The Immortal Hulk #44 - "To Rule in Hell"

[laughing_tree]

If you look back at those early issues, he’s hanging around with juvenile delinquents. In the ’60s, Iron Man’s building weapons for the military industrial complex. Hulk is beating them up. From a time before Stan Lee thought, “Actually, I’m feeling very counter-cultural myself,” Hulk was still the earliest example. I feel like Immortal Hulk is a book where we can do that and it won’t be out of place. It’s been an interesting journey, though I think some readers didn’t appreciate it as much as others. -- Al Ewing

Comments

[cyberghostface]

I don’t really get the Iron Man comparison. Wasn’t the point of Tony to create a character that readers at the time would initially be opposed to?

[sadoeuphemist]

I've heard this is revisionism on Stan Lee's part. I tried briefly googling to find sources about it, and here's a comment on reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Marvel/comments/bwnqt4/til_iron_man_was_created_by_stan_lee_as_a/eq5p5ss?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

[laughing_tree]

Yeah, Stan's claim doesn't really stand up to scrutiny when you consider the level of jingoism also present in other Marvel comics of the era.

[tcampbell1000]

There might be a GRAIN of truth to it, in that Stark's phenotype was less "underdog" than most other Marvel heroes. He wasn't obviously disabled, he wasn't some monster people ran shrieking from, he wasn't a teenager whose powers exceeded his self-control: he was rich, handsome, successful. Even Stephen Strange and Reed Richards were weirdo shut-ins by comparison.

But to draw this back to the original point... yeah, early Iron Man was not at all critical of the military. It got far more drama out of Tony's mortality, that injured heart of his that his technological genius was then barely able to keep going (which made him an underdog after all, just less obviously). The shift from "crush the commies" to "atone for my own war crimes" is fascinating in its own way.

[bravest_spinja]

It's funny the complaints about the MCU being Military Propaganda, but one of their first efforts definitely wasn't flattering to the Military Industrial Complex, but was met with a shrug. Uncle Sam's money was probably looking pretty good.

[cyberghostface]

I don’t have much of an opinion either way but they were shilling the United States Air Force pretty hard during the Captain Marvel promo cycle at least.

[bravest_spinja]

Yeah there was an official tie in there, and I know they actually did make a deal when making the first Iron Man. I just think the whole thing is disingenuous--people aren't just feeling Marvel aesthetic, so they reverse engineer their opinion from a moral standpoint, when chances there are Pentagon™ Approved blockbusters they probably do like, and subversive movies they don't.

[tinygaylaura]

I liked Winter Soldier with its message of "The US government is infested with nazis and cannot be trusted"

Because that's the kind of realism I'm okay with having in my superhero fiction

[whatsmoothbeast]

+

[velacron]

Except MCU Hydra doesn't care about race, they have multiple high-ranking members of color, and are much more akin to the Deep State the libertarians ramble against

[donnblake]

HYDRA has never had a particularly coherent ideology, I think. Are they Nazi diehards? Communist stooges? Council of Days-esque anarcho-nihilists? An ancient conspiracy dedicated to the return of a Kree science experiment? Stateless nationalists? Pawns of an Elder God?

[tinygaylaura]

They are Nazis.

They are literally shown and stated to be nazis multiple times in canon

[donnblake]

Yes- and they have been shown having different beliefs and motivations as well. Which is why I said they don't have a particularly coherent ideology, not that they had never been shown as Nazis.

[sadoeuphemist]

It's hard to say what message Iron Man has about the Military Industrial Complex. Tony Stark discovers his weapons have fallen into the hands of terrorists, so he stops selling weapons to the military and makes himself an Iron Man suit so he can go to the Middle East and start shooting terrorists personally. But then it turns out it was an executive in his own company supplying the terrorists, so cutting the supply chain to the military didn't actually accomplish what he wanted.

What is the moral of the story? That the War on Terror should be privatized by billionaires? That it's corporate bad actors that need to be weeded out? Something something Ayn Rand? All I know is, both weapons manufacturer Tony Stark and the US military come out looking pretty good.

[bravest_spinja]

By the way, I was referring to the Hulk movie. Where the Hulk roughs up tanks and general Ross is showed to be an self-destructive-Ahab like figure, and the guy he forms a bond with is another soldier who jumps at the chance to become a literal monster.

[sadoeuphemist]

Not sure what the Hulk movie has to say about the Military Industrial Complex, as opposed to just, like, the military.

Also, that one ends with Blonsky going rogue and turning on the military, and then Banner and General Ross have to team up to stop him and they airdrop Banner from a helicopter into the warzone, and then Ross is briefly sympathetic at the end and allows him to escape, so yeah, mixed messages.

Like, just look at this shit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNV3x_O8rqA

[bravest_spinja]

Blonsky went rogue in the same way John Walker went rogue. He was everybody's idea of the perfect soldier, but he could not abide the idea of someone being more powerful than him, and made a grab for a boost the first chance he could. Yeah, Ross was like, "Yeah, go fight him" out of desperation, but his last shot is him alone at a bar. (And frankly, in later movies that he keeps falling upwards and still personally alienating most of the people he meets is sadly realistic.)

Like, I'm not going to argue it's an Abbie Hoffman style manifesto or anything, but it's definitely on the lower end of ra-ra of a summer blockbuster, including the the polarizing but more respected Ang Lee movie.

[sadoeuphemist]

I'll be honest, I had completely forgotten about the Hulk movie, because who remembers the Hulk movie, but you have reminded me how dumb it was that the driving conflict throughout the film was 'I need to be on the run because I don't want the military to use me as a weapon', and then the climax was 'oh no Abomination's rampaging through the city, I need to be airdropped by the military into the warzone.'

[tinygaylaura]

"I'm the government, mister"

One of the many, many reasons why I utterly despise Henry Peter Gyrich

I'm going to be so happy if he gets killed before this series is over. Because he's had it coming ever since he first appeared

Also insert MST3K "I'm the government! I'm the government! I'm the reason nothing works!" song here

[sabertoothlotus]

If they do, then who gets to be the government strawman that we all get to hate on and feel good about it?

You don't kill the golden hate goose; it's bad for hate business.

[tinygaylaura]

I mean, are they a strawman though?

As I understood it a strawman arguement is taking someone's opinions and taking them to a ridiculous and unrealistic extreme

The only thing unrealistic about Gyrich is that instead of retweeting brain rotting horseshit from QAnon he's joined the Evil Science Nazis over at ORCHIS instead

[akodo_rokku]

Gyrich will never die, the people ACTUALLY in charge will always find him too useful of an idiot.

[tinygaylaura]

He's the personification of the banality of evil

[scorntx]

The logistics of that cover alone are just Silver Age level bizarre.
So, Orchis, the secret evil organisation dedicated to wiping out Mutantkind also apparently own a publishing company. And they're printing a comic about the U-Foes, and they haven't even bothered to change the name to something less evil sounding (I mean, if they wanted to sound less evil, but U-Men has already been taken, so... U-Team? I dunno).
And apparently this comic has been successful enough to go on for at least fourteen issues.
For fictional representations of characters who once helped start a war.


It is always astounding how Gyrich seems to be a person utterly without any sense of self-awareness, that this is a man so awful and unlikable even Captain America can't stand his guts, and yet he never seems to stop and think about why that might be, just doubling down on being terrible.
... it's not surprising that someone in the Marvel governments keep giving him jobs, even though his disaster / success rate is itself pretty horrific. Depressing, sure, but not surprising.

As far tactical decisions go, you can see how the U-Foes have reached the reputation they have when their method of killing the Hulk, a man powered by radiation, is to throw more radiation at him.
Can't possibly see any way that might backfire...
(That's sarcasm. We all know what's gonna happen next.)

[bruinsfan]

As far tactical decisions go, you can see how the U-Foes have reached the reputation they have when their method of killing the Hulk, a man powered by radiation, is to throw more radiation at him.

To be fair, there is a rationale if you read the full issue.

[scorntx]

I have read the issue, and the one before that. But it's still not a great plan all the same.
(We, the readers, do have the advantage of knowing Joe's safe because he's the main character, in a series about how Hulks just can't die, and the U-Foes don't, but given their track record with the Hulk...)

Why, if they aren't careful, it's like the plan would backfire somehow, and make Joe, who has been depowered, more powerful or something.
But that's crazy talk.