While this past week has been another big pain in the butt, both in terms of the news of the world and in my own life, I’m feeling a little bit happier than I did last week. For one thing, it turns out our water softener doesn’t need repairs at this time, which means for the first time since January, we don’t have something in the house that needs repairing. For another—and this may seem like a little thing, but sometimes it’s the little things that get you through the rough patches—I’ve found a couple of new Marvel comics to feel excited about. I mean, I feel excited about all the comics I read, otherwise I stop reading them, but Marvel just relaunched a couple of favorite characters in new books that have me even more excited than I had been. Those two comics: The Immortal Hulk and Amazing Spider-Man.
Some spoilers after the jump.
I knew the Hulk mainly from the Bill Bixby TV series of the 1970s, but I never watched it faithfully. I think he’s a character I knew more by reputation than from actually reading the comics, until Peter David started writing him in the 80s. I read those books, and a number of runs after that, but it’s only in recent years that I’ve realized that I am actually a pretty big fan of the character.
The concept of a smart but physically unimposing guy whose inner tough guy comes out when he’s angry naturally appeals to me, because I’m not a particularly tough guy. I see big, mean people pushing the world around to get their way all the time, and it makes me angry. Why wouldn’t I love a story in which that anger manifests as the world’s most powerful being who can push around all the bullies, and who can’t be stopped by anybody?
The Hulk is a character who has gone through a great deal of evolution, particularly since those Peter David issues. However, at the very beginning, it read very much like a monster comic. I recently read those early stories on Marvel Unlimited, and while the story is pretty much all over the place, the earliest Hulk is a monster, not a hero. He does things that are “right,” but not out of a sense of justice or heroism.
This new series, The Immortal Hulk, takes the character back to those roots. He’s been through a lot these past few years, including the (temporary) death of Bruce Banner at the hands of Hawkeye. However, as recent issues of Avengers: No Surrender have established, Banner can’t be killed, because the Hulk can’t be killed. We see this play out pretty starkly in the first issue.
Behind a gorgeous cover by Alex Ross, the story, written by Al Ewing and drawn by Joe Bennett, Ruy Jose and Paul Mounts, sees Banner caught up and killed in a convenience store robbery gone wrong. However, Banner comes back as his green alter ego, and hunts down the killer responsible for his and so many other deaths, including that of a 12 year old girl.
In the second issue, Banner comes to a small town where people are dying mysteriously. He finds himself embroiled in the mystery, and it leads him—and, of course, the Hulk—to a particularly brutal solution. Seeing a character regarded as a “superhero” taking some pretty horrific actions really gives the book an edge that separates it from recent stories, and yet feels like a completely natural development from those stories.
In a lot of ways, this reminds me of the mainstream (from Marvel and DC) horror comics I read in the 80s, particularly the earlier issues of Saga of the Swamp Thing, written by Martin Pasko and Alan Moore. Ewing seems to have come up with a fresh take on the wandering stranger, roaming from town to town, coming across some sort of problem and solving it before moving on. He’s using a monster as anti-hero, and those solutions may be effective, but they’re brutal and nasty. There’s also a nod to the 70s series, with the introduction of a reporter named Jackie McGee (the TV series had Banner pursued by a reporter named Jack McGee.)
Because this series has taken such an effectively dark turn, taking a familiar character down a path I hadn’t been expecting, and because the stories have been so well told so far, this has become one of my new favorite books. The art particularly surprised me. Joe Bennett has gotten better and better over the years, but this represents a new high for him and regular inker Jose. Their Hulk looks genuinely scary and menacing, and overall they have given this book a fantastic mood. I’m glad this book comes out twice a month, because I’m really getting a kick out of it.
My other new favorite is actually a longtime favorite: Amazing Spider-Man. I had drifted away from it for a while, but came back for the last couple of years written by longtime writer Dan Slott. Slott recently finished up an epic 10-year (or so) run on the series, making him the longest continuous writer on the book. Marvel tapped Nick Spencer to take over as writer, and I thought that was a great choice.
Many comics readers will probably know Spencer mainly for his recent work on Captain America and the Secret Empire story, famous for turning Captain America into a Nazi, only he wasn’t a Nazi, he was a Hydra agent, and it wasn’t even Captain America, but whatever. Because apparently comics fans don’t like actual stories with twists that aren't immediately explained, Secret Empire was somewhat controversial, but I really enjoyed it. More to the point, even if you didn’t like Secret Empire, it’s hardly the only comic Spencer has written.
I’ve been a fan of Spencer’s from a lot of his independent work, including Morning Glories, and especially The Fix, a comedy crime comic which is hilarious. He creates that comic with artist Steve Lieber, and that same team created Superior Foes of Spider-Man, an equally hilarious comic about a group of the web-slinger’s foes. Spencer also wrote the recent Astonishing Ant-Man comic, another favorite.
His first issue of Spider-Man feels as much like the character I know and love as Dan Slott’s Spider-Man did. It felt like the same character that I fell in love with in the 1980s, written by Roger Stern, Tom DeFalco, and Bill Mantlo. In turn, those felt like the same character from the stories by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko which I read reprinted in the pages of Marvel Tales.
In short, I am excited to see where Nick Spencer and artistic collaborators Ryan Ottley and Cliff Rathburn (who I loved from the pages of Invincible) are planning on taking the character. Already, in this oversized first issue, they did a great job contrasting the human drama of Peter Parker’s life with the colorful action of Spider-Man. In Dan Slott’s run, he built Parker up only to tear him down. In this issue, Spencer and co bring Pete down even further, taking away what gains he had made during the Slott runs. But, in doing so, he points Peter in new directions towards new goals to achieve, and former goals to recover.
I don’t want to spoil too much of this first issue, because so much of my enjoyment came from the surprise twists in the story. But I will spoil that Mysterio is one of the villains, because he’s always been one of my favorite Spider-Man villains, just from his design alone. And I really liked the role Mary Jane plays in this issue. When I became a Spider-Man reader, Mary Jane was just being brought back into the book in a prominent role, and so she will always be a major part of the series for me.
Like Immortal Hulk, this is a book that is published twice a month. I’m eagerly looking forward to both of these series, and I hope these creative teams have long, healthy runs on these books.
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