Customer Reviews

Essential Incredible Hulk, Vol. 2 (Marvel Essentials)

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The Marvel Essential series is perfect for both novice comics fans and the hardcore faithful, providing 500+ pages of comics for less than .... Some of the collections vary in quality; the first Hulk collection is a bit spotty, with weak writing and inconsistent reproduction. But Hulk vol. 2 is a much better package. The reproduction is uniformly crisp, and the quality of the stories improve greatly. Granted, the stories aren't as deep or rewarding as Peter David's long run (or even Bill Mantlo's 80's run), but it's a fun romp nonetheless. If you're looking for more good fun, I highly recommend Marvel's Essential Fantastic Four vol. 3 and the Essential Spider-man collections (all are wonderful!). You can't go wrong here!

When I think of "The Incredible Hulk" it starts from the period covered in "The Essential Hulk, Volume 2," when Herb Trimpe was doing the pencils and John Severin was doing the inks. This is not to be confused with the period right before that when Herb Trimpe was doing the inks over Marie Severin's pencils. This only sounds confusing because we are talking about the Trimpe-Severin period and not the Severin-Trimpe period, and while this is the same Trimpe it is different Severins, although they are brother and sister. Collected in this volume are "Tales to Astonish" #92-101, at which point the Hulk and the rest of the Marvel superheroes doing time shares in comics like the Sub-Mariner, Captain America and Doctor Strange, got their own titles. Namor's title started with issue #1 while "The Incredible Hulk" picked up at #102 and we continue through #117.

The Hulk benefited from getting a full twenty pages each month instead of the ten page more so that the other characters. That was because with Captain America, Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Dr. Strange the Marvel writers and artists came up with pretty good multi-part stories. However, a key part of the Hulk is the whole transformation bit back forth from the Hulk to Bruce Banner, and that is hard to do every issue when you only have ten pages. Stan Lee does the writing for most of the issues and if you compare these stories to those in Volume 1 of "The Essential Hulk" you will find that the main thing is upping the ante on the Hulk's opponents. This time around Ol' Greenskin gets the Silver Surfer, the Rhino, the Missing Link, the Mandarin, Ka-Zar, the Sand-Man, and the return of the Leader. There is a lot of borrowing from other comic books, but when you are coming up with lame original villains like the Space Parasite, this is not a bad thing. The best story lines of the bunch are the multi-part story with the High Evolutionary and the one in the land of the Inhumans in the first "Hulk" annual, although his best fight is with the Sub-Mariner, which is what took place in the second to last issue of "Tales to Astonish" that they shared together, #100 (nice touch).

The issues collected her are a definite improvement over Volume 1, but the glory days are still to come. Hopefully we can get to Volume 3 in this series so you can see for yourself, but only Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four have gotten that far so far. I do not mind that these collections are just in black & white because I appreciate the economics involved and if you want your favorite title in color the Marvel Masterworks series is getting around to those as well. You just have to be patient, because it might be a long haul. Final Note: Great choice of using the Hulk from #105 for the cover of this collection.

Dr. Robert Bruce Banner is a weak yet intelligent scientist with a dark secret: high emotions cause him to transform into the huge greeb monster known as the Hulk- a creature of immesurable strength who just wants to be alone. But when he's angry, he resorts to breaking things. Did I say secret? My bad, Banner's secret identity was revealed to the public in the first Essential volume. But Bruce went inti hiding shortlly thereafter. Military General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross is the man who had hounded the Hulk all these years and still does not trust him completely. Major Glenn Talbot also distrusts Bruce Banner for differant reasons- because both are in love with the beautiful Betty Ross. Betty obviosuly has her heart set on Bruce, but he's almost never around.

This anthology collects the last issues of Tales to Astonish (#92-101, Hulk stories only) before changing to the Incredible Hulk(Volume 2) with Issues 102-117 and the first Incredible Hulk Annual all from the late 60s. With Namor out of the picture, Hulk now has twenty-plus pages all to himself(Tales to Astonish was a comic shared between two superheroes who each got aobut ten pages worth of story). Now Marvel's second Silver Age hero is up for bigger battles written by Stan Lee with art by John Romita and various other artists.

The stories get bigger with each issue. One flaw is taht a trend starts to develop between some issues (Hulk somehow winds up in extraterrestrial place. Hulk proves his worth to the foreigners and is zapped back to Earth.) There also aren't many new villains except for lame part-timers like the Man-Beast, Galaxy Master, Space Parasite and Umu the Unliving or something. Most of Hulk's enemies are guest stars- Tales to Astonish #100 features a titanic showdown between Hulk and Namor the Sub-Mariner, current stars of the book. Other guest stars include Nick Fury, the Silver Surfer, Ka-Zar, the Inhumans and the good dudes from Asgard. The guest villains include the Mandarin, the High Evolutionary, the Sandman, Maximus, the Puppet Master and the Executioner. But one of Hulk's major villains in his small stable of villains unexpectedly returns in an awesome three-parter that ends the book and proves that Hulk deserves this rating. Now when's Volume Three coming out?

Picking up where the last volume of essentials left off, The Essential Incredible Hulk, volume two finishes up the Hulk's appearances in Tales to Astonish and chronicles his first exploits as the title shifts over to the Incredible Hulk, volume two. Although black and white in this reprint, the adventures are retold faithfully in all their glory, and have some excellent moments of high adventure and tragedy. Key points of interest include the Hulk's first meeting with the Silver Surfer, some adventures off-world, and the return of the Hulk's most deadly enemy, the Leader.

These tales also mark the winding down period of Stan Lee's run as a writer on the book, which is a good thing despite Stan being one of the co-creators of the character. While Stan has a lot of energy in his tales, he never seemed to be able to lock in what exactly he wanted out of the Hulk. Was he lashing out at humanity or protecting it? Was he capable of speaking coherently or in the trademark caveman talk? These inconsistencies do pop up here and there, along with a couple of odd decision, such as the Hulk's "Big Premier Issue" starting in the middle of a story arc. However, the tales are told with such passion and whimsy that the inconsistencies and oddities are easily dismissible. This volume of the Hulk is indeed essential, continuing the development of one of the best characters in comics and introducing some of his truly classic adventures.

The inconsistent tales of the green skinned monster continue from the origin stories in this second volume - much more of Betty Ross and much less of Rick Jones, Ross and Talbot, the somewhat limited support cast. The Hulk gets out and about here, as he mingles with some of Marvel's voguish galactic characters of the time like the Watcher, the Silver Surfer and others. These for me make poor stories, born of the need to find enemies strong enough to stand up to the somewhat over-strengthed Hulk, who gets stronger as the series progresses somehow. But the welcome return of the Leader perks it up (he is a gamma version of the Mad Thinker from the Fantastic Four series complete with his matching android) and there are some dramatic touches such as Banner dying (but don't fear, coming back from the dead is a staple characteristic for any self-respecting for comic hero and villain). It includes a couple of fun stories with the Mandarin, and a great slug-fest with the Sub-Mariner goes well with tussles with Sandman and the Rhino.

Stan Lee sometimes cavates the scripting but settled into a very solid run towards the end here with Herb Trimpe and Dan Adkins drawing. Lee's scripts tend to 're-set the clock' by revisiting the origin and doing away with continuity, which can be frustrating as everytime you think General Ross will come to understand he can't win, he flip-flops and rolls out the tanks. For all that Lee has great ideas and rarely over-complicates.

The only draw back is that the more Hulk stories you read, the less you have to look forward to by way of originality as the basic themes exhaust themselves. But stronger than the original for writing and art.

As amazed as I was at how good the first volume of the Essential Hulk was, I was just as impressed with Volume 2. I was looking for the fall off I've seen in so many other volume twos, but Stan Lee and Herb Trimpe really continued a strong storytelling process here. I agree with some of the other reviewers that moving to a full book partway through this collection only added to the ability to tell a great story.
The other thing with these Hulk collections is he is the best character to translate into the black and white format. We all know he's green, but that doesn't seem to matter when reading him in the Essential series; I don't miss the color as much.
After reading this volume, I look forward to the next one - To be Hulkinued!

I love graphic novels as much as the next collector and have just about everything listed by Amazon. Not exactly everything, but a great percentage. This graphic novels should actually be rated and listed the same as regular novels, because the dynamics of their stories, not just the fantastic artwork, takes you away to places that novels, such as STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, CHILDHOOD'S END, FOUNDATION, RINGWORLD, STAR TREK novels, DARKEYE: CYBER HUNTER and so forth, take you. All are extremely imaginative and have visually-gratifying narrative/dialogue not too far removed from graphic novels such as this or any other. Broaden your minds, but hang on to the graphic novels as well!

The bad bad bad reviewer from the first volume is a dumbas dumbass dumbass.The style and amount of action in this comic is perfectly satisfying.It will make you understand why the hulk trusts no one because of how he's been betrayed.It's great to see how the Hulks character evolves as he starts to learn more about his own history and his relations with others.The love,hate,and misunderstanding that exists amongst the struggles between Bruce Banner The Hulk Betty Ross General Talbot and the General makes for an excellent story.Great artwork/Not in color.The person who said The Hulk from volume three is the best version is a dumbass. This one is the best.There is a lot of print so you'll have lots of time to enjoyit. Almost ever story in this novel has you rooting for The Hulk.You'll really get into each story and be wondering what's going to happen next and what the conclusion will be.It's amazing to see how Stan Lee weaves one story into the next.Cast-Of course Namor+Thunderbolt Ross+Betty Ross+General Talbot/Puppet Master/ Silver Surfer/High Evolutionary+New Men/Inhumans/Rhino/Sandman/ Mandarin/Ka-zaar/Galaxy Master/A Radioactive Monster/Space Parasite/Exexecuctioner and Enchantress+Asgardians/Umbu The Unliving/A Giant Android/Nick Fury and Sheild+A version of Sheild from another nation/Living Lightning Legion
The battle between the best, Namor and the Hulk,is really great
Spoiler Alert.
Warning Warning.
Here it comes
I'm serious. .
The Hulk dies.
Just Kidding.
Seriously The Hulk doesn't die but instead just the opposite happens.Someone "comes back to life" and that someone as you might have guessed is the Leader.The last story in this book is the best. It is about an evil plan being carried out by the Leader and it will make you believe that nothing can stop The Hulk.Be warned if you read this book you'll "need" to read volume three because you'll love volume two so much and it will leave you in suspense.The only problem with volume one is that the amount of dialouge used by The Hulk is a bit excessive and some of it seemed unneccesary but you could probably care less when you read it.