Incredible Hulk #188. Droog & the Gremlin

(Cover from June 1975.)

"Mind Over Mayhem!"

Written by Len Wein.

Drawn by Herb Trimpe.

Inked by Joe Staton.

Lettering by Artie Simek.

Colours by Glynis Wein.

Incredible Hulk #188 might be memorable for many things but the one that leaps out at you like a sore sauropod is the introduction of Droog, the murderous poetic triceratops of terror.

With his love of flinging rhyming couplets at you as he tries to kill you, Droog has to be the strangest creation the strip had yet come up with and, bearing in mind this is the comic that once brought us a giant killer mouth in space, that's quite a boast to make. What the thinking was behind Droog's conception is anyone's guess but you can only suspect Len Wein may not have been totally serious when he first proposed it.

Still, however bizarre the thing may be, it does guarantee that, once read, the story'll never be forgotten, as the attempt to rescue Glenn Talbot from the Gremlin's fortress continues.

Thanks to Clay Quartermain happening to have a bomb concealed beneath his fingernail, the rescue party bust free from their cell and confront the Gremlin who summons Droog to deal with them. As the Hulk fights Droog, the good guys make their escape, just before SHIELD blast the fortress to smithereens.

You can't ignore the fact that SHIELD's actions in annihilating the fortress seem somewhat irresponsible, as they have no way of knowing whether Ross and his gang have actually got out of the place first. In all honesty, I'm not sure SHIELD overall come across as the most reliable organisation in the world. Every one of their agents that we see this issue seems perhaps a little too "flamboyant" and gung ho for the sake of professionalism.

Still, this is a comic book and we know the good guys win through in the end.

And so, minus the Hulk, our gang return to the US with Glenn Talbot's body.

His mind however is another matter, as the Gremlin had swapped it for that of one of his own agents before sending it back to the US in the exploding impostor we saw in issue #185. Because I don't have the intellect of a master-criminal, I don't have the slightest clue why the Gremlin did the mind-swap in the first place. Why didn't he just send Talbot back in his own body? And why was the loyal Soviet agent who now occupies Talbot's body being kept in one of the Gremlin's cells?

So, overall, it's a tale that no sense makes,

But in its insanity, entertainment it never fakes,

And proves there was some creative steam still,

With Wein and Trimpe's hands upon the till.

Blimey, it's infectious.

Incredible Hulk #187. The Gremlin's back.

(Cover from May 1975.)

"There's A Gremlin In The Works!"

Written by Len Wein.

Drawn by Herb Trimpe and Joe Staton.

Lettering by Artie Simek.

Colours by Glynis Wein.

Anyone with a functioning brain could see why a man who turns into an uncontrollable monster whenever he gets excited isn't the man to take along on a life-or-death mission to free Glenn Talbot from a Soviet fortress.

Bruce Banner isn't that anyone.

Told he can't go, by Thunderbolt Ross, he stows away on the plane and, inevitably, before the flight's even reached its destination, he's got over-excited and turned into the Hulk.

Exactly what Banner thought he could contribute to the mission is anyone's guess. Leaving aside the Hulk thing, he's a scientist, not a commando and hasn't even had access to the fortress schematics.

Happily, the weapons pod he was hiding in's been jettisoned by this point, meaning Ross and SHIELD agent Clay Quartermain can carry on with their plan.

And it's a plan that works flawlessly right up until the point where they're about to leave the stronghold with the newly liberated Talbot. That's when Ross hands him a gun, and Talbot promptly points it at them to reveal he's not Glenn Talbot at all. He's a Soviet agent and they're now prisoners of the Gremlin.

After some relatively dispensable stories this is something of a return to meatier ways. That's not to say it's original; re-running as it does The Incredible Hulk #164-165 in which Colonel Armbruster and co freed Thunderbolt Ross from Soviet captivity - while the Hulk's run-in with the Gremlin and his armour-clad Super-Troupers re-runs the events of issue #163. There's even a parallel in Clay Quartermain being introduced for the mission, just as Jack Armbruster had been for the Thunderbolt Ross rescue.

Like Armbruster, Quartermain seems rather full of himself and has an annoying gimmick. With Armbruster, it was his pipe-smoking. With Quartermain, it's his rictus grin. Not knowing anything of Quartermain's history before his introduction to the Hulk strip, I don't know what the story is behind it but it don't half make you want to punch him in the face.

Still, despite annoying grins, Bruce Banner's stupidity and a noticeable lack of new ideas, the concentration on the penetration of the Gremlin's fortress makes this a stronger and more focused tale than some we've been getting lately and can therefore be seen as a return to earlier form - even if it rediscovers that form mostly by an act of regurgitation.

Incredible Hulk #163. The Gremlin

(Cover from May 1973.)

"Trackdown"

Written by Steve Englehart.

Drawn by Herb Trimpe.

Inked by Sal Trapani.

Lettered by John Costanza.

Colours by Andrea Hunt.

Christmas, it only comes once a year.

Unfortunately it's not in May, which means no one's in danger of buying the Hulk a compass as a present any time soon.

That's a bit of a shame because he's still blundering around lost in the frozen north, looking for Glenn and Betty Ross-Talbot.

Not for long he isn't because no sooner has Betty's father found him than our hero's captured by the Gremlin, Soviet agent and son of his first ever foe the Gargoyle.

Like father like son. Not only does the Gremlin look like the Gargoyle but he has his genius too.

What he doesn't share is his father's reservations about serving the Soviet State. By the end of the tale, the Hulk's escaped but not before the Gremlin's captured Thunderbolt Ross and locked him in one of his cells as a present for Mother Russia. With no means of escape, is this (iron) curtains for the old warhorse?

It's all good fun stuff - even if the Gremlin's blatantly just Steve Englehart's excuse to bring back the Gargoyle without the inconvenience of having to explain how he returned from the dead - and there is a certain neatness in a servant of the Kremlin being called the Gremlin. I suppose that means we're now due to be introduced to a servant of the White House who's called the...

...anyway.

Herb Trimpe seems to be enjoying himself. In fact I'd say it's the best job he's done on the strip in quite a few months. Clearly the chance to pack virtually every panel with technology got his creative juices flowing.

But, whatever the Hulk's troubles, the focus is on Thunderbolt Ross and his kidnap. This seems to have been a policy of Steve Englehart since he took over the writing. While his stories don't appear to be as imaginative or odd as those of his immediate predecessors, he's clearly decided the dramatic focus should be on the supporting cast and not the Hulk, whether it be Glenn and Betty, the Beast and the Mimic, Paul Cartier or, in this issue, Thunderbolt Ross. It's a wise decision as it adds an extra dimension to what would, if only concentrating on the Hulk, be overly straightforward tales with few twists or turns.

However, you'd think someone would've told Betty her father's been kidnapped. She only finds out by reading about it in a newspaper, which means the entire world knew about it before she did. I know Glenn Talbot was trying to keep her away from all sources of information but you'd think that, under the circumstances, someone in the military would've made an effort to get in touch with them.