BHOC: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #77

Another week brought more new comic books, including this issue of MARVEL SUPER-HEROES starring the Hulk. Or, as he was billed on the recurring cover blurbs during this period, “Marvel’s TV Sensation!” I’d imagine that there were a lot of young readers who picked up their first issue of a Hulk comic book as a result of seeing the television show, and I wonder how many of them found it an alien experience given that the TV incarnation of the character was a lot simpler and more grounded than what routinely took place in a given Hulk comic book adventure. I’d imagine that, like myself, most would be able to square this dichotomy within their own minds. For example, even as a very young kid I had no trouble understanding that the Superman of the live action 1950s television series, the Superman who appeared on the SUPER FRIENDS cartoon on Saturday mornings and the Superman who showed up in comic books were all the same but also all different. I don’t think I ever gave it any conscious thought but I understood it on some fundamental primal level.

I really like this splash page, this huge close-up of a contemplative Hulk’s face. Herb Trimpe’s work had grown stiffer and more stylized over the years, to the point where his new work wasn’t all that appealing to me at the time. But I liked what he had done in these earlier reprinted stories, and they served to raise him up as an artist in my estimation. His sense of storytelling and breaking down a page was straightforward and strong, and he’d occasionally hit on a really lovely composition or bit of rendering, as he does here.

Writer Roy Thomas had hit on a nice rhythm on the title as well. Reportedly, he wasn’t all that wild about writing the Hulk, but he found ways of keeping it interesting for himself as well as for the readers. In this month’s tale, the world is on high alert as a mysterious comet, one that was nowhere to be seen only days previously, is approaching on a collision course with Earth. Should it pass near the planet, it would be an extinction level event, as radiation from the comet’s tail might poison the atmosphere. The military has an X-890 rocket with a nuclear payload that might be able to destroy the comet before it veers too close. What they don’t have is a “scientifically trained pilot” to fly the thing up. That’s where Bruce Banner comes in. Pumped full of tranquilizers–which is exactly the condition you want the pilot of a nuclear missile to be in–he agrees to fly the thing to the edge of space and destroy the comet.

And so he does. With an auto-pilot taking him most of the way, Banner plots an interceptor course for the comet, flies his ship into its tail, releases his warhead and escapes again just before the bomb goes off, vaporizing the comet and saving the Earth. But unbeknownst to Banner, he’s picked up a passenger along the way. You see, that comet wasn’t coming towards Earth coincidentally, it was being guided there by Thor’s old foe Crusher Creel, the Absorbing Man. Creel had been exiled to the depths of space in his last appearance by Odin, and here we find out that he’d floated in that void until the comet passed nearby, whereupon he used his power to duplicate the properties of any material that he touched to become one with it and use it as a conveyance back to Earth. Now, the comet is gone, but Creel has managed to attach himself to the outside of Banner’s ship, transforming his body into metal as he does so.

Heedless of the forces of re-entry–it must be said that the rocket science in this story is nonsense at best–Creel rides Banner’s ship back to Earth. But when he becomes aware that there’s a figure clinging to the hull, Banner grows agitated enough that even in his tranquilized state, his pulse rate increases and he transforms into his brutish alter ego, the Hulk. The Hulk wastes no time in smashing his way out of the cockpit and getting into a dust-up with Creel after the Absorbing Man attempts to smash the cockpit and its inhabitant once they realize he is there. Accordingly, the pair scuffle on the outside of the ship as it careens ever downward, eventually crashing into the ground below in what must have been a titanic detonation.

Roy and Herb, though, treat it as though the ship fell out of a tree–the craft is demolished, but the surrounding area is pretty much unscathed by their crash. The same can be said of the two combatants, who rise to their feet and resume their clash. This was always the heart of the appeal of the Hulk series in this era–it wasn’t long on plot, but every issue gave you some crazy knock-down, drag-out fight between the Hulk and some other villain, monster, robot or army. If you were there for action, INCREDIBLE HULK had you covered. Here, the Hulk is way stronger than pretty much anything that Creel can turn himself into, but the Absorbing Man is largely immune to taking any punishment from the Hulk, as his material changes in response to whatever is thrown at him.

In the end, the Absorbing Man does the most obvious thing: he touchers the Hulk himself and absorbs his gamma-spawned strength and power. At which point, he batters the Hulk down, and then prepares to finish him by dropping a huge pile or rock atop him. But the unconscious Hulk begins to transform back into Bruce banner, and as the Absorbing Man is still touching him, he does the same. Now, mind you, the Absorbing Man’s power has never worked this way before, he always took on the properties of whatever substance he absorbed until he relinquished them. But just go with it, yeah? Anyway, the Absorbing Man finds his strength dwindling, to the point where he can’t keep the gigantic boulder aloft. He attempt to shift his form to the stone of the boulder, but even as rock he isn’t powerful enough to keep it aloft. And so he winds up dropping the thing right atop himself, seemingly finishing him off forever. Banner has managed to crawl far enough away that he isn’t buried along with Crusher Creel–but as he passes out, some distant figures begin to approach him–figures with a sinister intent. To Be Continued!

As this was the start of a new month, September, we got a new Bullpen Bulletins page, one that trumpeted the impending appearance of a Fantastic Four Saturday morning cartoon show. This was the ill-fated series that was forced to replace the Human Torch with the Star Wars-inspired HERBIE the Robot. It was not good. And yet, I was excited by the prospect and watched it feverishly each week, even recording certain episodes on cassette tape so that I could listen to them again later. The page even closes touting the fact that Marvel titles cost only 35 cents, not 50 cents to a buck like the competition’s. This was an almost certain signifier that this was about to change.