The Immortal Hulk, Volumes 7 - 10 (Written by Al Ewing, Illustrated by Joe Bennett, Kindle eBook)



Two years ago I looked at the half of Immortal Hulk that was currently out. Well, the series is now finished and collected into trade volumes, so let's follow up on the Devil Hulk and the "Mehhhhh" his story built up to.

When we last checked up on the Devil Hulk he was off to slug it out with Dario Agger, which ends a bit anticlimactically when Hulk shows up at his office for an epic showdown only to find Agger's secret weapon has bitten him in the ass, and then beats Xemnu with one uppercut. Then a long-time foe rears his inflated head...

... and something just goes wrong with the book. Volumes 8 and 9 are mostly meandering around and taking three issues to cover the amount of story an old-school Hulk book could cover in one. I went through comparing these issues to ones from the Peter David era trying to figure out why I was blowing through these volumes in what felt like ten minutes each, and while they were only one or two pages shorter, there were fewer panels and thus less happening on each page. And most of what is going on is Hulk getting into fights: first with The Thing, then the U-Foes, then the Avengers, then the Avengers again. And three of these are over a misunderstanding. The final issue is a double-length special where four years of buildup climaxes with whatever the reverse of "rocks fall and everyone dies" is and a bunch of loose threads still hanging. Aren't those two guys still fused into one sin against God? Is the Devil Hulk dead or what? Aren't Doc Samson and Sasquatch still in each others' bodies? And I'd ask what eventually became of Dario Agger, who was last seen turned inside-out by Xemnu and crying for death on the floor of his office, but since he's more of a general Marvel villain than a Hulk one, maybe somebody else will finish his story.

I don't know if the series got kicked in the head by covid or the Disney overlords demanding things be toned down, but it's not even that horrifying by the end. Rick Jones gets caught in a gamma explosion that turns him into multi-limbed monstrosity that's about half neck, and Bruce's soul mangled into a tree of capillaries, but by the end the worst the series can manage is Leader sprouting a Xenomorph's inner mouth from his eye.

Also, freaking Blade is on the Avengers now? Nothing against the guy, personally, just seems like nobody remembers him outside of the Wesley Snipes movies.

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