weapon-h-1-feature Reviews 

“Weapon H” #1

By | March 23rd, 2018
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

When I first heard about the Hulkverine, I wasn’t overly shocked. The concept itself seems inevitable given the history of the two characters. But I’d passed it off for so long as just another Marvel throwaway concept within the pages of “Weapon X”. But now? Now Marvel are giving the creature it’s own comic, fit for his bombastic design and concept. Is this the comic that we never realized we always wanted?

Cover by Leinil Yu & Romulo Fajardo, Jr.

Written by Greg Pak
Illustrated by Cory Smith and Marcus To
Colored by Morry Hollowell
Lettered by VC’s Joe Caramagna

The Weapon X program has done it, at the cost of their own destruction: they’ve completed their biggest and most dangerous experiment yet, a hybrid of Hulk and Wolverine DNA known as WEAPON H. Now, he’s ready to take on the world – and he means business.

One thing I found interesting about this story is that right from the get go it feels like a condensed sum of its parts, but without the dragged-out pacing of a bad Hulk story. You see, Clay, the Hulkverine himself, is a military man who doesn’t spend half of his time moping about balancing his personality with the Hulk. There’s a lot of Clay trying to repress his extreme emotions and seeking solitude, but it’s with a strict execution, with Clay repeating the mantra “Head down” and “Empty your mind” over and over to keep himself in check. This is where the Wolverine aspect comes in, with a personality that’s no frills and sharp, but still sensitive to those in need of help. He forces himself into extreme weather conditions, but still helps a camp of scientists by anonymously leaving them a fresh deer carcass for food. “Weapon H” blends the best parts of each character to create a remix that feels familiar yet somehow new.

What’s also nice about this story is how well Pak has paced it out, holding a reasonable amount of content within the pages. As someone who didn’t read the origin of the Hulkverine back in “Weapon X” myself, I was comfortably able to align myself with the tone and origin of the character. I mean, it’s a pretty straightforward tale involving gene splicing, and Pak understands that, so we get an almost title sequence-like refresher page, telling the story of both Clay and the Hulkverine within four panels to give some background to the already well-developed character we received in the first six pages. From there, we see Hulkverine move to up in the alps, already trying to lose his identity by cutting off his fingerprints, but deciding to move on once again after nearly snapping with people once again. By now, Pak’s established a rhythm: move Clay to a new setting, show an ability of his that reveals another facet of his personality too. It’s fast and comfortable, familiarzing the reader with the protagonist, a robotic adversary and a few accustomed faces by the end of the story.

As great of a remix of both properties this is, there’s a little of a problem with the familiarity of it all. Although I will give credit to the fact that Pak has created a unique protagonist to through into these classic themes and settings, the problems lies in that these are still the same, done-to-death settings in much of the classic “Hulk” and “Wolverine” stories. If you’re new to these characters, this might not be a problem, but chances are that you’ve read a few of each, and Pak ticks the boxes for those comics. Highly-provoked civilian fight? You got it right from the word go. Cold, Alaskan setting? You’ve got that in spades. Luckily there’s a neat backup story featuring Clay’s wife, Sonia Sung, to mix things up – instead of seeing the female interest as morning their monstrous loves, Sonia proactively tries to find him, working against one of the big bosses of the Marvel Universe, Dario Agger. It’s a nice way to break up the overly familiar story beats and adds a solid, capable non-powered female character to the overall story.

Cory Smith’s art style fits right in with the ridiculous nature of the character. There’s an element of cinematic seriousness to his art, but it’s still undercut by subtle cartoony simplicity. It almost has a manga aesthetic to it – look at the first sequence in which Clay first pops his claws, and the panel has a close-up on the Hulkverine’s unsheathed hand amidst some serious speed lines. There’s other great close-up shots like this: when we see ‘Mr. Banks’ has been poisoned by Roxxon and has his face set towards the camera, sweating with almost comedic intensity. It works well with the high-octane pacing and serves to push the story right along.

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Smith’s overall character work reflects the light-toned nature of his overall style, but is honed to a T by executing expressive and sharp reactions to events. I love Clay’s general stoic expression towards events, it goes miles to show his militaristic training and attitude, but Smith will also inject moments of satisfaction whenever he defies his instinct to do something good – help the Roxxon workers, for instance. Then we get to the next level, and see how fiercely Smith renders his monsters. The Hulkverine himself is a formidable page presence. In a way, I find this creature emotionally to be something right between standard Banner Hulk and the Red Hulk, and Smith conveys this by giving him a very humanistic aggression, one that feels powered by the military mind like Red Hulk, but one that also feels like it’s channelling a deeper rage.

Marcus To on the secondary story does some great character work too, albeit amidst some decidedly tame and bland environments. I love how he renders Sonia – immediately, she’s likeable as she expresses herself amongst her kids that seems to emanate the words “I can’t believe my mutated husband left me all this crap to deal with”. But what really shines is To’s depiction of Dario Agger. Throughout the story, we see his shock at being introduced to the Hulkverine, we see his cunning manipulation as he decides to try and get it on his side, and we see his dark determination as he swears to find it first before someone else. All of this is conveyed through To’s subtle expression changes and use of Agger’s glowing red eyes, cementing him as one of the top moustache-twirling baddies around.

Morry Hollowell does a great job on colors, giving a tone of otherworldliness and dream to this whole bombastic book concept. Where Holloway shines best is on the Alaskan sequences. There’s some lovely blue-to-orange gradients at use here to portray the countryside at dusk, and each character has a subtle glow about them that focalises them on the page and conveys the ethereality tone even more. The rest of the book is mostly stock standard, but there’s a scene in the secondary story I love Hollowell’s coloring on. The scene of Agger viewing a large screen of the Hulkverine has a great blue static coloring to it that gives the creature a certain majesty even viewed on screen.

“Weapon H” was a book that took me by surprise. Elevating itself miles above it’s absurd but obvious concept, Pak takes a story that blends the best story beats of either character to make a story that feels like a greatest-hits in a new, weirdly fitting genre. Smith and To do some great character work and visceral action, and Hollowell provides the tone that glues it all together. This was actually pretty good, guys.

Final Score: 7.3 – The Hulkverine is here to stay in “Weapon H” #1, and the book’s creative team make a compelling point for him to do so.


Rowan Grover

Rowan is from Sydney, Australia! Rowan writes about comics and reads the heck out of them, too. Talk to them on Twitter at @rowan_grover. You might just spur an insightful rant on what they're currently reading, but most likely, you'll just be interrupting a heated and intimate eating session.

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