Look, you either like the whole “Red Hulk” concept or you don’t. The basic idea of it is that there’s a new Hulk in town who’s a big bully and can punch his way across and through the Marvel Universe. I dug Red Hulk but…This event is no Red Hulk.
The Fall of Hulks event crosses the two ongoing Hulk titles as well as two miniseries and several one shots:
- Fall of the Hulks: Alpha
- Fall of the Hulks: Gamma
- Fall of the Hulks: Red Hulk #1-4
- Fall of the Hulks: The Savage She-Hulks #1-3
- Hulk #18-21
- Incredible Hulk #606-608
- Fall of the Hulks: M.O.D.O.K. #1
It starts with the origin of Red Hulk, which we haven’t seen yet. In the past, MODOK assembles a group of evil scientists (Doctor Doom, Leader, Egghead, etc.) who tap into the knowledge of the Eternals and figure out how to create a Red Hulk.
To stop him, Thunderbolt Ross puts on some super-armor and…
…Red Hulk kills him. But wait, you say, aren’t Red Hulk and Ross the same person? Well, yeah, I thought so. It’s a fake-out–a life-model decoy.
In the present day, Rulk is working with the extended Banner-side of the cast, including A-Bomb (Rick Jones). They discover a lab where MODOK has dozens of clones of himself that he harvests for body parts. In the same lab are experiments to create a “Cosmic Hulk” powered by cosmic energy instead of gamma. Apparently, this Hulk has been around before—there’s a ton of exposition about him. He was a robot empowered by the Eternals…Honestly, it’s a retcon and I stopped reading because it’s truly boring. His story is the focus of the “FoH: Red Hulk” miniseries.
As the story progresses, Banner learns that he has a daughter: Lyra. The new version of She-Hulk who has had back-up features in Incredible Hulk that are pretty much undreadably bad. She gets a bunch of screentime in this event, too, including her own mini.
This event tries really hard to weave in old continuity into the Red Hulk storyline. Frankly, it tries too hard. There’s tons of flashbacks and even some data files at the end of many issues in the series that provide even more text-laden material. I really don’t want to try this hard to read Red Hulk. The fun of Red Hulk is that it’s big and dumb. This is tedious.
Eventually, Bruce Banner changes into Hulk (as he’s been threatening to do for the last 6 months). Doctor Doom gets to play a part in the whole mess, but before Doom can kill Hulk, Skaar stops him because Skaar wants to be the one to kill his daddy. Then Banner-Hulk returns the favor by stopping Doom from killing Skaar.
Let’s just skip to the end, shall we? Red Hulk’s identity as Thunderbolt Ross is revealed, and because no popular villain seems to be able to remain a villain, he gets to redeem himself and become an antihero. MODOK figures out how to create an army of AIM soldiers that are “hulked out,” but also hulks-out a bunch of superheroes as a set up for World War Hulks, the next big story.
WWHs promises to be much sillier with much more smashing. Sounds like it will be a much better read.