Incredible Hulk #193. Doc Samson's back.

(Cover from November 1975.)

"The Doctor's Name Is Samson!"

Written by Len Wein.

Drawn by Herb Trimpe and Joe Staton.

Lettering by John Costanza.

Colours by Glynis Wein.

It was hard not to feel disappointed when Doc Samson was first written out of The Incredible Hulk. If ever there was a character whose potential'd been left untapped, it had to be the muscle-bound psychiatrist, a hero almost as strong as the Hulk but with a fully-functioning brain. Therefore I suppose it's ironic that the departure of my favourite Hulk artist coincides with the return of one of my favourite supporting characters.

Thunderbolt Ross has brought the psychiatrist in to try and retrieve Glenn Talbot's erased mind. To do it Samson needs two things; Gamma radiation and Bruce Banner. Why he needs either isn't exactly clear but of course no sooner have we been introduced to his mighty Gammatron than it goes wrong. It springs a leak and, hey presto, its creator's got his muscles back, his green hair back and is itching for another scrap with the Hulk. Unfortunately, having sent Samson flying with one punch, the Hulk departs before Samson can get back to the battle site, leaving him to crawl from a hole in the ground, vowing vengeance.

Maybe it's me but Samson seems more macho and gung ho than before. OK, he wasn't exactly short of confidence on his first appearance but this time he seems to have taken the self-belief up a notch. Maybe his mind is affected by the radiation after all. He also seems to have got more action-packed, his fight with the Hulk being much more mobile than it was on their first meeting, as the pair leap around, fling things about and end up slugging it out atop the World Trade Centre.

Joe Staton's inks are strong in more ways than one, giving the tale a drastically different look to that which we were used to for years. In some ways he's a great inker for Trimpe, lending Trimpe's work a visual depth and dynamism it might otherwise lack. In other ways he almost obliterates Trimpe's own style, leaving just hints of it showing through - however much Staton's modified the penciller's work, the Hulk's teeth for instance are still pure Trimpe. Regardless, there's no denying the result looks pleasing, even if Staton's inks were arguably better suited to Sal Buscema who succeeded Trimpe on the strip.

I suppose it would've been nice if Trimpe had gone out with a multi-part epic, featuring all the things he did best; tanks, planes, spaceships, monsters and giant robots. Instead he goes out with a tale whose main function is to set up future events. In that sense it's a little disappointing but, even if it's a mixture of prepping future events and rerunning past ones, it's entertaining enough and moves the strip towards the more action-packed style to come.

And that's it, the end of Herb Trimpe's run, and the end of the blog. Budd's pointed out to me there's one more Herb Trimpe issue, from around a year later, that I wasn't aware of. Sadly I don't yet have a copy of that. So, until I get my hands on it, the blog's done and dusted. I'd like to thank the people who've stuck with it to the end, no matter how gruelling it might have been for you. And, for anyone new, I might as well give a plug to my other blogs Spider-Man Reviewed and Maria McKee's Life Is Sweet, the latter of which has pretty pictures even if you don't want to read the text. Will I be back with another blog? Who can know? Right now, after reviewing over 90 issues of the Hulk, I need a break and, when my feeble mind's recovered, I'll see if there's the fuel in the tank to to tackle something else.

Incredible Hulk #141. Doc Samson makes his debut

(Cover from July 1971.)

“His Name Is… Doc Samson!”

Written by Roy Thomas.

Art by Herb Trimpe and John Severin.

Lettering by Artie Simek.

Something that strikes me, reading this tale, is that almost a decade in we still know next to nothing about Bruce Banner. We simply haven’t seen enough of him to know how his mind works or what kind of man he is. He’s the protagonist of a comic book and a scientific genius and therefore we assume that, like the early Reed Richards, he’s noble, wise and mature.

But last issue we saw him happy to be dictator of a land he barely knew and, this issue, when confronted with what he thinks is a love rival, instead of doing what anyone in the slightest bit well-balanced would, which is talking to the object of his affections, he instead refuses to have anything to do with her and sneaks into a laboratory to turn himself into the Hulk. What he expects to gain from such an action is anyone’s guess but that combined with his dictatorial tendencies of the last issue and his history of getting over-excited at the drop of a hat, suggest the man we know so little about might actually not be quite right in the head.

If I was into blatant links between paragraphs, I might say he needs a psychiatrist, but there’s one at hand, and he’s the root of it all.

Dr Leonard Samson’s come up with a device to drain the Hulk of his energy, thus curing Bruce Banner of his affliction while using that energy to cure Betty Ross of the vitrification that’s afflicted her for the last few issues. How a psychiatrist came up with such a scheme - which is as far out of his field as a sheep would be on Jupiter - is anyone’s guess but blow me down if the plan doesn’t work.

Showing he’s just like the rest of us, Samson then uses the remainder of the Hulk’s energy to turn himself into a super-hero. Possibly not so like the rest of us, he then takes a shine to Betty Ross. Cue jealous strangeness from Bruce Banner and the return of the Hulk.

Whatever Bruce Banner’s mental state, it’s another classic as we get to meet a new, though unsuccessful, super-hero whilst the distancing of Bruce Banner from Betty Ross - which began with the introduction of Jarella - continues.

The story’s only failing is did Roy Thomas really have to christen Doc Samson “Dr Samson” before he got his powers - especially as his hair grows long in the process of gaining them? I’ve heard of nominative determinism but some coincidences stretch credulity to a breaking point that even Bruce Banner’s trousers couldn’t endure.