Incredible Hulk #1.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

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Holy smoke! What is this? I could have sworn I'd reviewed the first appearance of every great Silver Age Marvel Hero - and Ant-Man - but I've suddenly realised I've never cast a critical eye over the arrival of the Hulk.

Does my having forgotten to tackle it say something about the quality of the comic?

Or does it just say something about the quality of me?

Here's where we find out!

It's a great day for US atomic scientist Bruce Banner who's due to detonate his Gamma Bomb, a weapon that could destroy a continent and whose other possible effects he's not really too sure about. But, whatever, they are, he's about to find out.

Fortunately, his assistant - a communist saboteur cunningly hiding behind the name "Igor" - is there to try and talk him out of it, on the grounds that he could kill everybody.

Bruce, however, is having none of it. He's got a bomb to detonate and, by George, he's going to do it. He even points out to the Russian saboteur he's hired as his assistant that he doesn't make mistakes.

Fortunately, Bruce isn't the only one in an explodey mood because that's when his boss General Thunderbolt Ross barges in and demands he sets the thing off immediately because he's bored with waiting! 

It's a strange thing when a Red Menace story forces you to start siding with the communist.

But, sadly, for Bruce, there's something even worse than socialism on the loose.

And that's a teenager!

It's true. Rick Jones has decided it'll be top lulz to park his car in the middle of the test site and start playing his mouth organ.

Clearly no lover of music, Banner rushes to the scene to get Rick out of there but, just as he's doing so, Igor decides it's the perfect moment to set off the bomb and kill his superior.

And that's the end for Bruce Banner.

Except it isn't - because, somehow, he survives and, that night, as he chats in his hospital cell, with Rick, he turns into a creature called the Hulk and starts to knock down walls before turning back into Bruce, the moment the sun returns.

But such a rampage cannot go unnoticed.

And so it is that, in an unnamed communist country, news of the Hulk has reached the ears of a huge-headed radiation-mutated genius called the Gargoyle who decides to fly to America to kidnap the brute.

By some unknown means, he lands his plane where the Hulk just happens to be and abducts both the monster and Rick Jones, taking them back to his homeland.

But, there, he starts crying and declares that he wishes he could be a normal man again.

Bruce responds by promising to use his knowledge of radiation to cure him and, having done so, flees the country, in a stolen rocket, while the man who'd been the Gargoyle blows up the facility where he works, to gain revenge upon his employers.

And, with that, the first adventure of the Hulk is over!

Except it's not really, because the Hulk doesn't actually have an adventure. He's barely in the story and it's Bruce Banner who saves the day.

The thing that most leaps out at me is that this origin doesn't have the moral element of many of Marvel's Silver Age debuts. Bruce has been the architect of his own downfall - and completely irresponsible in creating a possibly continent-destroying bomb - but, at the tale's end, he doesn't show any indication of having learnt anything from it. There are no signs of him being a reformed character, of him grasping that his fate is his own fault, or even of him having decided he must use his powers for good.

When it comes to the bad guy, the Gargoyle's a fairly undeveloped villain who also barely appears and is quickly disposed of. Clearly, though, Stan and Jack liked his basic concept enough to return to it with the far more motivated Leader.

However, despite the Gargoyle's throwaway nature, the basic theme of two men transformed by nuclear tests - one through his own foolishness, and the other through that of his government - where one gains release and the other's doomed to be trapped forever in his nightmare, displays a pleasing symmetry. Or at least it would if the Gargoyle featured more prominently in the tale.

But, of course, we can't ignore the elephant in the room. And that's skin colour. Famously, the jade giant isn't green in this story. He's grey.

Except on the splash page, where he's purple.

And page eight where he's flesh-coloured.

And page nine where he's red.

And page ten where he's yellow.

And page eighteen where he's green.

In fairness, he's not the only character who keeps changing colour. So does the Gargoyle which, I suppose, does serve to further highlight the parallels between the two characters.

It's easy to talk about 1960s Marvel as a creative whirlwind, flinging innovation at us from all directions but the truth is Lee and Kirby were beating deadlines by mostly recycling well-worn tropes and, here, the roots of the strip are clear, drawing heavily on such familiar characters as the Wolfman, Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll. The Hulk also has a clear debt to Marvel's own Thing whose early appearances in the Fantastic Four had him displaying similar anti-social tendencies. 

Did we all see what Stan and Jack did there?

Banner is doomed to become the very thing he detests most.   

But the strongest influence is, surely, 1950s radiation movies. With its atom bombs, reckless scientists, lovestruck heroines, hip teenagers, Cold War politics, spies and blustering military types, it genuinely does feel like an adaptation of a 1950s movie that was never made. It really only deviates from that mode in its very final act where it suddenly moves off in its own direction entirely.

So, the exciting core concept of a scientist who turns into a destructive brute is set up.

But, then again, just how exciting is it?

As mentioned earlier, the Hulk barely appears in the tale, the human drama of Bruce Banner's torment and his conflicts and interactions with those around him clearly being of more interest to Lee and Kirby than the limited spectacle of a muscleman walking around bending things.

And, when it comes to resolutions, Banner solving things with his intellect is always going to be more compelling than the Hulk just smashing things.

At least, that's how it seems at this stage. Later stories would demonstrate just how much fun the Hulk solving problems by smashing them could be. But that would come later. Exactly how to handle the Hulk's strip is a thing the title's various writers and artists would struggle with for years to come.

Rather more promisingly, the concept of a teenage boy, a tortured scientist and a monster bound together by fate is a potentially compelling one, even if it rarely proved compelling in practice.

Thor: Love and Thunder! With added Lou Ferrigno!

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

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By Heimdall's bushy beard! It's come to my attention that Marvel Entertainment's just released the trailer for its latest masterpiece Thor: Love and Thunder!

Can it live up to the standards of previous Norse adventures?

Who knows? I thought the first Thor movie was OK, I can remember nothing of the second - other than that Christopher Eccleston was in it - and I've still not got round to seeing the third one.

Admittedly, when I say, "just released," it seems the trailer actually came out a full month ago and the film's knocking 'em dead in cinemas, even as I type. But what's this? It seems it's not going down too well with audiences or critics?

Looking at the trailer, it does feel like it's gone a bit overboard on humour, and those fonts do look a bit He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. But who can judge a film by its trailer?

Regardless of any of that, we have solace because, even if the critics prove to be right, we have our memories of a real Thor movie. The one that co-starred the Hulk.

After all, who can forget the first time those two titans met on screen - way back in 1988 - when films were so awesome they didn't need the magic of competent special effects to entrance the public?

Screen Junkies hasn't forgotten it. In fact, right below, is where the channel reminds us how that masterpiece went.

Strangely, in retrospect, the feel of that movie doesn't seem that different from the direction modern Marvel movies are going in. Clearly, it was a work that was ahead of its time.

 

Incredible Hulk #145 - Call him Colossus!

I must confess that, in my younger days, I was quite the fan of the theories of Erich Von Däniken.

Those theories stated, of course, that virtually every building constructed before 1950 was put there by aliens.

Granted, over the years, some individuals have striven to debunk such theories by pointing out that they make no sense and that there's no evidence at all to back them up.

To which I can only reply, "Yah boo sucks. What sort of spoilsport ruins a good theory by inflicting the truth on it?"

Thus it is that issue #145 of The Incredible Hulk has always been a favourite of mine.

In it, our green-skinned hero manages to land a part in a movie - only (after reverting to Bruce Banner) to be kidnapped by aliens bearing a remarkable resemblance to ancient Egyptian gods.

It turns out that, thousands of years ago, they visited the Earth and planted seeds in the desert sand; seeds destined to mature into giant stone monsters that'll fight each other in order to settle some parochial dispute or other.

Needless to say, Bruce Banner's not settling for that. As we all know, it's his job to smash everything to smithereens, and he's not letting anyone else get in on the action.

So, he sabotages the activation of one monster (the Sphinx) and then, in his Hulk form, is returned to Earth to fight the other monster (the Colossus) as the aliens flee our world in a panic.

Needless to say, the Hulk quickly deals with the Colossus and then strolls off, bemoaning the fact that nobody wants to be his friend.

It has to be said that, in the course of this tale, he does sink a ship and murder its entire crew and also destroys a village by accidentally inflicting tidal waves upon it. So you can easily see why he's not quite as popular as he'd like to be.

The fight itself is an odd thing, bearing a noticeable resemblance to the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the Black Knight refuses to admit he's seriously injured as yet more and more parts of him get chopped off.

Likewise, no matter how many bits of his stone opponent the Hulk smashes to pieces, it carries on declaring that it's still on course for a magnificent triumph. It may not be too bright but it is at least an optimist.

The fight's also a little odd because one of the onlookers bears a striking resemblance to Betty Ross while another looks exactly like her father, which creates a very strange sensation as you read the panels in question.

Speaking of the Ross family, I do believe this to be the issue where the Hulkbuster base makes its conceptual debut, as Thunderbolt outlines his plans for it, complete with its layout which, bizarrely, is clearly modelled on the CND symbol.

Well, Thunderbolt Ross might not like the Hulk (or, seemingly, nuclear weapons) but I do still love this tale even though, as an adult, I can see that the aliens' behaviour lacks a certain something in the logic department. Just why does it take thousands of years for their creations to reach maturity and just why did they bring Bruce Banner aboard their spaceship and then leave him unsupervised so he could wreck their plans?

These are all mysteries.

They're mysteries as great as those of Von Däniken himself and so may find themselves buried forever beneath the sands of enlightenment, never to be unearthed.

But, let's face it, that's the best kind of mystery - the kind that never gets answered.

Random comics I have owned. Part Four.

When it comes to the National Lottery, a wise man once said, "It could be you."

Sadly, he was wrong. It couldn't be me. Why? Because I've never entered it.

Happily, there's another lottery. A better lottery. One that brings far more joy into people's lives than winning ten million pounds could ever do.

And that's the lottery that is, "Random comics I have owned."

Just what magic will it fling at us tonight?

I don't know.

But one thing's for sure.

I'm not going to let it change my life.

At one point, I had every one of the Black Orchid's original Adventure Comics appearances. All three of them. Sadly, it wasn't long after her debut before she was booted off the book, to be replaced by the Spectre.

Happily, for fans of women with flower obsessions, she was soon back, in the pages of The Phantom Stranger.

As for this tale, I have no recall at all of what happened in it but I gather that sailors and boats were involved.

It's one of my childhood faves, as Superboy finds himself turned into a merboy.

And if that's not one of the greatest comic book covers of all time, I'm a seahorse.

The X-Men come up against the Hellfire Club who seem to be an awful bunch of bounders and not at all inspired by a notorious but celebrated episode of TV's Avengers.

Batroc and Mr Hyde come up with a plan to blow up New York, with a boat, unless they get zillions.

Needless to say, Captain America soon puts a stop to their devilish plans.

Is it my imagination or is, "Batroc," misspelled on that cover?

It's the only original issue of the Hulk comic that I ever owned as a kid but I loved it, as, now residing in Canada, the Mimic is in danger of draining all our hero's life energy from him

This was the firs time I ever encountered the blue furry version of the Beast and was initially most confused as to whether he was meant to be the same character as the one from the X-Men.

I got this from a newsagents in a place called Heeley Green. This fact will mean nothing to 99.9% of the people reading this post but, somehow, that memory adds a certain charm to it all.

I seem to recall that an alien robot tyrant takes a fancy to the female member of the Metal Men and decides to bombard Earth with loads of missile-shaped robots because of it. How this was supposed to win her heart, I have no idea.

With their sharply defined personalities, I did find the Metal Men quite charming at the time.

It's the comic that gave us America's first teenage president.

More to the point, thanks to its unfeasibly visaged bad guy, it was the first time I ever encountered the smiley-face symbol with which all internetters are now so familiar.

I also learned from it that Mussolini made the trains run on time.

Who says comics aren't educational?

Iron Fist comes to London and immediately gets into a punch-up with Radion the atomic man.

Sadly, it turns out to be curtains for the Post Office Tower, which meets an explosive fate.

Whisper it quietly but I do believe this strip featured John Byrne's finest artwork.

Incredible Hulk #109 - Ka-Zar!

Those of an observant nature will know that Christmas was an exciting time for me.

When I say, "Observant," I mean, "Fixated," and, "Prone to stalking," as only such people would know  I spent the Festive Season braving the wilds of Devon.

American visitors to this blog will of course not know the dread reputation Devon has amongst the God-fearing folk of England. What savage terrors I encountered there as I was forced to battle manfully with various wild animals for supremacy.

Needless to say, I was triumphant, managed to get the blanket off the cats on more than one occasion, avoided tripping over a dog and lived to tell the tale.

But who else could have managed such a feat?

Only one man could.

And that man is Ka-Zar: king of the Savage Land.

And so it was that, as I roamed, bare-chested, the fields of Devon, people would often say to me, "Steve, having someone of your fame in our little county's quite an honour but when did you first encounter the loin-clothed loiterer on whom you've clearly based your survival skills?"

And the truth is it was in Mighty World of Marvel #61.

This is a good thing. Mighty World of Marvel #61 holds a special place in my heart. Not only was it one of the earliest comics I collected but its reprint of Incredible Hulk #109 features one of my fave Hulk tales, as the green skinned stirrer lands in the Savage Land and proceeds to make a nuisance of himself before saving the world from a machine that can make it rain a lot.

First of all, of course, he has to fight Ka-Zar.

Frankly, against such opposition, Ka-Zar's totally outclassed.

When I first read the tale, knowing nothing of the character, it didn't strike me just how outclassed he really is but he and Zabu are soon dispatched by the Hulk and left to the tender mercies of the Swamp Men who're in the mood to set light to them.

Frankly that's the least of their worries because it seems some naughty aliens have planted a doomsday machine in the Savage Land and it's in full swing.

What can even the Hulk do to stop such carnage?

It turns out he can't do anything but Bruce Banner can and Bruce battles to sort things out, as a giant robot stomps the land.

It's not hard to see just what the appeal of the tale is. The mixture of the Hulk, prehistoric creatures, jungles, aliens, Tarzan clones and giant robots is a heady and evocative mix. Not only did the tale introduce me to Ka-Zar and Zabu but it introduced me to the Savage Land itself - and Umbu the giant four-armed alien statue with a killer tuning fork.

Herb Trimpe had been drawing the strip for a few issues when this tale started but, for me, this was the tale where he really arrived, his partnership with John Severin hitting its stride to take the title to heights it had rarely even aspired to before but rarely fell from from that moment on.

Within mere weeks, the Hulk would be in outer space battling a giant mouth in space, Betty Ross would be made of glass, the Leader would be back and the strip would exert a grip on me that, even all this time later, those tales still hold. It's not often you can view an individual issue as pivotal in a strip's history but I reckon The Incredible Hulk #109 is more than worthy of that description.

Underused villains.

There can't be many of us who've not at some stage in our lives wanted to smash a pink, radioactive Neanderthal in the face.

Sadly; for most of us, such an act can never be more than a pipe dream.

For the Hulk however it became dramatic reality in the pages of Mighty World of Marvel #53, a comic that shall always linger in my memory as the oldest issue of that mag I had in my collection.

From what I can recall of it, that issue featured two stories; the Hulk's first-ever encounter with the Missing Link, and the Fantastic Four's meeting with the Enfant Terrible.

In the Hulk tale, having seen off the Rhino, our hero returns to New York just as the Chinese unleash their own version of the Hulk on the city.

That version is the Missing Link, a caveman revived by nuclear tests, who quickly mutates into something else altogether.

I admit it, I loved the Missing Link. He managed to make even the Hulk sound articulate, and his tendency to explode at inconvenient moments could only be viewed as appealing.

Sadly, no doubt thanks to that tendency to randomly explode, it was several years after his first appearance before the Missing Link returned, by which point he was called Lincoln and working in a mine. After that, he was never seen again during the era when I was reading comics, and I have no idea if he's been seen since.

While it was disappointing, such an absence does raise the issue of villains you always felt didn't appear enough in comics.

Some of them were plain baffling.

For instance, there was the Lizard's long long absence from the pages of Spider-Man between his initial appearance and his eventual return in John Romita's tenure.

Even more markedly, the Scorpion - having been used twice in the Steve Ditko era - managed to go missing throughout the whole of the John Romita and Gil Kane epochs before finally reappearing well into the Ross Andru one.

Of course, those were the lucky ones. Although initially ignored, they did go on to become major foes.

But others weren't always so fortunate.

So, which villains did you always think were bafflingly underused?

And, for that matter, which were used too often?

Incredible Hulk #5 - Tyrannus.

As I prowl the storm drains of Sheffield, people often say to me, "Steve, I always find you to be a winning combination of Alexander the Great and John Hurt's Caligula. Is that an effect that comes naturally to you, or have you had to work at it?"

I always reply, "Much as I'd like to claim it's all spontaneous, I do have a role model."

That role model is Tyrannus, malevolent master of an underworld kingdom I first encountered in The Mighty World of Marvel's reprint of Incredible Hulk #5.

I knew at once that Tyrannus was my kind of villain, possessed as he was of far more style than the Mole Man could ever hope to match.

What happens in his first appearance is that, like all good underground villains, he wants to invade the surface world.

Sadly, he's scared the surface world'll fight back.

So, posing as an archaeologist, he kidnaps Betty Ross, on the grounds that we'll never dare resist invasion if there's the danger she might get hurt.

Yes, that's how wars work. One side won't bother to defend itself if its attacker has a hostage - especially one no one's ever heard of. With tactical chops like that, all of a sudden I'm starting to see why Tyrannus always loses to the Mole Man.

Needless to say, the Hulk's determined to put a stop to all this subterranean subterfuge.

But it's a different Hulk than the one we're used to. There's none of that, "Why does pretty deer not like Hulk?" nonsense. It's more a case of, "Clam up, Bambi, or you'll get a slap." Still floundering around to try and work out how to make the strip work, Stan Lee's clearly decided to make the Hulk more like the Fantastic Four's early Thing. So we get him running around in swimming trunks, talking in slang and being noticeably anti-social. And, even though he's no Reed Richards, in his exchanges with Rick Jones and Betty Ross, it quickly becomes clear that he's somehow the brains of the trio.

I've always had a soft spot for this story. For all his stupidity, Tyrannus is my kind of villain, and I do like the stroppy Hulk. I also like the way he does a Samson and brings the pillars of Tyrannus' kingdom crashing down on him. I remember copying that scene with my pencil and paper on more than one occasion as a child.

One thing that does strike me is there's a scene where Rick Jones, for once in the tale, shows some gumption and rescues Betty from her cell by putting on a guard's armour and releasing her, a scene that bears a remarkable resemblance to the one in Star Wars where Luke Skywalker does the same to rescue his snog-buddy/sister Princess Leia.

But that could never be, could it? George Lucas borrowing from Marvel Comics?

Herb Trimpe's all-time Top Ten Hulk covers.

The Mighty World of Marvel - thirty six pages of magic that entered my life every Saturday in the 1970s. Its line-up changed over the years but one thing never changed.

Every issue began with the Hulk.

Even now, re-reading his old tales gives me more far pleasure than it ought to. Why is this? No doubt because anyone with any sense wants to be able to bend street lamps with their bare hands, and thus the Hulk appeals straight to the heart of what it is that makes super-hero comics appealing.

Reading The Incredible Hulk #127, a couple of days ago, for my post on that issue, reminded me just how much I love old Hulk stories. And so, fired up with a suitable passion, here's my ten favourite Hulk covers that were drawn by Happy Herb Trimpe - the Hulk artist of the 1970s.

10.

The Hulk finally finds love - but not for long, as naughty old Psyklop crashes the party.

9.

Ka-Zar swings into action as Umbu the Unliving strikes.

Let's face it, what sort of mad person wouldn't want to read a comic that features a monster called, "Umbu the Unliving"?

8.

It's an orange monster vs a green monster! 

It's the Hulk vs the Thing!

It's all happening on the side of the Baxter Building!

7.

The Wolverine makes his debut and heads straight for our hero.

6.

Thanks to Kang, time weighs heavily on the Hulk's shoulders.

5.

Can it be? Can it be curtains at last for our hero?

4.

It's Ka-Zar again, as Herb gives us serpentine layout packed with power and portent.

3.

I love that colour scheme.

I love the Glob.

I love the cover.

2.

It's got the Hulk. It's got the Valkyrie. It's got a storm. It's got the Empire State Building.

Not only that but just dig how the angle of the masthead conflicts with that of the rest of the shot, to give us a cover seething with drama.

1.

Doc Samson makes his debut.

And, just for a moment, he manages to convince us he's actually a threat to the Hulk.

Incredible Hulk #127. Mogol! Tyrannus! The Mole Man! And Me!

Art, music, sport, pig husbandry; many are the talents a man may have in life. But anyone with any sense knows there's only one gift worth having. And that's the ability to smash down doors with your bare hands.

Happily, The Incredible Hulk #127 gives us not one but two people who can do just that, as the Hulk meets the being known as Mogol.

Mogol's no ordinary man. He's a huge subterranean sent to the surface by Tyrannus to enlist the Hulk's aid in his war with the Mole Man.

Now, you might've thought it a pitiful super-villain who needs help to defeat the Mole Man but need it Tyrannus does. After the inevitable initial scrap, the Hulk and Mogol recognise a sense of kinship and become the best of friends as they work together to prepare Tyrannus' mighty machinery for battle.

Sadly, when that battle finally comes, Mogol's hit by an inconvenient death-ray and his minor wound makes it clear at once that he's actually a robot.

At this point the Hulk reacts as anyone would. He decides he's been lied to and smashes his friend to pieces. He then goes on to destroy the Mole Man's underground city and then its Tyrannusian counterpart.

The truth is there're few Hulk stories from this era that I don't love and this has always been near the top of my list. Herb Trimpe's art's wonderfully dramatic, as perfectly suited to the strip as ever, especially in the fight scenes between the Hulk and Mogol, and writer Roy Thomas has the sense to know it'll always be gripping to see the Hulk gain a friend only to lose him.

It doesn't though reflect too well on the Hulk that he kills Mogol for no reason other than that he's a robot. Somehow I'd expect a man who spends all his time lamenting his lack of friends to be more tolerant.

Still, at least we get to see the Mole Man's kingdom get trashed, and we see the return of Tyrannus, a man who's always been one of my favourite villains - mostly because he reminds me of myself.

If only I had mastery of an underground kingdom.

How exactly does one get to gain control of such a thing? Is there an exam one can take?

And is there a chance I might pass it if I cheat hard enough?

Incredible Hulk #2 - the Terrible Toad Men!

As I roam the streets of Sheffield, people often say to me, "Steve, why are you roaming the streets of Sheffield with giant magnets strapped to the sides of your head?"

And I say, "Poltroon! Know you not that magnets are the mightiest weapon known to man? Why, if I had just one more fridge magnet glued to my forehead, humanity itself would face extinction."

And it's true!

If you don't believe me, just take a look at Incredible Hulk #2, in which the treacherous Toad Men from somewhere or other decide to use their mastery of magnetism to invade the Earth.

As they explain, with their magnets they can suck the water from the oceans and make people's feet stick to the pavement. Who ever thought feet and water could be so magnetic?

But that's not the only trick because, ignoring the fact that the moon has no magnetic core, with their magnets they have the power to yank it out of Earth's orbit. Clearly they get their laws of magnetism from the same place as Magneto.

I must make a confession. This is the first Hulk story I ever read, way back in the pages of Mighty World of Marvel #4. In fact I only read the second half at that time, as I'd missed the first three issues, but just one glance at the opening image - Bruce Banner stood in the wreckage of a crashed alien spaceship - was enough to hook me. I didn't care that the Toad Men were silly villains. Let's face it, the Skrulls - also in that issue - were even sillier and that didn't stop them becoming arguably Marvel's main alien menace to humanity over the years.

Revelations about the unexpected power of magnetism aside, the thing that's always stood out for me about this tale is it's drawn by Marvel's two defining Silver Age artists, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, and I've always loved the combination on this tale, with Ditko laying his moodier style over Kirby's dynamism.

Still, the problems of the early Hulk comics leap out at you. The first being that the Hulk's a bad guy and as much a threat to humanity as the Toad Men. He at one point muses on the possibility of using the Toad Men's weapons to destroy all mankind. Then, that plan scuppered, he sets out to kill Betty Ross and Rick Jones. It's only him turning back to Bruce Banner as the sun comes up that stops him.

That transformation highlights the other problem the strip had; the fact that Bruce Banner only used to change into the Hulk when it was dark. On paper it seems a great idea, adding a sense of nocturnal menace and tragedy to the proceedings but it proves to be an unwieldy conceit that manages to make the Hulk ultimately irrelevant to the tale, as he plays no part at all in the Toad Men's demise. There's also the fact that, once the Hulk's irrelevant rampagings are over, there's only space left in the mag for Bruce Banner to defeat the Toad Men with ridiculous ease.

But perhaps what most strikes you is that the whole story feels like a B movie, combining 1950s alien invasion flicks with The Wolfman and Frankenstein.

This probably all makes the story sound terrible and, in theory, it possibly is. But, one, it was the first Hulk story I ever read, so I'm bound to have a fondness for it and, two, I'm a fan of 1950s invasion flicks and Universal horror movies, so its mood is always going to appeal to me.

In the end, I don't suppose anyone reading it'd be shocked to be told the title was cancelled within a few issues of this one but it has a charm to it that those of us who love the corny and hoary can't resist and it is oddly enjoyable to speculate just how the comic would've developed had the early concept of the Hulk never been ditched.

The Hulk's greatest ever foe: Poll Results!

It's time to split your shirt but not your jeans and lift up a mountain because the results are in from Steve Does Comics' sensational poll to find the Hulk's greatest ever foe.

As always it was a hotly contested vote, with opinions swinging this way and that but in the end the winner was the man who must've known all along he was going to triumph because he called himself the Leader.

That's right, the man who's as high-handed as he is high-headed came in first with a Gamma-tastic six votes.

Second was Thunderbolt Ross with a Hulk-Busting five votes.

Joint third were the Abomination and, "Himself," with two votes each.

Fifth place was a three-way tussle between the Missing Link, Wolverine and the Glob with each claiming one vote.

I'm proud to say I voted for the Glob, as you can't beat a good old pile of mud when it comes to enemies. That's why I've now decided my back garden is my deadliest foe. Grargh! Puny garden is strong but puny Steve is stronger!

Thanks to all who voted. And remember; within each of us, ofttimes there dwells a mighty and raging fury.

The Incredible Hulk's all-time greatest foe.

Rargh! Steve smash! Puny Internet is strong but puny Steve is punier!

No, wait that's not right.

Whatever.

All that matters is Steve Does Comics' insane quest to find the greatest super-villain of them all has reached Marvel's mightiest marauder, the incredible Hulk.

Film critic Mark Kermode once claimed a Hulk movie can't work because the Hulk has no great enemies. Pshaw! What kind of madman could turn his nose up at the Abomination, the Glob, the Rhino, the Space Parasite, the Leader, Umbu and the Galaxy Master?

But of course those're only a small selection of the myriad foes Jade Jaws has fought over the years. So, who's your all-time favourite Hulk villain?

As always, after a couple of days, I shall gather your nominees together and put them in a poll.

And then the world can at last decide just who is the Hulk's greatest ever foe.

Marvel Treasury Editions.

Mars Bars might like to tell us that small size is fun size but we all know better. Fun size is giant size.

And they didn't come any gianterer than Marvel Treasury Editions, those magnificently impractical comics that reprinted classic Marvel tales at a scale that would've made Black Goliath feel small. I'm pretty sure that Bronze Age Babies, in the not too distant past, invited us to nominate our favourite Marvel Treasury Editions and, as there's no idea too firmly nailed down for me to steal, I'm going to do the same.

I only ever had four Marvel Treasury Editions. In fact I only had three but, as I'm a Marvellite rather than a DC fan, I always count Superman vs the Amazing Spider-Man as belonging to the House of Ideas. My least favourite of the four was The Hulk on the Rampage. While it had such classic tales as Jade Jaws having  to fight all his greatest foes in one afternoon, Doc Samson's debut and the Hulk teaming up with the Thing to fight Kurrgo and the Leader, it also had a not very inspired meeting of the Hulk and Hercules that could only be called crude even by early Hulk standards. Superman vs Spider-Man is reviewed here and The Mighty Avengers was packed with a raft of Avengers debuts; from the Panther, to the Vision, to Yellowjacket and even the Valkyrie.

But of all these books, my most loved had to be the single Conan Treasury Edition that I had, which featured Barry Smith and Roy Thomas' adaptations of Robert E Howard's Rogues in the House and Red Nails. With its epic length, Red Nails really was something special, as Conan and sword-swinging piratess Valeria teamed up to take on a house that could only be described as divided. Packed with detail, style, drama, atmosphere, gloomy corridors, monsters and occasional nudity, if ever there was a tale that seemed designed to be reproduced on a giant scale it was Red Nails.

But, while those are my thoughts on the matter, a blog is no blog without feedback. It's merely one of those awful static websites that belong in the dustbin of history. So, that in mind, which were your favourite Treasury Editions?

Incredible Hulk #121. The Glob.

If a man should learn something from every experience in life, He should learn two things from The Incredible Hulk #121. He should learn never to hang around in a motel next to a swamp - you never know what might come calling - and he should learn never to fling barrels of radiation into the Everglades.

But of course, Glenn Talbot and Betty Ross pay no heed to the former advice, while the Hulk pays no mind to the latter. And so is born one of my favourite Hulk tales as the Glob stalks the sludge.

The Glob's created when a slightly miffed Hulk flings barrels of radioactive material into the swamp, causing the mutated resurrection of a long-dead escaped convict.

When he died, that convict had one thought on his mind - to get to the woman he loved.

Unfortunately that woman, like the convict, is long dead so he goes instead for Betty Ross and when he kidnaps her, mistaking her for his former love, it's mere pages before the Hulk and Glob are fighting. But, as the Glob re-enters the swamp and starts to dissolve thanks to a load of chemicals Thunderbolt Ross has poured in, the muck monster holds Betty aloft for the Hulk to rescue, leaving the Hulk to reflect on the possibility that he's lost someone who could've been his friend,

How could anyone not love this tale? Leaving aside that it's got a cover that can only be called spiffing, the Glob's easily my favourite comic book swamp monster, leaving the likes of the Man-Thing, the Heap, the Swamp-Thing and the other Glob far behind. Herb Trimpe's art's perfect for the story, and Roy Thomas weaves a tidy tale that at times feels suitably feverish. The fact that we never get to know the name of the long dead convict, even when we get his back-story told in flashback, adds to the vaguely nightmarish nature of the story. But of course it's not the Hulk's nightmare, it's the Glob's.

It's easy to compare the Glob to those other swamp creatures but, with its resurrected monster looking for the woman he once loved, only to be swallowed by the mire, I detect the influence of a million and one Mummy movies. It seems that's the third thing to be learned today; be you mummy or muck monster; learn to let go.

Nostrils and monsters. Life's a beach on the island of terror.

Never explain and never apologise. Neil Gaiman once told me that.

When I say he, "told me," he told me nothing of the sort. I've never met him and he's never met me. That's probably for the best, as I have a much daintier nose than him and I'm told these writers can easily plunge into a jealous rage.

But the advice I began this post with, I read it in an article he once wrote, and The Incredible Hulk #170 (AKA, The Mighty World of Marvel #176) is a perfect example of its correctness, as, having seen off the Bi-Beast, the Hulk and Betty Ross find themselves on a mystery island. With no immediate way to leave, the Hulk takes on the role of protector and provider, while Betty Ross takes on the role of annoying woman who keeps running off and having to be rescued.

The island, you see, is home to a bunch of giant monsters. Where they come from and how they got there, we don't know. Not only that but the monsters themselves don't know. It seems they're from outer space but the hows, whys, whats and wherefores are so long forgotten they've degenerated into little more than animals. All we - and they  - know is they speak in cryptic symbols, without the aid of speech balloons, and they're very keen on killing Betty Ross. This means that, when she flees the Hulk one time too many, they take her off to be sacrificed, at which point the Hulk flings them to their deaths in a volcano, before a rescue helicopter arrives.

You can't get round it. With its almost total lack of clarity as to what's going on and the unlikelihood that such gigantic creatures could've remained undiscovered on a small island for what seems to have been thousands of years, it's tempting to write the whole episode off as a hallucination caused by the infected wound we know Betty has.The problem is I'm pretty sure the Hulk makes a reference to the monsters in a later tale, so it looks like if it was a hallucination it's one they were both sharing.

I've mentioned before that in 1975 The Mighty World of Marvel disappeared from my local newsagents, again without explanation and apology, but this was the first Hulk story I read upon its return. It seemed a strange tale then and it seems a strange tale now. And that strangeness lies at the heart of its appeal. However frustrating its lack of answers, it's that very lack of answers that makes it live long in the memory.

So, it looks like Neil Gaiman was right. There is a strength in not explaining things. Maybe I should write a post without any explanations. Maybe I should make a plaster cast of my nose and send it to him, leaving him none the wiser as to why. The power of mystery. The power of mystery.

Mighty World of Marvel Annual 1975.

Dads. Are they psychic - sometimes sensing their future blunders and taking action to make amends for them before they've even committed them?

A couple of years before he completely forgot to give me the Avengers 1977 annual for Christmas - meaning that, when he finally remembered, I got it in the Spring - my dad, for no reason I've ever been able to determine, gave me the 1975 Marvel Annual, weeks before Christmas. Clearly Christmas was a movable feast in his eyes.

Why he did it I shall never know but I know it was on a Thursday because Top of the Pops was on and David Essex was singing I'm Gonna Make You A Star, with a little help from The Goodies.

Well, David Essex was a big fat liar and never did make me a star but my future bitterness over his broken promises was the last thing on my mind right then because I suddenly had a Marvel annual to keep me warm through those long dark cold winter nights. This was the first Marvel annual I had after the 1972 Fleetway Marvel Annual that had so disappointed me at the time and this more than made up for it. Not only had I not read any of the stories before but blow me down if they weren't in full colour too.

So, what did we get for our 90p?

Well, we got lots of Hulk. First up we got a double-length helping of him and his encounter with Captain Omen's undersea kingdom that owed nothing to Captain Nemo. Clearly Steve Englehart had the same kind of mentality that I had when it came generating names.

When it came to the tale itself, I was most struck by Captain Omen's bright red metal tentacles the Hulk thought were giant worms, the wide-bodiedness of his crew, the salivary goodness of Aquon and most of all  the shocking denouement as the crew of Omen's ship exploded in the lower air pressure of the surface world. Never before had my youthful mind reeled before such titanic terror. There were other things that grabbed me  too; the fact that General Thunderbolt Ross had been captured by the Russians, and that one of Captain Omen's crew kept a leaf as a sacred relic of the surface world.

This was followed by the Hulk's first punch-up with Zzzax, the creature from the Dynamo. I like Zzzax. Zzzax always referred to himself in the third perzzon and was as stupid as they came. This is how a Hulk villain should be. Through the story I also got a bit of a lesson in electricity from Hawkeye, thanks to which I've never been tempted to use my electric toaster in the bath.

Finishing off the annual we had what for me was its highlight; the Hulk's first-ever encounter with the Silver Surfer. The Hulk's determined to force the Surfer to take him into outer space, where he can escape the puny humans who hound him. The trouble is the Surfer's not allowed to go into space, thanks to the orders of Galactus. Violence follows - the ironic ending being that, after discovering where the Hulk came from, the Surfer's about to cure him, with his cosmic powers but the Hulk thinks he's about to attack him. The Hulk hits the Surfer in preemptive "retaliation" and the Surfer takes his board home and leaves.

Sandwiched in between all this green goodness were a series of pin-ups, mostly the covers to the issues from which the annual's tales originated. There was also a very curious pin-up of the Hulk landing in what seems to be a courtyard, as a bunch of oddly-dressed men run away and a strange looking tank waits  in the background. I don't have a clue who did it. It's clearly not by what you'd call one of Marvel's top rank artists. The issue also features what for me's quite a special pin-up, a reproduction of Marie Severin's  cover to Tales To Astonish #99. Unless there's something wrong with the version on GCD, the one in the annual's clearly been re-embellished noticeably and it looks genuinely epic, which is why I'm reproducing it here.

So David Essex didn't make me a star and my dad never again displayed anything that resembled psychic powers but I had an underwater kingdom and a rider of the space ways to keep me happy and, in the often blighted days of the early 1970s, that was enough.

PS. Don't forget the breathless results of our Captain America vs Daredevil poll are in, fresh from the burning inferno of democracy -- and it's not good news for one of them.

Steve Does Comics' 100th issue special

Hooray, Steve Does Comics celebrates its 100th postiversary.

That's right, despite often lengthy and unexplained absences, I've somehow managed to rack up 100 missives on this blog. And to celebrate - and avoid me having to do any proper writing - I thought I'd look at how some of my favourite heroes marked their 100th issues. I'm only including tales I've actually read, so I'm afraid the likes of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman don't make the list.

Daredevil marks his 100th appearance with a tale I have no memory of whatsoever, although I'm sure I must have read it in the pages of Mighty World of Marvel. Judging by the cover, it seems to follow the Marvel trend of having a load of old foes show up to mark the occasion. Unfortunately, it probably also highlights the fact that most of his foes were a bit on the so-so side.

I said there was a trend with these things. Like Daredevil, Spider-Man fights a whole villains' gallery of his deadliest foes - this time in his dreams. It all climaxes with him getting a mystical message from the late Captain Stacy before waking to find he has six arms. Words can't describe how much I loved the six arms when I was eleven.

This is how to celebrate a 100th issue. Everyone who's ever been an Avenger up to that point - including the Swordsman - goes to war with Olympus. I read this in the pages of Marvel UK's Titans mag. Thanks to the ground-breaking landscape format, the art was shrunk to the size of a postage stamp but Barry Smith's art still shone through.

Just like Spider-Man and Daredevil, the Fantastic Four get to fight a whole bunch of their greatest foes. I think they were the first of Marvel's Silver Age heroes to make a hundred appearances, so they can at least claim to have been the ones who set the trend. Sadly, the foes in question are only robots, and the not-exactly-awesome villains behind it all are the Thinker and Puppet Master who manage to blow themselves up through their own incompetence.

Thor celebrates Journey Into Mystery's big ton by tackling Mr Hyde. Mr Hyde might not be one of Marvel's greatest - or best dressed - villains but, like the Gray Gargoyle and the Cobra, I've always had a soft spot for him. Love the smiley Thor pic in the top left corner box.

One of Marie Severin's best efforts sees the strongest man on land tackle the strongest man in water, as the Hulk and Sub-Mariner square up to each other. Again the Puppet Master's involved, this time looking like Donald Pleasance. I seem to recall the story's set in Miami, which, when I read this story, as a kid, impressed me greatly, even though I'd never heard of Miami.

The very new New X-Men grapple with the original X-Men. Again, it's only a bunch of robots they're up against but, happily, despite the appearance of a bald bloke on the cover, it's not the Puppet Master who's behind it. This was the first issue of the new X-Men I ever had and I didn't have a clue what was going on or who any of these people were. But I knew one thing. It grabbed me. The tale was a roller coaster ride of action, tension and human drama, starting with the scrap between new and old X-Men and ending with a battle to escape a solar flare, and the genesis of the whole Phoenix saga. Could they have crammed more into a comic if they'd tried? 

Of the above tales, I have to say the X-Men, Avengers and Hulk/Subby stories are the ones that stand out most in my memory and, like the visiting judge at a prize marrow contest, I think I have to give first prize to the X-Men which really was a classic in every way imaginable.