This might just be my favorite Hulk comic. Not without good reason. Everything about this issue is flawless. The pacing of the story is amazing. Everything flows along perfectly. Every movement and action in the issue has purpose and meaning. There are no cackhanded attempts at shoehorning plot elements in. Betty Ross' story is removed from the main action in a 1 page interlude. The central narrative is very simple - the near mindless Hulk is drawn by some subconscious impulse to return to New Mexico, his birthplace, of sorts. Doc Samson follows him and Hulk dukes it out with hallucinations of his main antagonists, all depicted in the amazing cover above. While the Hulk is distracted with these figments of his tortured subconscious the good Doctor Samson scores that elusive KO victory over the behemoth in one of the greatest and most remembered splash pages of the 1980's. This really is an example of John Byrne flexing his artistic muscles as large over sized panels and splashes dominate the issue. Byrne once claimed that he could not depict a punch possessed off the same power that Jack Kirby could but the punch Samson lands at the end of this issue is awesome. Banner's subconscious still exists as is clear from the manifestations of all of Hulk's main antagonists. This was Banner's attempt to distract the Hulk so Samson could defeat him. Samson cottons on to this on the last page as relates the events of the encounter into a Dictaphone. It is this ingenuity on the part of Byrne that grounds a fanciful plot in a semblance of reality. I'm not a huge Hulk fan, I like the character but in the last decade I've moved away from him. This is one special issue that I always remember as being one of the best Hulk stories ever. It is sad that Byrne's run had to be aborted due to editorial differences,that in itself is one of the greatest 'what-if' stories Marvel has ever seen.
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| That punch!! |
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