This isn't really a review of this comic so much as a rant against what the Hulk has become in recent years.

I read the other reviews here and I think I'm finally starting to get the reason that the Hulk doesn't work as a book supporting character for so many people.  Many people think of the Hulk as a "Force of Nature", that he's like a storm, or an earthquake, or a volcano.  That's not what the Hulk is, and the fact that so many writers (Peter David gloriously excluded) write him this way is the reason that his stories are often so boring.  I mean, one can only watch the Washington Monument get destroyed in some disaster movie so many times before it becomes more of the same old same old.

The Hulk is Bruce Banner's Id.  It is his innermost desire, and his innermost fear unleashed upon the world.  The Hulk is every repressed desire for pleasure and release that Bruce Banner has ever had.  And it is the fact that Banner is the weeniest, weakest, most repressed person imaginable that dictates that the Hulk, when released, is a raging torrent of testosterone and destruction.  He is the exact opposite of Bruce Banner in every conceivable way.  The gray Hulk is a smooth pimp-daddy, good with the ladies, good with words, and an epic ass-kicker in a fight.  The green Hulk is pure selfish rage, capable of nothing but lashing out in anger and bravado, but also capable of selfless protection of the weak.  On some level the Hulk is everything Banner wants to be, and is terrified of being at the same time.  The reason that the Hulk is as physically powerful as he is, is because Banner is so physically impotent.  And therein lies what should be the crux of good Hulk/Banner story telling.  You have the dichotomy of a brilliant and gentle man, who in a sense misused his intelligence by attempting to create a destructive weapon, is turned into exactly what he most despises (and perhaps secretly loves); an out of control, mindless, raging font of destruction, and he was turned into this by the very bomb he created.  He did this to himself.  He can't stop it, but he must always try.

I think a large part of this Jekyll and Hyde type of relationship between Banner and the Hulk is lost when every Tom, Dick, and Harry also turns into a huge strong guy when exposed to gamma radiation.  I think even Peter David over did it a little bit with the percentage of people, who upon exposure to gamma rays became "super", but at least with his stories it affected all people differently.  The Leader was also seemingly a manifestation of what Samuel Sterns wished that he were, or wished he could be like on some level; brilliant.  Able to lord it over on all of the scientists who probably treated him like crap when he was their janitor.

I don't think Jeph Loeb gets that.  The Hulk isn't just some source of destruction.  He's not simply the "Summer Blockbuster" of Marvel characters.  He's a Greek tragedy for God's sake.  We should look at Bruce Banner and pity what he's become, what he's done to himself.  He should be the greatest character study in all of comics.  But writers never treat him like that.