It’s a busy time for the Hulk. Not only is his movie at the top of the box office charts, smashing up the Happening, but he’s getting a lot of play for a character who currently only has a supporting role in his own book. A shitty book, but at least he has connections elsewhere. Incredible Hercules, co-starring Hulk’s little buddy Amadeus Cho, is one of Marvel’s best books right now. Skaar: Son of Hulk just started up and last week gave us a one-shot by Jeff Parker about futuristic warrior feminist Thundra going back in time to scrape some DNA off Hulk and make a green futuristic warrior feminist daughter. Then you have Wolverine, where we see that 50 years in the future, Hulk’s inbred grandchildren rule California with an iron fist. Whatever that’s all about.

Hulk is becoming like the gamma irradiated Wilt Chamberlain of Marvel.

A few weeks ago at work, we got a bunch of Hulk books for kids to tie in with the new movie. Junior novelizations, picture books, coloring books and so on. One thing we got was an activity book that came with a tiny little Hulk figure, held onto the cover with a plastic shell. The figure is supposed to be tossed into water, where it will expand into six times its original size.

Being that some (most) children are little bastards, one of the copies of that activity book got trashed. The plastic covering got torn off and it became unsellable. I pulled that copy of the book to be sent back to the publisher, but decided to at least put that Hulk figure to good use. I called over my manager and we got a cup of water, filled it up and dropped the Hulk in there, ready for the mild thrill of watching it grow like one of Rita’s creations.

…nothing happened.

Going back to the book, we found that we needed to wait up to ten days for it to grow. Christ, what’s the freaking point? If I felt like waiting over a week for some pointless green thing to grow, I’d buy a Chia Pet.

Could you imagine how lame Hulk would be if Banner had to wait ten days to transform, like some kind of superhero Brady Law? “Sorry, Tony. I’d love to help you and the guys fight Kang the Conquerer, but I have three more days of making myself angry before I can be any help. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Small Wonder marathon I need to get back to.”

Enough days have passed and the Hulk has indeed grown quite a bit. Although he may be bigger and stronger, Hulk has certainly seen better days.

HULK IS NOT ANIMAL!

You ever read Marvel Ruins where instead of becoming a green-skin giant, the gamma bomb turned Bruce Banner into a mountain of tumors? If you haven’t, don’t. The comic sucks. But I can’t shake the memory from looking at this thing. Maybe his bicep isn’t angry enough.

Those black lines are supposed to be ridges in his forehead, but I can’t help but think of them as cartoony eyes. Like something Kirby would have. In fact, it reminds me of Roast Beef from Achewood.

Poor, poor SpongeHulk Tornpants. Maybe he can get a job working for Dr. Frankenstein or move into a bell tower.

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Posted in comic books by Gavok |