Incredible Hulk #179. The Missing Link returns

(Cover from September 1974.)

"Re-Enter: The Missing Link!"

Written by Len Wein.

Drawn by Herb Trimpe.

Inked by Jack Abel.

Lettering by John Costanza.

Colours by Glynis Wein.

We've seen super-villains reform before but the Missing Link puts a whole new spin on the word, as a character we last saw exploding in mid-air returns, his bits and pieces having literally re-formed into the bright pink caveman we all remember.

But if he survived his fall from on high, our other main player has his own plunge to endure.

Sent back to Earth by the Recorder, in a spaceship that seems to have been produced from nowhere, the Hulk loses patience with being inside it and smashes his way out, leading him to plummet several miles into the Appalachian landscape. When he wakes up, it's Bruce Banner who finds himself taken in by a local family; the Brickfords. That's when he finds out he's not the only stray they've adopted because they have a lodger. They call him Lincoln.

And he's the Missing Link.

But it's a different entity from the one we encountered before. Whereas his former incarnation was full of rage and fury, this one, having been taken in by the Brickfords and shown kindness by them, has mellowed into a pillar of the local community.

Still, as the Hulk could tell him, when you're a radiation-spawned monster, life's rarely simple and, despite befriending him, Bruce Banner soon discovers the Missing Link's giving off radiation levels that're endangering everyone around him.

Of course it all leads to a fight between the Hulk and the creature, that, like the last one, ends with the Missing Link exploding. But this time he reforms instantly and, his radiation output back to safe levels, goes off with his friends, leaving the Hulk once more alone.

This is more like it. After the pretensions of the last few issues, we get back to basics as the Hulk comes up against another big ugly monster. Happily, it's more sophisticated than that as we get to see the former menace recast as a good guy, fighting to save his friends from the deadly peril he believes the Hulk to be, while the Hulk thinks he's saving the town from the Missing Link. With its redefining of a former menace, the contrast between the Hulk's outcast status and his foe's acceptance by the society he's found himself in, and the caveman inadvertently posing a deadly threat to his new-found friends, it's easily the best Hulk tale we've seen for a while and, after recent missteps, it's good to see the strip finally back on track.

On the face of it, it's not the only one back on track because Glenn Talbot's finally back on American soil.

But what does this mean for his long-suffering wife?

And just how does it connect to Colonel Armbruster's digital watch blowing a gasket?

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.