Incredible Hulk #156. The Smart Hulk vs the Stupid Hulk

(Cover from October 1972.)

“Holocaust At The Heart Of The Atom!”

Written by Archie Goodwin.
Art by Herb Trimpe and Sal Tapani.
Lettering by Artie Simek.

So John Severin vacates the inker's seat, and Sal Trapani moves in. It's a fair old contrast to go from Severin's softer style to Trapani's determinedly angular one. The odd thing is that, despite their differences, both approaches seem to suit Trimpe equally well. Severin's style lending Trimpe's work a subtlety, detail and depth it might otherwise lack, Trapani's giving it a greater boldness and definition.

Back on Jarella’s world, the Hulk - once more with Bruce Banner’s brain - finds her kingdom in ruins, with Jarella captured by the evil Lord Visis. Being the Hulk, he quickly rescues her and then agrees to face Visis’ champion to decide the victor in their war.

But the devious warlord has a trick up his sleeve and a machine in his armoury and uses it to make Banner face his worst fear, a version of the Hulk out of all control.

It’s a perfectly pleasant and readable tale but there’re really no new elements introduced from those seen in previous Jarella tales, plus, as I’ve said before, not being a sword and sorcery fan, I don’t find Jarella’s world and its politics all that interesting. That problem’s not helped by the fact that yet again the bad guy’s the somewhat run-of-the-mill Lord Visis who we’d all have forgotten about long ago were he not in the habit of reappearing every time Jarella does.

Still it’s appropriate that the one thing that can defeat an intelligent Hulk is a stupid Hulk. With other Marvel heroes, it’s their intelligence as much as their powers that make them unbeatable. With the Hulk, not for the first time, we’re left in no doubt it’s his total lack of intelligence that does it.

Inevitably, the Hulk survives his encounter with his stupid self but is once more snatched by cruel fate from the arms of his would-be queen. Poor old Hulkie, will he never find happiness? I don’t like to be negative but I think we all know the answer to that one.

Incredible Hulk #148. Jarella’s back

(Cover from February 1972.)

“But Tomorrow-- The Sun Shall Die!”

Written by Archie Goodwin.
Plot assist by Chris Claremont.
Drawn by Herb Trimpe.
Inked by John Severin.
Lettering by Artie Simek.

Far be it from me to suggest someone do the obvious and send Bruce Banner to anger management classes but it’d be a whole lot cheaper and, you suspect, more successful than all the high-tech attempts to cure him put together. Just about everyone else in the Marvelverse has had a go and this time it’s down to space boffin Peter Corbeau who wants to harness the rays of the sun for the task.

Like all the other attempts, it works.

And, like all the other attempts, it fails.

Why? Because, in search of Bruce Banner, Jarella’s come to our world to try and take him back to hers. Unfortunately, the two events combined have destabilised the sun and if she doesn’t go back sharpish, minus the Hulk, it’ll go supernova. Meanwhile, an assassin of Lord Visis has followed her here and, in order to save Jarella from him, Banner finds himself having to transform back into the Hulk.

We can hardly claim it’s unfamiliar territory. Yet again Bruce Banner gets cured only, the first chance he gets, to turn himself back into the Hulk. If you were suspicious you’d start to think that, for all his complaining about being the Hulk, he actually likes it.

It’s pleasing to see Jarella back, although I can’t say I find her world and its political turmoils overly interesting and we barely get to see Lord Visis, the true villain of the piece. Dramatically it would’ve been much stronger if it’d been he, rather than a lackey who’d followed Jarella here.

In the final analysis it’s an issue that doesn’t change anything. At its conclusion, Bruce Banner’s still the Hulk, and Jarella’s back in her own world. It also probably suffers from being a single-parter, meaning we don’t get to see enough of Bruce Banner with Jarella and we don’t get to see what Betty Ross makes of this sudden appearance of a love rival she never knew existed. That should, after all, be the main source of human conflict in the story but instead it's nowhere in sight.

It’s not a bad tale but, in its unwillingness to change anything, it feels like a solid piece of filler rather than a vital tale. In the end, for all its readability, it’s a story you could remove entirely from the strip’s history and no one would ever notice.

Incredible Hulk #140. Jarella makes her debut

(Cover from June 1971.)

“The Brute That Shouted Love At The Heart Of The Atom!”

Plot by Harlan Ellison.

Script by Roy Thomas.

Layouts by Herb Trimpe.

Art by Sam Grainger.

Lettering by Artie Simek.

After the Hulk’s descent into Lovecraftian horror last time out, it’s now time for him to get stuck into the battling realms of Sword and Sorcery.

Not that a man of his strength needs a sword of course as he finds himself in the sub-atomic land of the beautiful Queen Jarella where, thanks to her sorcerers, he now has the mind of Bruce Banner.

I complained about how the last time the Hulk had the mind of Bruce Banner he didn’t retain it long enough for the idea to be fully explored, cheating us of what could have been an intriguing and refreshing set of stories, so it’s good to see him getting another crack at that whip and, though his lucidity, again, lasts for just one issue, we see enough to know it was an idea that could have worked, as he gets betrothed to the green-skinned Jarella and becomes protector of her equally emerald subjects. Needless to say, such happiness doesn’t last and by the end of the issue he’s back to normal size and normal “intelligence”.

For some reason, all through this cross-over, Roy Thomas keeps doing in-jokes about the original Captain Marvel. In the tale’s first half - The Avengers #88 - he has Iron Man crack a joke about seeing a line of weird statues in an abandoned subway tunnel. In this, two of Jarella’s sorcerers are called Holi and Moli, not to mention the out-and-out reference to Billy Batson he throws in. My knowledge of the original Captain Marvel’s somewhat incomplete but, from what I’ve read of it, the feel of it didn’t seem to tie in at all with the style of these stories, so I can only assume Thomas must just have had some sort of bet going on as to how many references he could cram into one story.

But despite such affectations, it’s a great, if truncated, tale that at last introduces a bit of romance into the Hulk’s life - and a potential love rival to the rarely interesting Betty Ross. I’m not sure I’d have wanted to see more than one consecutive issue set in Jarella’s fairy tale style kingdom. It’s just too far away from the Hulk’s normal milieu but, as a one-off, it works, and highlight of the issue has to be Psyklop’s giant hand smashing through the domed ceiling to reclaim the Hulk, as the locals flee in panic.

My one worry is Bruce Banner takes a little too easily to the idea of being a king, not seeming to question for one second his right to be what’s basically a dictator of a land he’s only just arrived in. You’d think a man used to living in a democracy would have at least some concerns over the political system of Jarella’s land. It is, after all, a place where a man might rise to power through assassination and the accused can be found guilty and sentenced with recourse to neither judge nor a jury.

Then again Bruce Banner was a man who once made a living out of blowing up atom bombs. Maybe social responsibility never was his strong point.