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

[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.'