Spike1138

February 4, 2011 4:22 am Would a 6-year old really be dropping knowing reference pop culture references to Arkham Asylum? That's just one step removed from a pre-schooler using the correct pronunciation of Cthulu.

I'm excited about this being made and getting a much wider audience, not least because it will propel Joe Hill deservedly up to the next level but I really worry how it will pan out dependent on how well they manage to get Bode right. In the early stages at least, more than half the story is focused on Bode and his exploration of the house and how he's not yet at that age (below 8, I would say) when he properly realises that these things he witnesses are not or should not be physically possible or necessarily sinister.

I guess the best way to surmise that sense is to say that what you really want for the character is a non-actor child to play the part rather than a child actor, although I realise that creates a production nightmare considering the number of scenes that would have to revolve around the character. What I mean is that you are looking for something more like Elliot's little sister Gertie in ET than Elliot himself, someone who would question what he's seeing, try to reason it out and say "But that's impossible!" an awful lot. His sister Gertie, on the other hand, while she does scream in surprise the first time she sees the alien in her house, quickly rationalises him as being "The Man from The Moon" and that explanation is perfectly sufficient for her understanding of the situation. Bode's encounters with the lady in the well, the ghost key and the head key need to be just like that.

I will be watching, but the first three volumes have set the bar pretty high for me. 

May 16, 2010 10:49 pm

On top of which - I read this issue directly after reading Sentry: Fallen Sun, which makes Hulk look like Dostoyevsky by comparison.

Seriously, did I die or get hit on the head and wake up in 1994 for some reason? Next thing you know, Rob Liefeld will be putting out a new series of Youngblood...

May 16, 2010 10:39 pm

Bad, awful, predictable and terrible.

 Absolutely not worth over 2 years of pointless teasing to get to this point. 

 

From the get-go, you have an aggressive, arrogant Hulk, who hates and obsesses over Bruce Banner but has advanced military and tactical training and SHIELD clearance.

 Could that be General Ross, by any chance? Why, yes it could.

 

For the love of god, how many times can you read the same dialogue boxes of "I have my own agenda but now is not the time to think of that or explain. My word, I hate Banner more than life itself for some indistinct wrong he did to me in the past, but I need him for now, for reasons that must remain my own"

 It's been going on like that for at least a year! Ever since the issue where Domino learned of his true identity, the ENTIRE story (except for a Doc Sampson interlude and one with Banner and A-Bomb) has been related via the Rulk's inner monologue - which by definition can reveal NOTHING that might further the plot!

 I've never known a series this gleefully frustrating and more perfectly positioned to just piss people off en-mass. A series that on every page just punches the barriers around my suspension of disbelief with consistently illogical and out-of-character behaviour and which seems totally determined to just take an enormous steaming turd over the continuity of the entire 616 Universe. In doing so, it has revived and cranked up all the worst excesses of the 90s from an editor in Chief, writer and staff who should know better. A year or two prior to Civil War, variant covers were almost a thing of the past. Now we have to put up with 2 or 3 standard covers, plus sketches and chase variants? It's Hulk's fault along with Irredeemable (another book with probably less than 300 words or 60 panels per issue, and I've lost count of the number of times I've picked up a wasted extra copy of an issue by mistake due to variant covers that bare no relation at all to the contents). They are ruining comics again and we should be smarter than this by now.

 As for out-of character behaviour and dire continuity, this is exactly what JMS had a problem with when he quit Thor in protest and I entirely support where he's coming from - you can either choose to have an integrated universe or ignore it. Editorial mandating is just getting totally out of control, but the left hand is not talking to the right hand.

 

For a few years now, Marvel has had a big crossover event running either parallel or concurrent with another much smaller event or major storyline. When Civil War was happening at the same time as Annihilation, Planet Hulk and all the cosmic stuff, it was a perfect arrangement. Then Bendis-time takes it's toll. Reading, as I do, both Mighty and New Avengers in hardcovers, it's obvious that the first 12 issues of Mighty take place over the space of 48hrs, before leading *directly* into Secret Invasion. Picking up in New, there is an impossible crossover with Mighty that cannot possibly happen within that timescale. And World War Hulk... goes where? Why is there no mention of it hardly anywhere else?

My point is, the Hulk books have been very much doing their own thing since Planet Hulk and in a way that's completely impossible to reconcile with anything else. That they are even consistent with each other even, is highly questionable. Jeff Loeb's Hulked Out Heroes and this reveal are the the latest in a long line of slaps in the face - Thor-Hulk? I mean, really. I was prepared to give this title the chance to prove me wrong and NOT insult my intelligence further, but I was sorely disappointed. The final straw here was Doomwar, which I refuse to even give the time of day - running three major overlapping events is foolish at best, but not impossible. But having one character (in this case Doom) be pivotal to the ordering of events but not even address the conflicting needs of each story is just plain negligent, patronising and needlessly confusing.

 You guys complain a lot on the show about the X-men recently not crossing over with other Marvel titles and just doing their own thing too much - I think that can only be a good thing in times like these and a sign of a disciplined editor tending dutifully to his patch. As it is, the whole line of Hulk books are damaged goods insofar as consistency goes and a OMD reset of the Hulk waking up in his SHEILD shuttlepod 5 years later, Bobby Ewing style would be the only way to salvage the situation.