How much can one Hulk be hated?
May. 18th, 2011 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_dailyIn terms of the Red Hulk, you've no doubt already figured out the answer.
Parker's Hulk run certainly has, its Scorched Earth arc having Rulk take it on the chin from Iron Man, Thor, and Namor. It's also realized that if you want to make a character viable beyond the events of his creation (despite Incredible's upcoming conclusion, Hulk promises to be predominantly "all red" for a while yet.. Rulk and Red She-Hulk? Definitely a familial connection..), you've got to draw him away from it.
To that end, it's been cranking out all-new antagonists since March, four deathly deadly terrors with their own reasons to see Rulk dead: the living weapon Omegex, the vengeful soldier Fortean, the creative mastermind Zero/One, and the haunting Hyderabadian spectre known as the Black Fog.
It's wrapped up those acts of creation with this month's #33, to take Rulk off to space; if future solicits are any indication, it won't be coming back to them for a few months at the least. Still, Parker's done a nice job dropping a few new toys into the box, and I'm eagerly anticipating his picking them up again.
(A note: These're pages from Hulk #30.1-33, none of which exceed the 7/21 split; only 4 from this week's #33 are below, for those who need to know that sort of thing.)
Certainly, they're not the most original of antagonistic concepts; take Omegex, shown in #28-29 to be a last-resort superweapon constantly recreating itself, locking in on the first living thing it sees and setting out to genocide its species.
Parker's playing it exactly how you'd expect, bringing the species destroyer to bear on the Earth (and Rulk in particular). He's added a little spice to the mix, however, by making Uatu responsible for its picking up Rulk's scent.
First, he's indirectly amended "Rulk punches our Watcher" (well, #26's "You're being sucked into a black hole, and I can only watch for I am THE WATCHER!" did that as well), and second he's added an interesting little meta-wrinkle by making this latest threat the indirect fault of Mister "I am sworn not to interfere".
It's that same entertaining, if not wholly novel creativity he brought to #30.1 (a Point One issue that really did its job, I think) and its introduction of Fortean.
We open on Rulk leaping through Colorado on his way back to his probationary Gamma Base, when a few missiles come roaring out of the sky, KRAKBAMMing and BAWHOOMing him right around Aspen.
More pissed than anything, he zeroes in on his aerial attacker, only to discover that it's apparently "the air command center I commissioned!"
Is it?
"Sir" is Fortean himself, a military man created to be Rulk's own.. Ross.
He's his own man, though, willing to directly confront our protagonist with the best military budgets'll let him have:
And his rationale for Hulk-hunting is much more personal, he continues: " Like you really didn't kill the man I used to serve for years. General Thunderbolt Ross. "
He issues a challenge to Rulk- be at the Salt Flats base at 0900, or the hunt'll just increase in intensity- and boots him off his Thunderbolt, leaving Ross to flashback in freefall:
(It's a workable enough retcon, dropping this guy into Ross's life.. I'd wondered if they could've just used another Talbot LMD instead, but that'd probably be a bit much.)
Making his way back to the safety of Gamma Base, he and its LMD staff work out where Fortean's coming from; after his publicized death, Fortean was promoted to fill the void.
However, when he lobbied for a military response against the Red Hulk, he was shot down because no one wanted to sanction "another Ahab":
(Love his throwing in anti-mutant sentiment; either he's playing to an audience, or he shares a casual quality with a decent chunk of 616's Earth.)
Fortean's fueled all that into heavy-duty armament, to be brought to bear on Rulk; why confront him, one LMD opines?
"He deserves his fight" says Ross, making for a much different acknowledgement of the ties between hunter and prey than Bruce ever had.
(Of course, the tie itself is very different..)
And what a fight it is, Fortean bringing out the sci-fi armory that seems to define all he'll be throwing at Rulk:
Ross proves harder than that to bring down, of course; he fights back, with words and fists:
What follows isn't a pedestal-shattering and derangement on Fortean's part, despite that face.
Instead, exposition that Rulk knocked out his audio.. but didn't one particular little weapon, planted by that funky little purple gunk and activated vocally.
Not a weapon that kills, but one that inhibits instead:
(Love his exit, and that last panel.. and the idea of jetpacking out of a mech bound to the ground, too.)
So exit Fortean from the foreground, having dealt Rulk his new status quo. He'll play Ahab, and looks set to keep playing, but a much calmer one; when he looses his newest toy in #31 (units that created humanoid armor from their natural environment), he's calm enough to check for non-Hulk life signs in the area first.
But his cool toys aren't what's important about that issue; instead Zero/One, another one out for Rulk's blood.
(I love this common thread of fervent intent on the destroyers' parts; if you're to try and kill a Hulk, you've really got to be an obsessive.)
And her soon-to-be henchman, remembering her and his origin:
You'll remember Hulk #26, and Scorched Earth's attack on Omnisapient (Parker's own addition to the MU's many shady corporations; it's where the Ghost used to work, as his Thunderbolts origin told us), and the scientist Rulk 'saved'?
Turns out, Ross's characteristic directness let MODOK's little attack vector play havoc with her.
So while he and one of his LMD friends (who do not, it turns out, register on stuff designed to detect life signs) deal with Fortean's rockmen, the burned man gets a visitor:
Who reveals herself in an expository, oratory full-page:
And displays the breadth of her talents (comparisons to Angie Spica become apt about.. now):
(I know it's wrong to wonder, but d'you think her psuedo-bindi doubles as a laser? I know I'd do that..)
Jacob's taken off to her base, an Omnisapient lab out at sea (I have the feeling AIM was watching them like a hawk) she's repurposed; she tells him she's decided to keep at super-science, to become a sort of engine of thought.
(The images are all her, by the way; it's a nice distinct little quirk, isn't it?)
So Zero/One's agenda is, like Fortean's, rooted in Rulk's destruction of someone.
But she welcomed it, it turns out; she's only out for her destroyer because he might well come after more of her creations. And note her being "a creator", and intending to make another proxy, despite her promo appearance having her draw on the Hulk; it's an approach you could definitely get some mileage out of, down the road.
(At the very least, she's got the makings of a big-thinking mad science lady.. and hey, we all like Superia and Monica Rappacini, don't we?)
Speaking of Fortean, he makes a remote appearance via the stuff of his improvised soldiers, to needle Rulk:
(Body armor with your stars down the center? Makes a kind of sense..)
Attacking his enemy both cerebrally and physically, and committing to sparing those who are not Rulk? He's expressing his vendetta in some rather interesting ways, ones I hope he maintains in future.
#32 certainly gives to him voicing of more conventional expressions, but again in the background; while Rulk keeps on the run, Zero/One and Jacob stay on the rise.
They're off to that country she showed him (check yer maps) in pursuit of her new proxy.
Most of their scenes are narrated from his journal, making of him her chronicler, but he has his own feelings too:
(Pinstripe suit man has a rigidity about him that suggests something's up his ass.)
Not that he's completely consumed by them, refreshingly; his core motivation seems to be, instead, to check his boss's growing reliance on proof-based logic:
(Really, to check his boss as a whole; there's something you could do with a henchman who does that.)
And so the last of our Fanatic Four is made manifest, putting paid to theories that Jake there would be turned into the Black Fog.
(Still, it's nice that we're introducing the fourth by way of the third. Keeps the whole thing from becoming too unwieldy, since everyone's got running threads.)
Instead, he is most definitely a distinct entity:
But also, definitely not what he was:
She considers him, briefly.. and then they're off to base, to "upgrade" (or perhaps rebuild) the Black Fog into the terror he might once have possibly been.
Meanwhile, Rulk saves Beede, Arkansas from a tornado by doing a shockwave clap. This earns him a town's goodwill and the speculation of the Thunderbolt's crew; one airman thinks, might it not have been simple chance and decency that made him do it? No Hulk could predict a tornado, after all..
Irrational ascribing? Well, we can't all be perfect.. and all it's doing is moving his plan up, so good for him!
Meanwhile, Zero/One busies herself with her latest project, the Black Fog:
(Yes, electronics shop guy is also a henchman now.. when you need warm bodies for the stuff the cold ones can't do as well, you'll take what you can get!)
And Jake's journaling is revealed, cast in the vein of warnings for the future:
We close on the Black Fog, and open this week's #33 on the Omegex, coming in hot and hunted:
(Gotta love that kind of casual acknowledgement of continuity.
And the Omegex's resoluteness, and the fact that this is all one race's last gasp. All of it.)
Meanwhile, Rulk is running ragged. He and his LMDs take some time off at the Mojave Boneyard in California, when in blows.. the Black Fog!
I'd like to discuss this battle a bit more, but the limit prevents me from; it's one nice battle, though, illustrating Black Fog's usage of "death of a thousand cuts" as combined with teleportation. He may just be an attack dog, but he's a nice one.
(It's never really said how much he was the bogeyman; I'd like him to have been, just cause the idea of a superhuman thrill killer is pretty cool.)
Ross wins (drives off Black Fog, gets a serum that allows him the sleep he's lost) and loses (an LMD sort-of friend of his is annihilated by Black Fog's sword) the day soon enough, while Fortean and Zero/One clash briefly in midair.
On the latter note, there's even an interesting pick-up on their parallelism that might foreshadow future interactions:
(Oh, Hardman; you and the colors make this work especially well!)
Rulk's question is answered by a remote Steve Rogers, who's sending him off to space, apparently putting hold on all of this until he gets back and Fear Itself ends at the earliest.
Unless, of course, he runs into the Omegex:
And so a destroyer soldiers onwards (is that Skrull script?), a soldier tailors, a mad scientist tinkers, and a fog espies its next victim. Four folks who're sure to make fun profiles somewhere down the road..
Parker's Hulk run certainly has, its Scorched Earth arc having Rulk take it on the chin from Iron Man, Thor, and Namor. It's also realized that if you want to make a character viable beyond the events of his creation (despite Incredible's upcoming conclusion, Hulk promises to be predominantly "all red" for a while yet.. Rulk and Red She-Hulk? Definitely a familial connection..), you've got to draw him away from it.
To that end, it's been cranking out all-new antagonists since March, four deathly deadly terrors with their own reasons to see Rulk dead: the living weapon Omegex, the vengeful soldier Fortean, the creative mastermind Zero/One, and the haunting Hyderabadian spectre known as the Black Fog.
It's wrapped up those acts of creation with this month's #33, to take Rulk off to space; if future solicits are any indication, it won't be coming back to them for a few months at the least. Still, Parker's done a nice job dropping a few new toys into the box, and I'm eagerly anticipating his picking them up again.
(A note: These're pages from Hulk #30.1-33, none of which exceed the 7/21 split; only 4 from this week's #33 are below, for those who need to know that sort of thing.)
Certainly, they're not the most original of antagonistic concepts; take Omegex, shown in #28-29 to be a last-resort superweapon constantly recreating itself, locking in on the first living thing it sees and setting out to genocide its species.
Parker's playing it exactly how you'd expect, bringing the species destroyer to bear on the Earth (and Rulk in particular). He's added a little spice to the mix, however, by making Uatu responsible for its picking up Rulk's scent.
First, he's indirectly amended "Rulk punches our Watcher" (well, #26's "You're being sucked into a black hole, and I can only watch for I am THE WATCHER!" did that as well), and second he's added an interesting little meta-wrinkle by making this latest threat the indirect fault of Mister "I am sworn not to interfere".
It's that same entertaining, if not wholly novel creativity he brought to #30.1 (a Point One issue that really did its job, I think) and its introduction of Fortean.
We open on Rulk leaping through Colorado on his way back to his probationary Gamma Base, when a few missiles come roaring out of the sky, KRAKBAMMing and BAWHOOMing him right around Aspen.
More pissed than anything, he zeroes in on his aerial attacker, only to discover that it's apparently "the air command center I commissioned!"
Is it?
"Sir" is Fortean himself, a military man created to be Rulk's own.. Ross.
He's his own man, though, willing to directly confront our protagonist with the best military budgets'll let him have:
And his rationale for Hulk-hunting is much more personal, he continues: " Like you really didn't kill the man I used to serve for years. General Thunderbolt Ross. "
He issues a challenge to Rulk- be at the Salt Flats base at 0900, or the hunt'll just increase in intensity- and boots him off his Thunderbolt, leaving Ross to flashback in freefall:
(It's a workable enough retcon, dropping this guy into Ross's life.. I'd wondered if they could've just used another Talbot LMD instead, but that'd probably be a bit much.)
Making his way back to the safety of Gamma Base, he and its LMD staff work out where Fortean's coming from; after his publicized death, Fortean was promoted to fill the void.
However, when he lobbied for a military response against the Red Hulk, he was shot down because no one wanted to sanction "another Ahab":
(Love his throwing in anti-mutant sentiment; either he's playing to an audience, or he shares a casual quality with a decent chunk of 616's Earth.)
Fortean's fueled all that into heavy-duty armament, to be brought to bear on Rulk; why confront him, one LMD opines?
"He deserves his fight" says Ross, making for a much different acknowledgement of the ties between hunter and prey than Bruce ever had.
(Of course, the tie itself is very different..)
And what a fight it is, Fortean bringing out the sci-fi armory that seems to define all he'll be throwing at Rulk:
Ross proves harder than that to bring down, of course; he fights back, with words and fists:
What follows isn't a pedestal-shattering and derangement on Fortean's part, despite that face.
Instead, exposition that Rulk knocked out his audio.. but didn't one particular little weapon, planted by that funky little purple gunk and activated vocally.
Not a weapon that kills, but one that inhibits instead:
(Love his exit, and that last panel.. and the idea of jetpacking out of a mech bound to the ground, too.)
So exit Fortean from the foreground, having dealt Rulk his new status quo. He'll play Ahab, and looks set to keep playing, but a much calmer one; when he looses his newest toy in #31 (units that created humanoid armor from their natural environment), he's calm enough to check for non-Hulk life signs in the area first.
But his cool toys aren't what's important about that issue; instead Zero/One, another one out for Rulk's blood.
(I love this common thread of fervent intent on the destroyers' parts; if you're to try and kill a Hulk, you've really got to be an obsessive.)
And her soon-to-be henchman, remembering her and his origin:
You'll remember Hulk #26, and Scorched Earth's attack on Omnisapient (Parker's own addition to the MU's many shady corporations; it's where the Ghost used to work, as his Thunderbolts origin told us), and the scientist Rulk 'saved'?
Turns out, Ross's characteristic directness let MODOK's little attack vector play havoc with her.
So while he and one of his LMD friends (who do not, it turns out, register on stuff designed to detect life signs) deal with Fortean's rockmen, the burned man gets a visitor:
Who reveals herself in an expository, oratory full-page:
And displays the breadth of her talents (comparisons to Angie Spica become apt about.. now):
(I know it's wrong to wonder, but d'you think her psuedo-bindi doubles as a laser? I know I'd do that..)
Jacob's taken off to her base, an Omnisapient lab out at sea (I have the feeling AIM was watching them like a hawk) she's repurposed; she tells him she's decided to keep at super-science, to become a sort of engine of thought.
(The images are all her, by the way; it's a nice distinct little quirk, isn't it?)
So Zero/One's agenda is, like Fortean's, rooted in Rulk's destruction of someone.
But she welcomed it, it turns out; she's only out for her destroyer because he might well come after more of her creations. And note her being "a creator", and intending to make another proxy, despite her promo appearance having her draw on the Hulk; it's an approach you could definitely get some mileage out of, down the road.
(At the very least, she's got the makings of a big-thinking mad science lady.. and hey, we all like Superia and Monica Rappacini, don't we?)
Speaking of Fortean, he makes a remote appearance via the stuff of his improvised soldiers, to needle Rulk:
(Body armor with your stars down the center? Makes a kind of sense..)
Attacking his enemy both cerebrally and physically, and committing to sparing those who are not Rulk? He's expressing his vendetta in some rather interesting ways, ones I hope he maintains in future.
#32 certainly gives to him voicing of more conventional expressions, but again in the background; while Rulk keeps on the run, Zero/One and Jacob stay on the rise.
They're off to that country she showed him (check yer maps) in pursuit of her new proxy.
Most of their scenes are narrated from his journal, making of him her chronicler, but he has his own feelings too:
(Pinstripe suit man has a rigidity about him that suggests something's up his ass.)
Not that he's completely consumed by them, refreshingly; his core motivation seems to be, instead, to check his boss's growing reliance on proof-based logic:
(Really, to check his boss as a whole; there's something you could do with a henchman who does that.)
And so the last of our Fanatic Four is made manifest, putting paid to theories that Jake there would be turned into the Black Fog.
(Still, it's nice that we're introducing the fourth by way of the third. Keeps the whole thing from becoming too unwieldy, since everyone's got running threads.)
Instead, he is most definitely a distinct entity:
But also, definitely not what he was:
She considers him, briefly.. and then they're off to base, to "upgrade" (or perhaps rebuild) the Black Fog into the terror he might once have possibly been.
Meanwhile, Rulk saves Beede, Arkansas from a tornado by doing a shockwave clap. This earns him a town's goodwill and the speculation of the Thunderbolt's crew; one airman thinks, might it not have been simple chance and decency that made him do it? No Hulk could predict a tornado, after all..
Irrational ascribing? Well, we can't all be perfect.. and all it's doing is moving his plan up, so good for him!
Meanwhile, Zero/One busies herself with her latest project, the Black Fog:
(Yes, electronics shop guy is also a henchman now.. when you need warm bodies for the stuff the cold ones can't do as well, you'll take what you can get!)
And Jake's journaling is revealed, cast in the vein of warnings for the future:
We close on the Black Fog, and open this week's #33 on the Omegex, coming in hot and hunted:
(Gotta love that kind of casual acknowledgement of continuity.
And the Omegex's resoluteness, and the fact that this is all one race's last gasp. All of it.)
Meanwhile, Rulk is running ragged. He and his LMDs take some time off at the Mojave Boneyard in California, when in blows.. the Black Fog!
I'd like to discuss this battle a bit more, but the limit prevents me from; it's one nice battle, though, illustrating Black Fog's usage of "death of a thousand cuts" as combined with teleportation. He may just be an attack dog, but he's a nice one.
(It's never really said how much he was the bogeyman; I'd like him to have been, just cause the idea of a superhuman thrill killer is pretty cool.)
Ross wins (drives off Black Fog, gets a serum that allows him the sleep he's lost) and loses (an LMD sort-of friend of his is annihilated by Black Fog's sword) the day soon enough, while Fortean and Zero/One clash briefly in midair.
On the latter note, there's even an interesting pick-up on their parallelism that might foreshadow future interactions:
(Oh, Hardman; you and the colors make this work especially well!)
Rulk's question is answered by a remote Steve Rogers, who's sending him off to space, apparently putting hold on all of this until he gets back and Fear Itself ends at the earliest.
Unless, of course, he runs into the Omegex:
And so a destroyer soldiers onwards (is that Skrull script?), a soldier tailors, a mad scientist tinkers, and a fog espies its next victim. Four folks who're sure to make fun profiles somewhere down the road..
no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 03:10 am (UTC)But wow. These are good. They managed to come up with great, great villains for Rulk, just by looking at continuity and twisting it around a tiny bit. I am very impressed. I hope this continues to be good.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 04:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 05:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 11:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 11:11 am (UTC)Ok I haven't been reading Hulk lately but...
Date: 2011-05-19 05:48 am (UTC)Re: Ok I haven't been reading Hulk lately but...
Date: 2011-05-19 11:14 am (UTC)Grulk would kick his ass tho.
And I like the Black Fog. Why didn't anybody think of that? How do you stop the strongest thing on earth? You make something he can't punch.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-21 12:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-21 03:44 am (UTC)