iFanboy Video Podcast
Show Notes
Green Hulk the strongest one there is? The Red Hulk has something to say about that and the fans had a lot to say while it all happened. Jeph Loeb wove an epic run on Hulk, respecting the character’s past while adding some new and exciting aspects to the lore.
We’re Discussing Red Hulk? Really?
The iFanboy guys are as surprised as you are that we’re discussing Red Hulk. But after a few positive reviews and practicing what we preach, we decided to give Hulk a read and found that it was really quite enjoyable!
Red Hulk is Fun. Why?
One of the main reasons why Red Hulk was so enjoyable because it was a great pairing of creators with Jeph Loeb writing for Ed McGuiness. The book was fun to read in both the story and dialogue as well as the art. It’s even got something for every fan of the Marvel Universe, with appearances by The Defenders, X-Force, and The Avengers.
Red Hulk’s Identity Revealed!
As with the other classic Loeb stories, the Red Hulk was a mystery, centered around the Red Hulk’s identity. While it was figured out by several keen readers, the reveal of his identity paid off and was completely rewarding.
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THREADLESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1986 Best Baseball Team, EVER. Let’s Go Mets!
just finished watching it. good job, fellas.
I have never enjoyed anything Loeb has written. and I’ve accepted that.
I haven’t really enjoyed much of Loeb’s work either, but that’s because I took it all too seriously. This seems fun and with that, I think I’ll give it a taste at Borders’
Hey guys, could you post the link to Gary’s article that you mentioned?
I havn’t read Red Hulk but Ron sold it with "Anything with Modok"
I hated the Red Hulk run every step of the way. Childish story telling featuring great art. What a let down after the fantastic Planet Hulk and decent World War Hulk.
Aaagh! This episode and VinceB from 11 o’clock have convinced me to try Hulk. Wow.
… but where does his moustache go?
@Minion have you read the Long Halloween Trilogy of Batman books? i found those to be great!
yeah….where DOES the mustache go?!
Excellent episode. I’m also reading Red Hulk in trades right now (I already had the Red Hulk’s identity "spoiled" before this episode though, so don’t worry) and finding it immensely enjoyable.
Hulk is strongest one there is!
Alllllmost an apology to Loeb in this episode, but not quite.
I read the series for the first few years or so. It was okay and definitely fun quite a bit of the time. But saying that it’s "really quite good", guys? If this is an example of a "really quite good" comic, than the standards have dropped considerably. Things can be "okay", "fine" and "fun" without being "really quite good". And I know that the line between these things is kinda subjective, but the iFanboys I knew a few years ago woulda never held this up as an example of good comics. This is comin’ from someone who bought the series for a long time without (much) regret. It was fine, the art was really nice in some parts. But the writing is so atrocious and insultingly stupid that I can’t call the overall package good. Not as totally without merit as some critics screamed. But definitely not good.
froggulper-
So you paid money for something that you consider atrocious and insultingly stupid?
"This is comin’ from someone who bought the series for a long time without (much) regret"
Everyone is so worried that they are going to give Loeb some credit- that it’s like a defense mechanism to insult him
and hedge your bets- Face IT – You liked it.
You liked it- bc overall it was Good.
End of story.
I will admit that I hated Hulk when Rulk appeared. However ever since I started listening to iFanboy every series they have recommended to others I have picked up and enjoyed. So eventually I’ll read this in trade. Good show guys
@josh I don’t know if you did it on purpose, but Ron didn’t catch how you allowed Conor to introduce himself and you went ahead and said Ron’s name for him. Pretty funny.
@jonsamuelson https://ifanboy.com/content/articles/RED_HULK_identity_REVEALED__Or_Theorized_At_Least___
@froggulper: You’re right, it is totally subjective and different for everybody. You’re wrong that we wouldn’t have liked it a few years ago: here’s my review of Vol. 1 from a year and a half ago.
@RahUniQueI haven’t but I’ve never been a big fan of the main Batman title. I just seem to prefer him in small doses. I may give it a shot though because I have heard from quite a few people that it is good.
What’s the entire reading list for the Red Hulk storyline? tradewise…
I should really read this. What are all the collected editions to this story?
@SirCox – So far, it seems like there are five trades out with a sixth coming soon. They are:
HULK Vol. 1 – RED HULK
HULK Vol. 2 – RED & GREEN
HULK Vol. 3 – HULK NO MORE
HULK Vol. 4 – HULK VS. X-FORCE
HULK Vol. 5 – FALL OF THE HULKS
HULK Vol. 6 – WORLD WAR HULKS (Comes out in November)
As far as I can tell, there seem to be some supplemental material in other FALL OF THE HULKS books but they don’t seem to be written by Loeb. These six books should bring you up to issue 24 of the main series.
Hey Ron & co.–thanks for mentioning my article again, and as always, great work! I’ll admit, I didn’t like #23–there were still some things that irked me and you can read all about that on my own blog, Delusional Honesty (link in my profile!). I too agree that the Red Hulk saga Loeb crafted was better than he was immediately given credit for. Sure, some pieces just don’t fit in the larger Hulk mythos, but casual readers won’t catch it. That said, the majority of the continuity holds up, and it’s a fun story.
As for the trades: 1) Hulk: Red Hulk, 2) Hulk: Red & Green, 3) Hulk: Hulk No More, 4) Hulk Vs. X-Force, 5) Hulk: Fall of the Hulks, and the upcoming 6) Hulk: World War Hulks. The last 2 crossover with the Greg Pak-written volumes bearing much the same name (but "Incredible" is a part of their names). And don’t forget Jeff Parker and Gabriel Hardman have just begun their own run on the Red Hulk with HULK #25, which is getting some acclaim around the web.
Toodles!
~Gary, the biggest Hulk fan Ron knows!
Yeah… looks like this is an episode I won’t be Dl’ing on iTunes. It’s just as well, I’m behind a month.
PS: I love you Minion. Let’s be friends.
Great episode. I just started re-reading the Red Hulk saga, and you can tell he had it planned from the start. The fanboy ire over this series makes me love it even more. I remember at the last ECCC con some teenager spent about 6 minutes giving loeb shit in front of a room full of people about Hulk picking up Thor’s hammer, it was hilarious and sad.
No Churchill love? I thought his issues were gorgeous.
There is no way I will ever try and read Jeph Loeb Hulk again. It was shit when I read it about 1 1/2 ago, and it’ll be shit now. Sure that is my opinion and mine alone; it seems like a lot of people really like it now. But you can’t pay me enough money to read more of Loeb’s decline in writing.
Now Jeff Parker/Gabriel Hardman’s Hulk….Now that’s a series a want to read!
I didn’t read this, but how does Ron do this show if he lives in SF……….he must know teleportation.
I’m seriously considering trying to read these issues again. I read the first couple and wasn’t blown away, but it sounds like as a whole they form a great storyline.
Kudos on another great video episode.
If you ask me, Hulk hasn’t been that good since Peter David left.
Wow, you need six trades to get 24 issues worth of story? That’s like four issues each!!
@genericscreenname: I like to be positive regarding what they all do today, but I kinda feel the same way. I have dipped into Hulk here and there post-David (Byrne, Jones, Pak) but was never quite satisfied. I will say that I bought Hulk #25 at iFanboy’s behest, and the art was great, but the story just OK. This is a great opportunity to plug the Hulk Visionaries: Peter David TPBs, all available from InstockTrades.com.
I read the first arc in issues and absolutely loved them! I sort of just lost interest a few issues later because of the change in artists(Even though I love Cho’s work) and other books taking priority for me. I thought I would end up getting the trades as they came out, but never did. After watching this podcast though, It’s definitely back on my radar! I may even pick up #25 next time at my LCS!
Can anyone tell me? Regarding the trades for this run, are any of them able to be skipped? Would it be possible or even make sense to just read 1-24 of the Hulk without delving into the crossovers? or is 1-24 really all that the trades consist of(averaging out to only four issues per book?)?
Oh my god this series is so awful. I just tried reading the first four trades today and I could only get past the first two.
The plot and writing is everywhere, things happen for exactly no reason. The ‘mystery’ of Red Hulk is barely anything but that and it’s a joke. It’s insulting, it really is as a reader. Even if this is suppose to be ‘big, dumb fun’ it fails in entertaining because just throwing things on a dartboard to turn into an issue doesn’t work.
Please people, to anyone who hasn’t read this yet…..don’t. It will insult your intelligence and even if you want big, dumb fun it won’t entertain you there. It’s like a 8 year old wrote this comic and it shows.
The first 15 or so issues didn’t really gel with me, but when you get into the later issues and see how everything interconnects, I started to see how smart Loeb’s story as a whole was. Issue 24, especially, was great because it put all the previous events of the series, even the silliest monents, into perspective. It took a little long to get to the mystery, but once we did right at the beginning of Fall Of Hulks, this story really started to shine.
I still don’t quite like that Defenders vs. Offenders story, but that’s a tiny unnecessary blip.
@comicbookchris: My problem with that, with any series, is that why would I want to continue if (you even admit yourself) the beginning didn’t start off strong?
A series could have a fantastic run midway through, like Scalped, but if the beginning of it is boring or even bad to read…..Why would anyone want to continue further? I’m just saying that idea of keep reading even if you hate it to get somewhat rewarded is a weird statement in general.
@TNC Because Loeb’s story had a clear beginning and end. I fell off the wagon with the series, but as I went back when World War Hulks was going on, I realized something: this is written as a typical mystery. Silly things that seem to happen for no reason may seem dumb at the time being, but once you reach the end, you see WHY everything happened and it all fit beautifully.
It’s kind of like reading The Maltese Falcon and stopping a quarter way through saying "This doesn’t make any sense! Things are happening and we don’t even know why! And this Joel Cairo character comes out of nowhere and makes a random appearance! SO dumb!" With a good mystery, you’re not going to have a complete and cohearant frame of reference until everything is on the table…which usually happens at the end.
@comicbookchris: Okay I’m sorry; but when you link this up with the Maltese Falcon then we’re done talking this.
Twas silly of me to explain why I liked something to someone who vehemently tries to find reasons to complain about said thing and actively discourages people to read a suggested title for themselves.
To anyone else interested in my tiny analysis, just imagine that your name is next to the @ symbol and perhaps we can have a civilized talk.
… I don’t know. For the first two years the book is being published, you literally don’t know who the main character is, and it doesn’t matter? When the Hulk’s dual nature was always the point of the Hulk?
I don’t know.
I think when you turn to the page where the helicarrier is crashing and Iron Man exclaims, "Oh, the humanity!" it’s a litmus test for what you want out of a book, and what I want is the exact opposite of that in every way.
There are just random things happening in this book and Loeb does nothing to explain it. The 2nd trade I read had Hulk going from his Joe Fixit persona, back to dumb Hulk, to a Wendihulk in a span of 2 issues…..Did I miss something? Because Loeb never explains these events occurring and he quickly goes from one set piece to another. Now I’m not saying I want a scientific, nerdy response to that sequence. I’m just saying that Loeb will, lazily I might add, bring these plot developments in an issue. But apparently that is considered good comic book writing for a lot of people.
If this was Bendis, Johns, or anyone else we hold to a higher candle then they would be crucified for writing like this. But since it’s Loeb, and he hasn’t done anything remarkably high caliber for a long time now, most people have no choice but say this is a ‘high point’ of his career.
TheNextChampion is baiting for some attention.
I read the fist 11 or so issues. I thought 1-8 were so bad they were kind of fun. I thought 9-11 were just bad.
I will be trying Parker’s run, cuz I like his writing.
@Jimski I think the problem is that we’re only given concrete clues to the identity of Red Hulk really late in Loeb’s run. In the beginning, they avoid displaying any of Ross’ strong charactistics in order not give him away. Take that away from a Hulk, and pretty much all you have is smashing. It’s what made the early issues weak.
Read the first issue of Hulk; didn’t like it. Later on gave it another chance; I love it! Now I’m enjoying Parker & Hardman on Rulk!
This episode was like seeing movie reviewers you respect praising the Star Wars prequels.
I actually read the first 14 or so issues of this series, and it is a lot of fun. Hopefully, they’ll collect it in a nice big HC becaues McGuiness’ art is really awesome.
I wish that I had discovered this video earlier, I love Rulk! You guys hit it out of the park, if you hate Red Hulk, you probably haven’t read the book.
This episode/video podcast was awesome. I remember hearing all the buzz about a Red Hulk and got the graphic novel. I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who does that.
I think that a lot of hard core fans were really upset in the beginning because of the things that Jeph had done early on. I wasn’t a fan of Rulk hitting the Uatu the Watcher and I thought of him as an antagonist sure. It was the 4th book with X-Factor that I saw the character start to change and grow. Like you guys had mentioned when you take all the books from the two year run that Jeph and Ed had done it’s amazing. I also love what Jeff Parker is doing with the book now.