• Comic Book Review: World War Hulk Issues 1-4

  

  Written by Zeromage 4 Comments
  Last Updated:: September 30, 2007

  Marvel Comics has a new crossover series going on right now called World War Hulk. The casual comic book fan may be wondering why Marvel would create a crossover series with a simple-minded character that utters stupid phrases like “Hulk smash!” (Hey, it could be worse, he could say “It’s clobbering time!”). Anyway, most hardcore Marvel fans know the Hulk has great potential to be a really fun character to read. I personally had been steering away from Hulk comics for a while due to the stupid storylines that had become commonplace in Hulk comics recently. How many times is the Jade Giant supposed to fight dumb characters and then run away because Bruce Banner feels bad? So, after reading the Civil War crossover I began wondering where the heck the Hulk was in this mess, since I hadn’t been reading Hulk comics for a while. Glancing at my stacks of comics, I noticed that he been tricked into a space ship by four members of the super hero group the Illuminati (Reed Richards, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, and Black Bolt), and then rocketed into space. Eventually he ended up on the distant planet Sakaar, dressed as a gladiator. Well, that sparked the ole interest, and I began reading what has been one of the best crossover comics that I’ve read in a while.

  Basically, the plot of World War Hulk is Hulk smash the puny planet Earth. Why? Well, on the planet Sakaar, the Hulk rose through the ranks from a slave to a gladiator to eventually ruling the whole place. He also fell in love and got married. But the shuttle that brought him to the planet exploded, killing millions of his subjects along with his wife and unborn child. So the Hulk decides to come back to earth and smash everyone who he thinks is responsible for his exile. And this is the cool thing about World War Hulk. The Hulk is mad. Real mad. And as we all know, the madder the Hulk gets, the stronger he gets.

  So the Hulk and his allies, the Warbound, come to Earth seeking revenge. The Hulk is more powerful than he’s ever been, and each member of his Warbound is about as strong as he used to be. And all of them want to tear apart Earth’s mightiest heroes. Have you ever heard of a cooler storyline since the Superman Doomsday battle?

  First stopping at the Moon, the Hulk defeats Illuminati member Black Bolt. Black Bolt knocked a divot the size of Rhode Island out of the Moon in an attempt to stop the Hulk, but was somehow still easily defeated (for some reason we never see this fight and are never clued in as to how the Hulk actually defeats Black Bolt, a character who defeated the Hulk once before with merely a whisper). It’s here we hear some of the lamest dialogue in the series when the Hulk says “I came here to hear you scream!” What B horror movie did they lift that line from? Anyway, the Hulk then proceeds to Manhattan and via a holographic message demands the presence of the remaining three members of the Illuminati who sent him into space or he will smash the entire planet. As I was reading this part I was wondering who the Hulk got to edit that montage showing the Planet Hulk arc for the people on earth… even showing the whole bomb exploding sequence. It was that moment where Tony Stark could only be thinking, “This is all I need.” It was nice of the Hulk to introduce his Warbound buddies for the Earth’s benefit too.

  Anticipating that the Hulk is too powerful to be stopped by S.H.E.I.L.D. and the Avengers, Iron Man pleads with the Sentry to intervene. The Sentry being the Marvel equivalent of Superman minus the Kryptonite weakness, is the most powerful super hero in the Marvel Universe. Unfortunately he is also an agoraphobic schizophrenic who is terrified of his own power. He is friends with the Hulk and he also emits a radiation that calms the Gamma Goliath down, which would make any fight between the two about as one sided as a Fox news bulletin.

  In the meantime the Hulk travels to the nearby X-mansion, home of the X-men, and more importantly to the Hulk, Illuminati member Professor X. Although Professor X wasn’t present when the Illuminati decided to send the Hulk into space, the Hulk wants to know what Prof. X would have said had he been there. He admits that he would have sent him into space, but not permanently. At this point a battle ensues and the Hulk defeats all of the X-men, including Mercury, Dust, Rockslide, Elixir, X-23, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Wolverine, Beast, Shadowcat, Colossus, and Lockheed. He also defeats the Juggernaut. But he decides to spare the Professor, reasoning that Xavier himself is in a kind of guilty purgatory based on his own mistakes.

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4 Comments

1. #1 jack says:
   March 19th, 2010 at 4:39 am

   what about spiderman, he pwns all for 250 gold