Customer Reviews

The Incredible Hulk

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Designed for young readers, Kraft's narrative offers an introduction to the character of the Hulk and his world from its creation by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1962 to about 1981. Kraft focuses on the friends and foes of Banner and the Hulk, and these are featured in the three stories reprinted herein from _The Incredible Hulk_ (1st) No. 1 (May 1962), though with a gray Hulk re-colored to his more traditional green (as noted in another review), _The Incredible Hulk_ (2nd) No. 125 (March 1970), and _The Incredible Hulk_ (2nd) No. 227 (Sept. 1978). This book was part of a series that included volumes on Captain America (Captain America: The Secret Story of Marvel's Star-Spangled Super Hero (Secret Stories of the Sensational Super)), the Fantastic Four (Fantastic Four: The Secret Story of Marvel's Cosmic Quartet (1981) and The Fantastic Four: The Secret Story of Marvel's Cosmic Quartet (Secret Stories of the Sensational Super)), and Spider-Man (Spider-Man: The Secret Story of Marvel's World-Famous Wall Crawler (Secret Stories of the Sensational Super)), which were published in paperback by Ideals Publishing Corp. and in hardcover for libraries by Childrens Press. All volumes are now superseded by DK's more recent introductions to Marvel's heroes, including Hulk: The Incredible Guide (Hulk: The Incredible Guide).

This anthology contains some of the early stories of the Hulk and reflects the social and political climate of the times (early sixties). Radiation and fallout were new fears of the general population, so the gamma radiation could be used as the trigger for the creation of the super powered Hulk. The Hulk is another retelling of the classic Jekyll/Hyde split personality story. When the situation is calm and considered he is the mild-mannered intellectual scientist Dr. Bruce Banner but when Banner experiences emotions of anger and hostility, he turns into the raging and extremely powerful Hulk.
The stories are all multiple issues in length and also describe, albeit overstated, the political climate of the times. There is Cold War paranoia, where Banner is accused of being a Commie spy by a very overzealous and ignorant military man and there are guest appearances by several other Marvel characters such as the Avengers, Fantastic Four, X-Men and Spider Man.
While modern readers will enjoy the action, the Cold War paranoia and Red Scare hysteria will be lost on them. It is amusing in retrospect to look back and reflect on how the fear of communism could be the main story line of comic books. Yet, in a world where children were taught to "duck and cover", this was probably a less stressful expression of the fear.

This is a reprint job (itself long out of print) from 1978.

I thrilled to these adventures as a kid, and have never misplaced my lamentably worn copy of this book. It reprints critical issues from the Hulk, but most of the episodes revolve around Hulk's first encounter with the Leader.

Two things that are nice are that this is a bigger book than the ones they're making these days, and everything was reprinted in bright colors.

Only off-note is that the final adventure (starting on p. 244) is non-sequitur and doesn't belong in the collection.