miniseries was decent), although he's a little too amused with his cutesy puns and self-referential jokes. I'm going to give this at least a look-over in the store.

06:09 / 25.10.04

Well, I have to say, although 75 was the shit crown on the shit cake, and 76, the end of Jones' run was naught much better, the end was a bit of a resounder. The whole leader thing was typical, and all the zombie poo and everything witht he mind control, but man, Jones ended his run very unstable and chilling, with Betty screaming at Bruce that he's nothing but a monster, yadda dadda do. If nothing else, this run may balance out in hindsight just for the last coupel panels being the biggest downer of a run in a while. I always look at the end of a writer's long term run (if it has been any good at all) as the end of a movie in a way, and this was a way down tempo.