“Immortal Hulk” #6

The Hulk’s recent actions have drawn unwanted attention to him, and his return from the grave is no longer a secret. This review contains spoilers.

Written by Al Ewing
Illustrated by Lee Garbett
Colored by Paul Mounts
Lettered by VC’s Cory Petit

Bruce Banner is alive — and everyone knows it. Now he’s hunted by the government, Alpha Flight, the mysterious Shadow Base…and the Avengers. And someone’s going to find him first. But Bruce has bigger problems. Something terrible has infected him. Something with unspeakable plans for humanity. And the only one who knows about it…is the IMMORTAL HULK.

When Marvel announced the launch of “The Immortal Hulk”, much was made of how the new title will bring the feel of a classic horror comic to the jade giant. We were told that Bruce Banner will wander the country while the world at large thinks he’s still dead. He’ll battle his dark side, and try to channel it into something positive. It will be a new take on the classic character.

So, here we are at issue #6. The Avengers are attempting to bring the Hulk in at the direction of the United State Government. Will we see a new twist on a very old story or a regression to the mean?

Bruce Banner is afraid of the Hulk. Afraid enough to stay awake for two days straight to fend him off. We join him in a hotel somewhere in Minnesota. It’s the best scene of the issue, not least of which because neither Banner nor the Hulk is in much of the rest of the book.

Banner brings us up to date, and guest artist Lee Garbett makes me wonder why he’s not the regular artist on “Immortal Hulk.” He brings Al Ewing’s metaphor of the Hulk “banging on the mirror” to life with a large wardrobe in Banner’s hotel room. The Hulk bashes against the mirrored doors, pounding on a crack in the glass while Banner muses. Banner sits on the edge of the bed sipping coffee and looking half dead from exhaustion. The Hulk is trapped behind the wardrobe mirror, one arm poised to smash the glass. The perspective puts us in the corner of the tiny room. We’re caught in there with the two of them.

But we leave the new, different, “Immortal Hulk,” and move to another setting. We don’t just leave the character behind; we leave the book we’ve been reading for the past few months and return to the rest of the Marvel Universe. An old character reemerges. A character that isn’t compatible with the “Banner wanders the country alone” plot. I’m a little worried, to be honest.

From there to a new incarnation of a Hulkbuster base, of sorts, and Garbett gets another chance to show off. While the plot seems to swing in the direction of a conventional superhero comic, the visuals stay in the horror camp. We arrive at Shadow Base with a double splash of people with grotesque implants. They hang upside down from the ceiling of an underwater base. We’re looking down at them from an odd angle. Thick data cables obscure our view and attach to the backs of cyborg monitor’s heads. The monitors face an array of screens but can’t see them, because their eyes have been replaced by connections to even more cables.

We learn that these “Monitors” serve an old enemy of the Hulk’s, a man whose attitude toward his staff and his quarry fit well into a horror-themed comic. A second splash shows us what he’s working on, and the scene is just as frightening as the first, but more subtly. At the end of issue #2, we saw Hazmat-suited people take Delbert Frye the grave the put him in. Now we know where he is. The icing on the cake, though, is two people working at computers in the background. They’re perched on exercise-ball chairs, next to a snack machine.

Paul Mounts’ coloring sticks with the horror oeuvre, too. The hotel room in Minnesota is dusky and dingy, with walls that may have been off-white once, but are streaked with dirt and dust now. The ceiling of the “monitor room” has deep shadows that accentuate the electrodes sparking in the cyborg monitor’s spines. Frye’s glass cylinder gives off a bright green glow, the only clear source of light in the Shadow Base.

The encounter with the Avengers is where the art team shines. The Avengers appear behind Captain Marvel, but the team is in dramatic, dark shadows. Garbett resists the urge to draw a typical group shot, and Mounts keeps the colors dark and low-key, like the rest of the book.

It was inevitable that the government discover Banner’s return, and it’s too much to ask that he wander the country like the TV show. The frequent comparison to the classic show has a significant flaw anyway: Bixby’s Banner had a mission to find a cure. Today’s Banner has given up any hope of being rid of the Hulk.

But it wasn’t inevitable that he collide with the Avengers in the sixth issue. The confrontation with Langowski resulted in the arrival of a fascinating villain, but it also led to ground that is very well tread. “I need you to come with us,” Danvers says. Is it a temporary distraction from a great horror story? Is this the horror story? Or is it all we’re going to get?

Final Verdict: 8.0 – “Immortal Hulk” #6’s guest artist is an unexpected treat and makes the book worth a read regardless of how you feel about the latest developments.