Hulk humbles Namor.
An unconscious Bruce Banner is floating on the Atlantic, and Dorma finds him. Namor is jealous, because he’s an idiot, and a fight ensues that includes…
A Hulk Kool-Aid sequence.
And then it’s Hulk vs. Sub-Mariner underwater.
That’s a little much. He’s talking underwater, for Christ’s sake. And he seems to be able to survive underwater indefinitely. And talk underwater.
Lady Dorma’s potion, administered to the good Doctor Banner at the outset of this adventure, explains why the Hulk can exist at the bottom of the sea, at least for a while. Lady Dorma mentions on page two that the potion will enable him to exist under the sea for approximately an hour. The pacing of this story suggests to me that it played out across exactly one hour, at which point in time, Namor conveniently belts him out of his kingdom! There are several things about this tale that work for me. 1) The Lady Dorma. This blue-skinned hottie could make me forget all about Namorita and Princess Ariel! A flawless figure and beautiful auburn hair, which I get the impression is not the norm for Atlantean chicks! Most be a nobility issue. ( Hey- Namor, Namorita, and Namora are all white…… ) 2) Mistress Fara. She’s a duplicitous little cunt, but a damn cute one, and, as Adam West once pointed out to the Boy Wonder, there is ALWAYS a place in the world for a beautiful woman. Hopefully, Namor found an appropriate place for her in his court. ( namely, the Royal Bedchamber ) 3) The Hulk’s diction. He seemed to be a bit more well-spoken in this issue than usually is. His statement to Namor that “ANYTHING is possible!!!” borders on philosophy. Must be the effects of the depths. Anyway, I liked it. 4) The Hulk’s pants. Actually, they seem to be blue-jeans in this issue, as opposed to his usual purple slacks, which has always made greater sense to me, since jeans are the most durable form of pants that would be available to the transient Dr. Banner. Blue jeans look just as okay on the Hulk to me as purple slacks. 5) The Hulk’s size. Normally, the Hulk is drawn to be the size of a Mack Truck, which is not actually feasible. The physical dimension given to him by Herb Trimpe in this story is much easier to believe. The Hulk actually looks about the same size as Lou Ferrigno in this issue, and that’s fine. He can be strong as Hell without looking improbably large, as he does in this issue. Trimpe seems to understand this. It’s too bad he couldn’t maintain the Hulk’s correct size throughout his run on the series. Maybe the base readership prefers him the size of a Mack Truck. I dunno. Finally, the most emotional reason I enjoy ‘The Incredible Hulk’#118’s “A Clash of Titans’ so much, is because it was only the second issue of ‘The Incredible Hulk’ I ever read! ( oddly, issue#119 was actually the first- don’t ask/go figure ) A friend of mine and I kept our respective copies of this issue until they literally crumbled apart in our hands! Spent years trying to hold them together with packing tape! All that does is ruin the comics even further, but what the hell did WE know-??? I never tried to find a replacement copy of this issue, because I just assumed I would eventually have no trouble finding one! WRONG!!!! A halfway-good shape copy of 1969 ‘Incredible Hulk’ comics will run you around a hundred bucks a PIECE!!! No shit!! Remember: The Incredible Hulk is STILL Marvel Comic’s second-most popular character, right behind Iron Man, and preceding Spider-Man and Wolverine at numbers three and four! Iron Man was perennially on the ‘B’-list, until Robert Downey Junior came along, and knocked Spidey off the number-one spot he had successfully maintained for forty-six years! But the Incredible Hulk is BAD, in the Marvel scheme of things! Number Two is not too shabby for a guy who can barely talk! Or, as Lou Ferrigno would put it, “RRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!”