Incredible Hulk #110. Umbu.

(Cover from December 1968.)

"Umbu, The Unliving!"

Written by Stan Lee.

Drawn by Herb Trimpe.

Inked by John Severin.

Lettered by Sam Rosen.

Gilbert O'Sullivan once said, "What's in a kiss?" and William Shakespeare once said, "What's in a name?" While I can't comment on the wisdom or otherwise of Gilbert, I can tell you the bard should've known better because one mention of the name Umbu and you know straight away you're not up against a nine stone weakling. That's right, it's Hold Onto Your Hats time as we enter the senses-shattering conclusion to the Hulk's first ever foray into the Hidden Jungle.

And what a foray it is as he has to fight first Ka-Zar and his sabre-tooth tiger before taking on the might of Umbu, the Unliving. Umbu's a classic creation, a giant stone robot with a deadly tuning fork, created by aliens to guard the machine, from last issue, that's threatening to destroy the Earth. Happily, before it's too late - and mostly thanks to Umbu - the Hulk turns back into Bruce Banner who manages to destroy the machine before the lumbering robot can blast his way into the cave to protect it.

Maybe, given how slow-moving he is, it might've made more sense for them to place Umbu next to the cave that houses the machine he's supposed to be guarding, rather than miles away from it. Still, that's aliens for you. When it comes down to it, they're only human.

The aliens are a mildly annoying point. In themselves they're fine, what little we see of them but we're not told when they set up their machinations. Was it last week? Was it last year? Was it centuries or even millennia ago? It's a minor point but one that's always annoyed me. Otherwise, it's another top-notch story, in which Stan Lee's background in creating giant monsters whose names end with a "U" meets the strip's future direction. The Hulk'll be facing an awful lot of gigantic foes in the years to come but, frankly, none will ever manage to top Umbu and his tuning fork of death.

My one gripe would be that Ka-Zar simply seems too strong in this tale. Don't get me wrong, he's shown as clearly being out of his depth trying to take on the Hulk but, when the Hulk tries to crush him in a bear hug, instead of Ka-Zar coming out of it as the world's first super-hero purée - as he should - he survives completely unscathed and even manages to stun the Hulk with a karate-style chop to the neck. Frankly, there's no way Ka-Zar, who's really no more than a very fit human being, is ever going to be able to hit the Hulk hard enough for our anti-hero to even feel it.

Incredible Hulk #109. The one with Ka-Zar and Zabu

(Cover from November 1968.)

"The Monster And The Man-Beast!"

Written by Stan Lee.

Layouts by Frank Giacoia.

Pencils by Herb Trimpe.

Inked by John Severin.

Lettered by Artie Simek.

Rain, gales, sleet. It might sound like a typical Wimbledon fortnight but it's even worse than that. It's the worst threat the world has ever faced, as the Hulk finds himself in the Hidden Land.

In order to escape China, which is being less than friendly to him, our hero's hitched a ride on a rocket which, thanks to his weight, has crashed in Ka-Zar's homeland. No sooner has the Hulk arrived than he's back in his Bruce Banner guise and being shown a machine in a cave. Because he's the sort of genius who could only exist in a comic book, it takes Banner mere moments to realise the machine's affecting the Earth's rotation and'll destroy us all by messing up our weather. Unfortunately, before Brucie can do anything about it, he turns into the Hulk and now, with no one around to do anything about the machine, we're all in trouble.

This is one of my favourite Hulk stories from this era. Not only is virtually every panel a masterclass in how to do the Hulk but it starts a multi-part tale that encapsulates the strip's brand new era perfectly, with strange lands, strange machines, strange beings, alien planets, cosmic menaces, alien races, giant robots, an oppressed people in need of liberation, and more spaceships than you can shake a stick at. It also doesn't hurt that every panel's packed with drama either.

It has to be said this particular issue relies an awful lot on coincidence. The Hulk just happens to blunder across a rocket launch. The rocket just happens to deliver the Hulk to the Savage Land. Bruce Banner just happens to bump into Ka-Zar. At the time Bruce Banner, one of the world's greatest scientists, arrives in the Savage Land, there just happens to be a machine in a cave that's about to destroy the world - a machine Ka-Zar just happens to have stumbled across.

Somehow it doesn't matter.

As I've said before, if you're looking for a likely series of events, then comic books probably aren't the place to look, and the sheer vigour of it all carries you along regardless of all stretches of credulity.

An over-reliance on coincidence aside, for me the one failing of this issue is General Thunderbolt Ross whose characterisation is plain monomaniacal. Confronted by dangerously changing weather patterns, he promptly starts going on about how Bruce Banner must be behind it.

Why?

Why would Bruce Banner want to change the world's weather? Even if he had the ability, since when has he been the madman Ross describes him as here? Ross might have it in for the Hulk but since when has he viewed Banner as a major threat to the humanity?

Incredible Hulk #108. More of the Mandarin

(Cover from October 1968.)

"Monster Triumphant!"

Written by Stan Lee.

Drawn by Herb Trimpe.

Inked by John Severin.

Lettered by I Watanabe.

Anyone who doesn't think an inker makes that much difference to how a strip looks only has to be pointed towards The Incredible Hulk #108 because the transformation from last issue is genuinely astonishing. Gone is Syd Shores and in comes John Severin. Suddenly, it's like you're looking at the work of a completely different penciller. Whereas Shores' heavy inks weren't at all suited to Trimpe, Severin's more subtle and detailed work is perfect for him. And the comic looks fantastic, oozing energy, urgency and action in every panel as Trimpe finally starts to make the most of his strengths as an artist.

There's something else also started to change. From the moment the strip was born, it had the glaring problem of how to build stories around a stupid, inarticulate and witless character. Here, Stan Lee and Herb Trimpe simply bypass the problem by making the Hulk a supporting character in his own book, a catalyst as much as a protagonist. It's not something that hadn't been done before but it's a solution the strip would increasingly use from now on and enabled it to achieve an ever greater richness of story-telling.

So, what actually happens? Simple; the Mandarin, having captured the Hulk, uses him to launch an attack on the Chinese. For some reason, Nick Fury and his Russian equivalent Yuri Brevlov fear this'll cause China to declare war on their respective countries. Why they think this, is anybody's guess but it's enough to convince them to team up. Happily for them, and for no reason I can make out, Tony Stark concludes the Mandarin must be behind it all. And so the pair attack the Mandarin's fortress as the Hulk takes on the entire Chinese army. Needless to say it all ends with the Hulk smashing up the Mandarin's castle before blundering off into the distance, bemoaning the fact he can't find anywhere where he's welcome.

That's what he thinks because he's more than welcome in my house. I really can't stress how much of an improvement on recent issues this one is as, after years of inconsistency and sometimes plain floundering around, the strip's quickly starting to stumble upon a story-telling style and a format that'll finally put it up there among Marvel's genuinely great strips.

And next issue is where that moment'll finally arrive.

Incredible Hulk #107. The one with the Mandarin

(Cover from September 1968.)

"Ten Rings Hath The Mandarin!"

Written by Gary Friedrich.
Drawn by Herb Trimpe.
Inked by Syd Shores.
Lettering by Artie Simek.

There's only one man in the Marvel universe who loves purple and green more than the Hulk does and, with issue #107, at last our hero gets to meet him. After last issue and his spat with the exploding caveman, this time out the Hulk meets the megalomaniac Manchurian as he finds himself up against Iron Man's old nemesis the Mandarin.

Watching our hero blundering around in Russia, Mandy decides the Hulk's just the pawn he needs for his evil schemes and teleports him to his Chinese castle to inflict a series of tests on him. Luckily for the Hulk, none of them involve Advanced Calculus and most consist of smashing things. As the Hulk does "smashing" better than anyone this side of Jim Bowen, he passes with flying colours before trying to kill the Mandarin who, sadly, has one last trick up his sleeve.

It has to be said the general story-telling's not altogether ambitious in this tale. Basically, once the loose ends from the previous issue are tied up, it's just the Hulk smashing a string of machines, devices and robots before trying to smash the Mandarin. But is that really such a bad thing? What do we read the thing for if it's not an innate love of mindless violence? And it's always good to see the Hulk up against an over-confident self-declared genius. It always works with the Leader and it works here. It's oddly appealing to see Mandy so convinced of his superiority that he at no point grasps just what a clanger it is to bring the Hulk into his castle.

If the art wasn't exactly sensational last time out, this issue it's even worse, as Syd Shores' heavy-handed and unsophisticated inking almost completely swamps Trimpe's pencils. If you try really hard you can still just about see his style showing through but only just. Although she's not credited, I have to wonder if Marie Severin's still got a hand in the mix as there're several panels that look distinctly Marie-esque.

But none of this matters. What really matters is that possibly the greatest revelation of this issue is that the Hulk is quite the linguist as, surrounded by the sort of pitch-fork wielding Eastern Europeans that exist only in comics and 1930s' Frankenstein movies, he can understand their every word. If only the Mandarin had decided to test the Hulk's language skills instead of his hitting skills, who knows what unpleasantness he might have been spared?

The Incredible Hulk #106. The Missing Link

(Cover from August 1968.)

"Above The Earth.. A Titan Rages!"

Written by Archie Goodwin/Roy Thomas.
Layouts by Marie Severin.
Drawn by Herb Trimpe.
Inked by George Tuska.
Lettering by Artie Simek.

Pinpointing exactly when the Herb Trimpe era began is a bit like settling on which day of the week the age of the mammals started. The vagueness is because Trimpe was eased into the title, initially merely inking Marie Severin's pencils for a few issues before disappearing completely from the strip.

Bearing in mind how bad his inks looked over Severin's work, readers might've been forgiven for thinking his name would never again grace the credits box but, by issue #106, it was back and, this time, he was pencilling. However, the fact that he was pencilling over Severin's layouts, suggest he was still not quite trusted by the Powers-That-Be to do it all on his own.

Were those Powers-That-Be right to not trust him?

On the strength of this tale, yes. It's the conclusion of the Hulk's first meeting with the Missing Link. For those who don't know, the Missing Link was a neanderthal revived from being frozen in a block of ice, by a Chinese atomic test which promptly turned him into a bright pink equivalent of the Hulk. To say the tale takes off at a tangent in this issue'd be no exaggeration as, just as the Hulk and the Link are getting stuck into each other, Russia's answer to Nick Fury kidnaps them, in Russia's answer to SHIELD's heli-carrier. Somewhere along the way, The Missing Link explodes and we get the Hulk ending the tale as so many times since, by re-enacting the Frankenstein's-monster-with-the-child routine.

It has to be said it's not a great start to Trimpe's pencilling career on the strip. The combination of Marie Severin's layouts and his work, under George Tuska's inks, isn't a happy one and, for the most part, it looks like something culled from a fanzine, there're signs though, even here, of the later Trimpe style showing through, especially in the second part of the issue but, for now it all seems somewhat amateurish and the artwork isn't a patch on the issue before, which some of us would see as Severin's best work on the title.

Apart from the Missing Link, by far the best thing about this tale is Colonel Yuri Brevlov who, as well as being Russia's answer to Nick Fury, is torn between his sense of duty to his nation and his desire to do the right thing, making him a far cry from all those one-dimensional commies of Marvel's early years.

The other highlights have to be a wonderfully comical moment when the newly-transformed Hulk punches the Missing Link square in the kisser, and an earlier moment when Betty Ross saves Bruce Banner, Major Talbot and a strangely redundant Rick Jones by driving her car straight into the Missing Link. After years of vapid and useless Stan Lee created women, it's great to see one finally showing cojones in a crisis. Cojones in a Crisis, there's a title for a blog.

To be Hulk-inued.