snap judgments

Hey, did you read House of M?

It was an 8 issue comic series back in 2005 that led to the Decimation of the oodles of random mutants that had cropped up over the years in the Marvel Universe.  A population control problem, it cut down all the X-Men to all the ones everyone liked (which… yeah, that’s not true because as long as they appeared in a comic, all mutants are someone’s favorite) and … pretty much took care of the X-Universe exclusively.  The more important thing was that it was Bendis’s first shot at the Big Event Book and, almost as an anniversary gift, Bendis gives us it AGAIN after three years.

HOORAH!

This is, of course, a retelling of that fateful mini through the eyes of Spider-Woman Skrull and Hank Pym Skrull (making me really want to go back and read the HoM: Iron Man mini to see if this all really does fit in or Bendis is just name-checking his own books).  These two were totally going to go kill the Scarlet Witch, but they didn’t.

And that’s $2.99 and 28 pages, folks!  G’NIGHT!

The new issue of Wizard that comes out today promises on the cover to have Bendis reveal all about the Avengers, or at least what sounds like yet another iteration of the team that seems to have at least Cap, Iron Man and Thor in it that’s going to come out of Secret Invasion.  Dear Readers, I may just pick that up, but only in the name of investigation.

Really, he can only go up from here; both Mighty and New Avengers teams haven’t exactly inspired any confidence in me.  it took them just three issues to Disassemble and here we are in issue #5 of Secret Invasion and with all these heroes around only now are we swearing REVENGE and Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are gearing up to jump into the same fight in New York City we;ve seen from several different angles by now.

Annnnyhoo….  Mighty Avengers.  Remember Hank Pym’s a Skrull, right?  Here, we get to see a little bit of his more ‘human’ side to speak as he’s getting cold feet on this whole Invasion business.  Dum Dum Dugan (also a Skrull) sits down with him in a diner in apparently the Middle of Nowhere Forest and tries to talk sense into him.  Pym thinks it’s too dangerous and the variables too big to really launch the Invasion right without some serious resistance, Dugan reminds him who he’s supposed to be playing here, a wife-slapping loser.  Stop breaking character to be smart.

Oh Bendis.  Why won’t you let the slapping thing go?  Why can’t you find another part of Pym’s personality to poke at, perhaps one of the other terrible things you’ve had him do since taking up the character?

Anyhow, Pym ain’t buying it, there’s a really odd sort of face off between he and Dugan and then they decide to take out the defective Pym.  A big fight ensues, starting in the diner and ending in the trees, Pym nearly begging for them to just listen when they shoot him in his big giant head.  He then reverts back to Skrull form and then normal sized, making me unfortunately remember Black Goliath’s funeral.  Thanks, guys.

Dugan orders SHIELD (or at least his trusted men amongst them) to lay down a good cover up, people in the area being upset that the diner’s gone and the nice guy who ran it crushed in the ensuing battle.  Dugan calls up the mothership and orders up another Skrull Pym.  I’m going to say that this Skrull Pym is the one we have currently running around in Avengers: the Initiative.

All you need to know?  Pym can’t even get being an insurgent right.  They can replace people at will.

AND THEY HAVE A PLAN.

Sorry, All You Need to Know: Battlestar Galactica is another post.

It’s sad how much I keep coming back to this.  I keep thinking no one’ll care or it’s been too long or it doesn’t even matter but then I go to work and see that cover with Thor and Hulk pummeling away and think, “What on Earth happened?”

How did Loeb do it?  What is GOING ON with his Hulk book?  Every issue has been page after page of punches with little to no payoff or forward momentum.  It’s Marvel’s version of Particle Man with huge McGuiness muscles.

I’ve tried, don’t get me wrong.  There is simply NO OTHER Hulk book out there and Marvel seems pretty proud of this so what other choice do I have?  Ed McGuiness draws a pretty big Hulk and that’s cool.  The idea of massive battles that bring out the inner 15-year-old boy in all of us is something to behold.  There are good points here, there have to be, it just It took until Comic Con to realize that I’m not the only one as befuddled by the execution of it all.  Here I was, sitting on this side of computer screen thinking i just was having this bad bout of fandignance; it’s not the Hulk I want to read but maybe there’s some crazy person out there totally going nuts every time an issue comes out. Well, people are going crazy, just not for the right reasons.

Hulk #5 encapsulates a lot of things both wrong and right about the series, so let’s take a look at it for a moment and prove a few things right off the bat.

First off, let’s look at what we got here:  Thor vs. the Hulk.  Think on that.  Just let it sink in, on all the massive damage that’s going to go down.  This is should be epic battle in the mighty Marvel manner here, folks.  Before World War Hulk, I would have totally given this fight to Thor but seeing the green goliath at his meanest- wait.  This isn’t the ‘Hulk’ Hulk, this is that red Hulk, the one that punched the Watcher out of nowhere and who we still don’t know the identity of.  He’s just some big red dude who’s pummeled everyone we know and love into paste and seems to be here to.. kill the Hulk.  Or something.  Who knows his motives, his identity, why he’s red or why he just keeps winning, but this is the guy who’s going to fight Thor this issue.

And there’s just something about creating an unstoppable engine of destruction that doesn’t suggest temperance.

Little preamble, the first blow is swung by Thor and we’re given a sort of quick and cocky recap, as if the book really needed it by this point.  If you’re going to be an all out action book, don’t bother selling me on your story, just let me get into who’s gonna kick who’s butt.  Like I said, Thor vs. Hulk sells itself so don’t remind me that ‘Rulky’  (Rooby rooby roo!) is this great mysterious ubermench who we should all be really excited about.

So, BOOM!  Thor punches the red Hulk and unsurprisingly, the red Hulk is relatively unscathed.  He’s gotten a little deeper shading, some atmospheric smoke going on, one panel even shows that his face did cave in like it should have but seems to be healing up in a jiff.  All in all, the result of Mjolnir are nil since the red Hulk proceeds to punch Thor into next week (or at least a nearby observatory), all the while mockingly disdainful of this fight.  Thor pulls himself out of the rubble and has another go at it, not budging the red Hulk an inch.

Okay, now to borrow something from wrestling- I mean, ’sports entertainment’, there’s an element of ‘no-sell’ going on here that’s honestly making something that should be a fantastic battle fall short.  One needs to be sold on a move or a hit (especially when they’re fake!) in order to be engaged in the story that the fighters are telling, just like one needs to be sold on the premise of a movie before you commit to a ticket price.  Here, the red Hulk hits Thor and the move is sold to us by watching Thor fly off into a building and crawl out of rubble.  ‘The red Hulk hits pretty freakin’ hard!’ says our brain and we believe in the strength of a character that can so easily toss a Thunder God.  Mind you, McGuinness draws Thor just wailing on the red Hulk, dynamic shots full of great crackling energy, but the red Hulk doesn’t budge an inch.  The first short is aimed right at his face and his posture doesn’t bend from the impact or brace itself.  He just takes the shot and is seen arms akimbo next panel.  The red Hulk is just not selling Thor’s blows and that makes me wonder if Thor’s a lot weaker than he should be or if the red Hulk is a douche who’s going to be taking a beating in the locker room for making his opponent look bad.

But the red Hulk’s been no-selling for the past five issues, maybe it’s his gimmick?  Maybe the character is really that strong and boy howdy should we think he’s the coolest thing ever?  How cool, you ask?  Well, the book proceeds to alienate a good portion of Marvel die-hards by having the red Hulk ‘jump’ super high above the atmosphere of the planet, taking Thor along by holding on to his hammer.  So, he’s not ‘wielding’ mighty Mjolnir, just pushing it through space I guess as the red Hulk TKOs Thor with his own weapon of destruction.

:Let’s just say that again:  the red Hulk defeats Thor with Mjolnir through his tactical genius and the weightlessness of space.

Pretty epic, huh?  Or… does that kind of stick in your craw?  Are you secretly a little itchingly mad at such a bad portrayal of Thor?  At the poor use of physics?  At the gall of Loeb to sort of cheapen a fight that should have rightfully been of such scale and scope that bards should have spontaneously erupted into song, the IRIS would have had to add a new category of seismic activity to register the blows and mountain ranges changed their altitude in order to cower in the shadows of such a battle.

It’s a terribly nerdy thing to say, but if you’re going to use gravity to get around a magical ward on a weapon, you really have to go all thw way.  If the Hulk hit Thor in space, both of them would go flying back from each other.  Inertia, ladies and gentlemen, and as incredibly nerdtastic it is to bring it up in relation to comics, I have to keep going and point at Loeb as he started it.

So, the red Hulk beats up Thor and leaves him on the surface of the moon.  We then cut to …. aw geeze, A-Bomb dredging up the Hulk (real live Hulk, accept no substitutions) from the bottom of the ocean where I guess he was left last issue and bringing him back to team up with a variety of heavy hitters from the Marvel Universe: She-Hulk, Iron Man, Namor, Ares, the Thing and the Human Torch and oh, what the Hell?  Galactus and Superman.   Why not? I’m sure all these people are going to fight the red Hulk, who may or may not be wielding Mjolnir and a Kryptonite Ring next issue.

Yes, the issue is bad.  Yes, the entire run thus far as been boggling.  But that’s when I realized I had read this all before.  That’s right, back in 2001 Gail Simone paid future tribute to an issue thought at the time far too stupid to be actually written in a form that wasn’t parody.

Last note:  Jeph Loeb himself proudly told panel-goers at Comic Con last month, this storyline is coming to an INCREDIBLE ENDING, one you’ll never suspect!  THEN, the format is going to change on the Hulk so that it’ll have two stories in it each issues, just like Tales to Astonish used to, that will have a RED HULK story and a GREEN HULK story!  That’s right!  Because splitting a superhero into two and labeling them by color worked so well for the Distinguished Competition.

Let’s just hope the three remaining panels will be used for character development.