The Immortal Hulk #28
Recap
The Hulk defeated the Army General who has been ruthlessly pursuing his destruction, General Ross’s protégé General Fortean. Fortean, like Ross and Talbot before him, let his obsession with destroying the Hulk get the best of him and turned himself into a new version of the Abomination, but it didn’t save him. Now, with General Fortean dead and his Shadow Base taken over by the Hulk and his band of badasses, the Hulk has resources and a base of operations like he hasn’t had since he was a member of the Pantheon. But these are different times, and the self-actualized good guy Hulk of the Pantheon days is long gone. The current Hulk personality is called “Devil Hulk”. He and Bruce Banner have accepted each other and are in an alliance to pursue a new goal, which is to save the humanity by destroying most of it. In #26, Bruce unwisely broadcast a fireside chat to the world explaining that he was going to break the cycle of the rich and powerful exploiting disasters of their own making, starting with a particular entity, Roxxon Corp. The current CEO of Roxxon Corp is a villain from Jason Aaron’s Thor stories, a powerful half-man, half-bull named Dario Agger, the Minotaur. Just as the Hulk plans to use his new resources to wage his battle, the Minotaur plans to use Roxxon’s media machine to destroy the Hulk.
Review
The Immortal Hulk #28 is a character study issue about a father and daughter. Not what you may have expected, but definitely a compelling story. This father and daughter are both caught up in the current politicized zeitgeist and have turned against each other completely. The father works as a security guard for Roxxon, and the daughter is getting involved with protesting groups. Neither side is presented here as being in the right or as having moral high ground. What is presented here is a much deeper idea; that the politicization here IS the villain, and that it presents “causes” that people feel naturally compelled to take up with zeal, inevitably turning them against one another.
The main focus of the story is the father, as we watch him go to work and hear his internal monologue. He sees himself as part of a generation that created a safe world of convenience, full of free media technology for the next generation. He is dismayed and threatened by how, as he sees it, all of that media has turned the younger generation against their own society. There are frequent flashbacks to he and his daughter in happier times, when she was young and thought the world of him. Now, of course, her protesting activities bring her into direct conflict with his job. It’s a deeply sad story. We’re not really presented with the daughter’s perspective, and in that way it reads more like a short fiction horror story.
Of course, this is the Immortal Hulk, not This Is Us. Of course the Hulk shows up, just in time as it turns out, and the story ends on a dark note even as he saves the day. The full page shot of the Hulk’s arrival by Tom Reilly really captures his formidable menace.
The 2nd plot of this issue involves Dario Agger, the aforementioned Minotaur, roaming his corporate tower and plotting offensives and counter-offensives against the Hulk. Interestingly, one of his strategies is to participate in the marketing of the Hulk-inspired protesters, who don’t know that they are buying their Hulk masks from the same corporation they are protesting.
(Interesting note about the protester’s masks shown on the cover and in the issue, they are replicas of the real mask from the Ben Cooper Halloween Costume from 1977).
The epilogue to the issue shows the Minotaur visiting Monster Island to recruit Xemnu for his offensive against the Hulk. More on this scene in my review of 29-31.
Final Thoughts
Marvel takes a lot of criticism for injecting politics into its content, so devoting an issue to the current context of protestors vs. armed law enforcement is risky. The story is well told though and makes a valuable point about getting radicalized and thinking it’s normal, then finding yourself either firing a gun at your own children or watching your dad get beaten while you stand there and watch. Ultimately, the best stories make a comment about human nature and the times in which they are written, and we should keep in mind that talented writers like Al Ewing aren’t going to put out nonsense stories when they can try to say something more important.
That said, in a book with so many important plotlines going on, these kinds of character pieces/breaks in the action aren’t my favorite. The cover alone, beautiful Alex Ross piece that it was, just screamed “pass”, for me, but I’m glad I picked it up. This one redeems itself by being so dark and well written.
The Immortal Hulk #28: A Sad and Modern Tale
- Writing - 8/108/10
- Storyline - 7/107/10
- Art - 8/108/10
- Color - 10/1010/10
- Cover Art - 10/1010/10