Big, dumb, and barrels of fun. Ed McGuiness continues to provide layouts with full-page and double-page punches as the mysterious Red Hulk continues to punch his way through the Marvel Universe. He knocks out Uatu…
He tussles with Banner-Hulk and teases him about having killed Rick Jones, who is now A-Bomb, with a gun.
Rulk is ready to shoot Hulk in the head using the same gun, when Hulk bites the tip of the gun off (symbolic?) but then falls off the Golden Gate Bridge defeated. He beats up Thor…
After some wonderfully drawn fisticuffs, Red Hulk figures out how to carry Thor’s hammer.
And it gets better. Rulk figures out TWO ways to hold Mjolnir. He jumps into space, where he can beat Thor unconscious with his own hammer because of zero gravity.
Cool. We haven’t had a good “nobody can lift my hammer” scene in a while.
While Rulk is dumping Thor on the Moon, we see that Blue Abomination lives. He swims to the bottom of the San Francisco Bay and pulls Hulk out of the water to join with a team of muscle heads, assembled by Iron Man, with the goal of taking down Rulk.
Of course they all fight amongst themselves a bit before finally working together. Green Hulk gets his rematch and knocks Rulk out.
At the very end, the heroes believe Rulk is dead but of course he’s not. We see Ross and Samson standing over his body, seemingly responsible for his creation.
Also of note: In the few “quiet” pages of this arc, Iron Man and SHIELD are searing for General Ross and Doc Samson who have missing ever since Red Hulk took down a Helicarrier they were on. There is a misdirect that it might be Samson who is really Red Hulk, and…
CLAY IS DEAD
Clay Quartermain is dead. The dude had been around for decades and he’s killed off panel? Hm.
I know all of this is is big and dumb. That’s how I started this write-up. But it’s also creative and fun. At this time, in the 2000s, Marvel was full of big “events” and was investing in dark realism in books like Daredevil and Jessica Jones. It’s nice to just have some over-the-top, balls-out violence.