Comic Book Review: The Immortal Hulk · 8:05pm Sep 6th, 2021
As before, this was originally written and posted on DeviantArt. Anyone interested in reading this in its original form may do so through the link provided here.
Of all the characters in the Marvel Universe, perhaps none has gone through more changes and reiterations than the Incredible Hulk.
He has been, throughout the years since his first appearance, a cunning anti-hero, an outright villain and menace to the superhero community, a childish giant, a gladiator in another dimension, a mindless brute, a Vegas legbreaker with a love of fancy suits, a professor, a gladiator-turned-king of an alien world, a fugitive, an agent of SHIELD, and most recently... dead.
Yes, dead. Bruce Banner died a while back, as part of a plan to try and kill the Hulk permanently. And then he came back to life, before dying again.
And again.
Until finally, he came back permanently. And with that most recent resurrection came something of a realization for Bruce, about why he kept coming back to life.
Because, no matter what... The Hulk cannot die.
And so, Bruce Banner wanders the country, trying to lay low. And if something bad happens to him, like he gets shot... well, he dies. But when the night falls... the Hulk will rise. Immortal, and stronger and smarter, more ruthless than ever.
No more "Hulk smash" or "Leave Hulk alone." This is the Hulk as you've never quite known him before... as a legitimate horror character.
Written by Al Ewing and drawn by Joe Bennett, The Immortal Hulk is a book that right from the outset pulls no punches. Look no further than the very first issue for proof of this, as the comic's story begins with Bruce Banner traveling the country as a drifter, trying to lie low from day to day, in many ways evocative of the classic TV show from the 70s... except that when Bruce stops at a gas station, the place is robbed, and the desperate and anxious gunman accidentally shoots and kills a twelve-year-old girl in the midst of the robbery, and to cover his tracks shoots Bruce and the clerk as well. The police, in the aftermath of this horrible tragedy, collect the bodies and try to deal with the matter, all while a young reporter (named Jackie McGee) tries to get some of the facts of the case straight...
And then, night falls. And the body of Bruce Banner, still in the morgue, begins to turn green...
Cut to the hideout of the criminals who the gas station robber is in debt to. The gang of crooks collect the robber's takings, having some fun mocking him for his crimes... before suddenly, the place comes under attack, from something big, something monstrous, something that the reader does not see... until finally, the robber is the last man standing, and then he is met by the Hulk - looming over him, staring at him coldly. And then the Hulk smiles at him, and talks: intelligently and articulately, as he gives the name of the girl who was shot in the robbery, and he mocks the robber, asking him if he fantasized about using the gun, about shooting someone with it.
The robber begs for mercy, promising that he'll surrender himself to the police, pleading that he didn't mean to kill anyone, protesting that he's not a bad guy. "Am I?" he finally asks feebly, utterly cornered.
And then the Hulk looks down at him, and smiles sadistically at him, as he reaches towards him and asks:
"What do you think?"
We pick up in the hospital later, where it is revealed that the Hulk did not kill anyone in his rampage that night... but the man who robbed the gas station and shot the little girl, is in a coma and unresponsive. Nearly every bone in his body broken or crushed, it's doubtful that he'll ever wake up again. The issue ends with Bruce Banner, alive once more, hiding out in a cheap hotel room somewhere, as he looks in the mirror and wonders if he's a bad person. "What do you think?" he asks his reflection - and we see the Hulk in the mirror, giving him that sadistic smile...
All of that, in the very first issue. As I said before, this is the Hulk as you have never quite known him before. He's been monstrous before, of course, in different ways, depending on the writer. But Al Ewing and Joe Bennett take the character, his history, and entire mythos, and put it under the lens of a horror story. What type of horror story, you may ask? A whole lot of them. The Immortal Hulk is all of the following:
Superhero horror - the darker narrative takes a more deconstructionist approach to the typical Hulk story. A shining example of this would be in Issue Six, when the Hulk battles the Avengers. What would normally be a typical slam-bang action scene becomes a harrowing, tense and frightening sequence wherein a town is laid to waste and the Avengers only manage to claim victory by the very skin of their teeth. And besides this... a major core of the series is about the idea of death in a comic book. Or rather, the often impermanent nature of death in a world like the Marvel Universe. Ever wonder why some characters keep coming back from the dead? Immortal Hulk has one answer for that, and it's a scary one. 
Psychological horror - as time goes on, the full implications of Bruce Banner's mental state, and the incredible power he has at his disposal, are discussed, and the answers are never pleasant. Al Ewing takes ideas from Peter David's run (and Bill Mantlo's from before him) and carefully, skillfully builds upon them to paint a picture of the mental state of a man who's lived the horrible life that Bruce Banner has, and the nature of what the Hulk in all his various incarnations mean as an extension of Banner himself, and the possible conclusions one may draw from it are quite chilling.
Supernatural horror - Yes, supernatural horror too. For a character whose origin lies in the heart of the Atomic Age and the Cold War, the nature of the Hulk is something that has often veered into the paranormal. After all, for a character whose power comes from gamma rays, there's been some pretty mystical stuff in relation to the Hulk and his powers. Consider for example the way that most gamma mutates in Marvel tend to embody aspects of their psychological nature. The Immortal Hulk dives into this on a grand scale, along with the nature of comic book death as I mentioned previously, taking it all to a unique and eerie new level. There's a reason, which is all I shall say for now, that the third volume of the series is titled "Hulk in Hell"...
Cosmic horror - As the series goes on and dives deeper and deeper into the supernatural side of the Hulk and aspects of the Marvel Universe, it gradually builds up to a grander scale of horror in its scope. A recurring image throughout the series, and a driving part of the plot about resurrections and death, is "a green door," and what lies on the other side of it. What *is* on the other side of that door is a major part of the overarching story, and is perhaps one of the scariest aspects of the entire series in several ways too!
And finally, as if all of that weren't enough for you, body horror. Enough of it to make David Cronenberg weep with jealousy. Al Ewing has apparently cited John Carpenter's The Thing as a major influence on parts of his story, and I can definitely see that. The transformations in this comic (be they Bruce-to-Hulk, vice-versa, or with any other gamma character) are NOT pretty to look at, and add an extra dimension of creepiness to the darker horror-based tone of the comic. Admittedly, it does make a certain sense. Who *would* think that a man turning into a big green monster would be a pretty sight, hmm? Joe Bennett's artwork does a masterful job of depicting the freaky side of the Hulk, especially as the book goes on and the artist gets to depict a variety of new and horrific ways for the Hulk's transformations to be portrayed. Perhaps the ultimate example of this would come from volume four, appropriately titled "Abomination". (And as for that story's take on the Hulk villain by the same name? Mother of God…)
Al Ewing is a writer whose work I had next to no prior knowledge of, but with this series, I have to applaud the man for his work. He has taken one of the longest-running characters in the Marvel stable, a character who has been reinvented countless times and yet also retread familiar ground as often too, and made something truly unique, thought-provoking, and startling. He has shown a brilliant knack for characterization, especially in his work with the titular character. This is a Hulk who is a lot of things: he's cruel, clearly enjoying the pain he inflicts on those who draw his wrath. But he's also cunning, and with a certain dark wit to him too. And ultimately, there's his attitude towards Banner himself - and most tellingly, towards the iconic "Green Hulk" most people would be so familiar with. "The Immortal Hulk" is not a good guy in the least. And he doesn't care about being one at all. But he *does* care for Bruce, in his own strange way, and Ewing does a great job with that, for which I must compliment him. To say nothing of the man's work with many of the other characters in the book; even bit characters like the unfortunate robber from the first issue, or a bartender from another early story, can feel distinct and memorable in the time that they get in the pages of this comic!
I previously mentioned Joe Bennet and I would like to sing my praises of his artwork again. The man has talent and is able to bring it to the fore in this series; not just in crafting scenes of transformation horror, but also in a lot of other ways. Bennett's art skillfully builds atmosphere and tension, and does so in a way that very effectively complements Ewing's script. Again, this darker take on the Marvel Universe is a surprising one, and it's done full service by Joe Bennett's moody, stylish sensibility.
And on a bonus note, each issue is also well worth checking out, if only for the spectacular covers done by the legendary Alex Ross! 
To conclude, I have been blown away, time and again, by The Immortal Hulk. It is one of the best recent ongoing series I've read in recent memory, and definitely one of THE best things to have ever come out of Marvel in the past few years. This is a comic book that - while it most certainly won't be to everyone's taste - is willing to go to truly impressive and mind-blowing places, and do so with the skill and assurance that makes it, almost without question, a masterpiece of the comic book genre. I can only imagine as to where Al Ewing will take this book next, and I can't wait to find out.
And just a heads up. Al is next gonna take on VENOM after this. Sadly though he no longer is working with Joe Bennet as he has proven himself to be, sadly, a truly racist and terrible person that tries his best to hide it under the veneer of being just an artist.
Edit: I mean Joe. Not Al I mean. Al is SUPER supportive and forward thinking.
5578654
Yeah, I've heard... things, about Joe Bennett. Disappointing news for sure.
But good to know that Al Ewing will be taking his work to Venom next. I can only speculate as to what he might bring to *that* book after his run on the Hulk...
5578664
Him and a guy called Ram V are gonna be CO-WRITING the book. Ram V is tackling a.... certain character after revelations in the Donny Cates run while Al Ewing is tackling Eddie himself!
5578664
OH AND look up the tie-in comic Gamma Force! It brings back an old Foe in a rather epic and interesting way!
Considering what the Green Door is, and what that means for the source of Hulk's power, or, what gave him life initially, at least, that leaves absolutely terrifying implications for a lot of places. Especially places where things went wrong.
5578855
Agreed, absolutely. This is a book that offers a very, very scary idea of what the Hulk is and what it could very well mean for the Marvel Universe as a whole.
5579029
I didn't mean so much the Hulk as much as I did where you usually find gamma rays.
5579037
That's fair. I'm sorry, I didn't quite parse what you were getting at.
I read "places where things went wrong" and my brain partially jumped to the memory of beings like the Maestro, for one.
5579039
All good. Granted, the beings that have come about as a result of gamma rays raise some frightening implications already, but even regular nuclear disasters, which are already places you don't want to be, are now even worse.
5579040
Aye, that's very much true. We've already talked about stuff like Fallout, Metro, and others... though they're just fiction. The idea of places like Chernobyl, Hiroshima, Three Mile Island, having that kind of association or connection to them...
5579041
If that stays canon, I think a lot of governments are going to be going to the various super geniuses of Marvel with this information and saying "We need alternatives, stat."
Ideally beings like Reed Richards and Tony Stark. Because if you go to Doctor Doom, I wouldn't put it past him to find a way to fuck them over as a 'screw you' to Reed.
5579044
Agreed.
Shoot, I think I read about the new Dr. Doom series. He had a golden opportunity to fix global warming (by fixing one of Reed's devices, no less) and prove himself the far "greater" hero than Richards... and of course his ego made him obsess over Reed again (all over a freaking "good luck" call no less!) and he causes it to blow up all over again.
Even when the perfect moment was handed right to him, Victor von Doom can't help but screw it up.
5579047
Wow. And I thought Luthor was bad.
5579048
It gets worse. Doom found out that there was another universe where he did NOT become Reed Richards' mortal enemy, and indeed, that universe's Victor von Doom became one of the greatest men, scientists, and leaders of that particular universe. A man who made a borderline utopia out of his Earth.
This pisses off "our" Victor so much, that when the other Victor tries to talk him into letting go of his grudge with Richards - and suggests that he and Reed could actually be friends - Doom destroys that whole utopic universe with the Ultimate Nullifier.
5579050
Pretty sure even Luthor isn't that bad. Then again, seeing as he once cured his sister's terminal illness just like that, and then promptly reinjected it purely because he could...
5579051
I'd say it partly comes down to the Lex. With modern/post-Crisis Lex, it really is kind of a toss-up between whether or not him and Doom are the bigger bastard; they both have plenty of atrocities to their name. Pre-Crisis Lex, while an unrepentant villain with serious aspirations of global domination, *could* have moments of conscience or humanity. DCAU Lex, while also very bastardly in his pettiness, would probably balk at Doom's actions there, if only at least in part on some kind of pragmatic level.
Honestly, between the two, I'd probably say that Doom's the worse. I know about "Unthinkable." Even Lex Luthor might very well draw the line at something like flaying an old love to make her skin into magic armor, or trading a literal child to Hell in exchange for demonic power.
5579052
Yeah, pretty sure even Lex would draw the line at that. Even if he rationalizes it as his refusal to resort to magic.
5579054
Agreed. There's a few ways that he might rationalize it - dislike of magic, needlessly messy, too much risk of the deal getting reversed on him Faust-style - but Lex would probably call it at that.
There's a good moment from that Lex Luthor comic I love, "The Black Ring," where two issues involve Lex versus Vandal Savage, as well as a third party, The Secret Six. The Six are led by Vandal's daughter, and at one point Vandal reminisces a little about the occasion of her conception. He and his forces ravaged a village in Brazil, Vandal "availed himself" of the women, before having many of the people slaughtered, and when a daughter was born to one of the women, he found something about her that made him decide to keep her and train as an assassin in his service. Fun fact, one time in the daughter's training, Vandal had her mother executed just because the child got struck when running a gauntlet of assailants
Lex flipping Luthor is practically at a loss for words at this. He actually says something to the effect of, "Wow. You really are a monster, aren't you?"
5579057
Luthor is primarily a scientist and a businessman. And at the end of the day, he's mortal. He has to exercise a certain degree of pragmatism. Whether you want to argue that it's because if he goes too far off the deep end, Superman might kill him, because he's a 21st century man, whatever the case, there are lines that he refuses to cross. Availing oneself to others without their consent is probably one of the few things him and Superman agree is so far beyond Not OK.
5579058
Definitely agree on that. It'd actually make a very interesting alliance in its own regard, Luthor and Superman versus Vandal Savage.
...Really, Luthor and Savage - while kind of similar just in the sense that they're both diabolical geniuses, leaders and villains who can threaten the entire world - are kind of opposites to each other. Luthor is, as you've said, a man of science and of the future. He's also, at the end of the day, a mortal man. Savage is, ultimately, a primitive man at the core of his immortality. A cannibal, a murderer par excellence, and a rapist too. He can definitely put up the front of a genteel sophisticate, but he's still ready and able to do things like eat a henchman for dinner.
5579064
No matter how much he may change and 'evolve', at the end of the day, part of him will always be a man who never moved on from an era of kill-or-be-killed.
5579065
Nicely summarized.
5579093
I'm now picturing Lex handing Superman a list of all the things Vandal's done that crosses lines even he wouldn't.
Superman says nothing as he reads it, but he goes very still. For a moment, it's very easy to remember that as human as he looks, he very much isn't.
"Why would you give me this?" he asks, very calmly, and without the warmth you usually hear in his voice.
"Simple. Much as I despise you, I currently want Vandal gone more than I do you. If he's willing to go this far, between his lack of morals and his immortality, he's become a liability. Or if you insist on seeing me as the villain, let me put it like this. He's outlived his usefulness. I don't know if you can kill him, even if you tried, but I know he's not the first immortal you've dealt with. Deal with him."
5579095
I love that idea, and I can so hear Lex saying that.
5579098
Lex may hate Superman, but he's not an idiot. He's plenty capable of pragmatism. Which is why he invites Joker to teamups. At worst, he'll be uncooperative. If he's not invited, he'll likely want to make the teamup crash and burn purely because he wasn't invited. Which is very Faelike of him.
5579099
Agreed. Lex knows it's better to have the Joker along than risk invoking his wrath. Usually. In the more recent JL comics by Scott Snyder, Lex breaks the one term that Joker wanted for his joining the Legion of Doom - Joker retaliated by sabotaging the Legion's effort to expand its membership and trying to kill Lex, before telling Luthor that he'd be waiting to laugh in his face when Luthor's grand plan would ultimately fall apart on him. So yeah, don't take the clown lightly.
5579100
My point exactly. Lex is smart enough to know when the benefits he may gain of having, again for example, Vandal Savage, around are outweighed by the losses. So, he's going to cut his losses. You don't get absurdly rich with poor business sense. And you certainly don't stay rich with poor business sense.
5579102
Indeed. It may take a while in some cases, but yeah, ultimately bad decisions do come back home to roost.
5579105
Usually when his pride/hatred of Superman are needled. I'd argue that's what infuriates him the most. He knows that his hatred is, to some extent, irrational. But he still hates him to the point where he's sabotaged his own successes if it meant a short term "screw you" to the Last Son of Krypton
5579106
Yep, that's Lex all right. At his worst he's screwed himself over just because of his need to spite Superman, in spite of all other logic. (See the finish of "The Black Ring" for one of the most stellar examples of that right there.)
Moarte actually reviewed the first issue of this. It's interesting to see the Hulk be sort of a horror movie monster again. He's, I wouldn't say EVIL, but he's very capable of malice.
5593231
Yeah, I saw that the first issue was featured on Longbox of the Damned. It made me very happy to see Moarte cover that book.
I agree. This Hulk is clearly capable of some truly impressive malice, but at the same time, I'd not call him "evil".
5593233
That's because Hulk ISN'T evil. He's trauma, he's anger, he's the little Bruce Banner that wanted to lash out at the world but couldn't and now he finally CAN, but he's not deliberately going out of his way to hurt people who have done nothing.
5593238
Nicely said.
I remember sharing this comic review, I first posted it on DeviantArt. One person there commented that it sounded like the Hulk had become "pure evil," and I was pretty quick to tell them that such a conclusion was oversimplifying the matter. This Hulk might be ruthless, and outright sadistic towards those who hurt Banner or innocents, but he does care about Bruce, in his own, Hulk-ish way.
5593243
Hulk and Bruce Banner share an existence. One cannot exist without the other. So yeah, even if it's purely out of self preservation, Hulk wants Banner alive.
5593244
That's one way to put it, yeah.
There's an interesting moment in one of the early volumes, I forget which one, where this Hulk basically outright tells Banner that, in his own gruff way, he loves him (platonically) and will protect him. "Because someone has to."
5593245
That's, oddly heartwarming of him. And very human.