NOTHING THAT HASN'T BEEN SPOILED ALREADY

Okay, being a fan of the Incredible Hulk for over 20 years, I'd like to exercise my right to laundry-list my complaints about Jeph Loeb's HULK series that have been bothering me since the series' inception. I believe this is the third re-launch of the Hulk book, where the powers-that-be at Marvel decided they didn't like the way there were enough issues to get in the triple digits, so they just get a new creative team and start it over at #1. The last time they did this, it took a long time to get good, and the current story is no exception. Where Greg Pak left off with Planet Hulk, an excellent story, Jeph Loeb is starting over and ignoring all that has come before. If you'd like to skip my complaints, just know that I rate the artwork by Ed McGuinness as high as Jeph Loeb's storytelling is poor. So here goes:

1) STUPID.  WTF?, a GUN takes out the Abomination? I don't care if it is a gun big enough for the Hulk to hold, there is no gun that can take out a creature that has hide as thick as the Hulk (which can withstand rockets, molten lava, lasers, enchanted uru hammers, nuclear waste and even an atomic explosion).

2) BORING!  How are we supposed to get invested in a book's re-launch when the dialogue is sparse and all we seem to get are splash pages (four in this latest issue) and fight scenes? On top of that, this book follows the latest Incredible Hulk motion picture, so if Marvel wanted moviegoers to pick up Hulk and become new readers, it's a little odd that we haven't had much of the Green Hulk anywhere in the story.

3) INSULTING.  Through Planet Hulk and World War Hulk, every comic reader got a least a passing idea of the Hulk's character, who had become very smart, calculating and was mad-as-hell at the Illuminati for killing his wife and child. Now, we have the old Green Hulk again, who is dim-witted and doesn't seem to remember coming back to Earth to smash everybody. Now, Iron Man has offered to help the Hulk at the end of issue #5, and I'm willing to bet good money that next issue Hulk doesn't remember a thing about his super-intense hatred for Tony Stark.

4) UNIMAGINATIVE.  Okay, I get that somehow Rick Jones is now the new Abomination. We've seen gamma radiation turn ordinary people into hulking powerhouses. As we've been told in past issues, Banner suffers from multiple personality disorder, which means he has a weak scientist personality, a childlike and angry personality, a clever and self-absorbed personality, and others – which have explained his variations in appearance and behavior over the years. This said, WHY does A-Bomb automatically become stupid because he transforms into a blue super-powered behemoth? It's like Loeb said "We're gonna make Rick Jones turn into another Hulk-like creature, so of course we're gonna have him talking like a four year-old.

5) INCONSISTENT.  In the past, we've had Hulk and Thor go toe-to-toe because they both had equal power levels. Now that Thor has returned, he has the same power level as before as well as the Odin Power. Jeph Loeb doesn't seem to realize this, and the battle that commences between Red Hulk and Thor indicates this.

By now, everybody has come to the conclusion that Red Hulk is Doc Samson. All signs were pointing here from the beginning. But I'm starting to get suspicious that this theory has been manipulated and I'm not falling for the misdirection. I've developed my own theories, and they are: After World War Hulk, the Hulk has been split into at least two separate entities. One is the Red Hulk, who contains most of the cleverness, malice and hatred from Banner's dark side, which is why he had no hesitation to killing the Abomination. Green Hulk has been left inside Banner, but when he comes out he finds that most of his super-strength now resides in the Red Hulk, which is why Rulk wins so easily. It also may be the case that much of the Hulk's energy has been transferred to Rick Jones, causing his transformation to A-Bomb. That part's a MAYBE. Another MAYBE is that the Red Hulk is so much more powerful because he somehow absorbed the energy from Stark's satellite laser blast.

I'll keep reading just to see how the murder mystery turns out, but so far I'm pretty disappointed.

"Rolling Thunder"
Story: Jeph Loeb – 1 (Ghastly)
Art: Ed McGuinness – 4 (Exceptional)