BHOC: INCREDIBLE HULK #230

This next issue of INCREDIBLE HULK was eminently forgettable, and so I forgot about it almost entirely until we reprinted it in a MARVEL MASTERWORKS volume a year or so back. It was a fill-in job, a break in the ongoing storylines and continuity, and so it didn’t have all that much to offer to me as a reader. It was a nice enough diversion, but little more. And it seems to have been an inventory job that was worked into the ongoing narrative so as to give the regular creative team time to get ahead. As such, it was better than an unscheduled reprint (though, quite honestly, as somebody who hadn’t read that many Marvel books yet, I probably would have liked the reprint more.)

The interesting thing about this issue is that it was written by one of DC editor Julie Schwartz’s mainstay writers, Elliott S! Maggin. Maggin was a regular feature in the Superman titles of the era–he sort of stepped into Denny O’Neil’s shoes as a young writer who had something to say about the modern world, but whose story and plot sensibilities were perhaps a bit more in line with Schwartz’s. He did very few stories for Marvel, and in an interview in THE AMAZING WORLD OF DC COMICS, he professed to not liking the Marvel approach to building stories, calling them little more than fight scenes with some scant connective tissue. I’m not certain how he came to write this issue of INCREDIBLE HULK, but doing so was likely an attempt not to keep all of his eggs in one basket, even though it didn’t result in a great deal more work.

And if truth is told, some of the plotting on this story feels like the sort of thing that would have fit in over in Schwartz’s office. The story opens with the Hulk, continuing his wanderings, having come to ground in a corn field in the American heartland and settled down for a snack. He quickly puts away a frightening amount of corn right off of the husk, and winds up the local farmers when they realize that he’s there. Not being the brightest bulbs, rather than calling in the military to help them, the local sheriff decides to take down the Hulk himself with the help of his deputy and the farmers. This goes about as well as you might expect it would, with the Hulk effortlessly tearing through their capture net and scattering their tractors to the winds.

It’s worth speaking a little bit about the artwork in this story. It was penciled by Jim Mooney, a classic artist with a style that often struggled to achieve the level of excitement demanded by the Marvel audience. He was helped immeasurably in this instance by the inking of relative newcomer Bob Layton. Layton was one of a few modern inkers (including Terry Austin and Klaus Janson and a couple of others) whose approach was so strong that they would often elevate the work they were working on. In essence, they were the modern day equivalents to Joe Sinnott or Wally Wood back in the day–ink artists who took command of the final image and gave it additional polish and power. The artwork is slightly quirky here, but it’s got impact and splash, and that’s what was required.

As the Hulk concludes his bout with the locals, he’s suddenly beamed aloft by a spaceship that happens to be passing by–a relatively absurd coincidence on the face of it. There, he’s accosted by a buglike alien who believes that the Hulk may possess the secret that he’s been searching the stars for. The Hulk is too physically powerful to overcome by brute force alone, the alien’s technology and ability to alter the composition of its own form is eventually able to sedate the brute. The alien is surprised, however, when the quieted Hulk begins to shrink back into his puny alter ego of scientist Bruce Banner. This gives a break-point for a single page interlude to keep subplots spinning back at Gamma-Base and cement this otherwise stand-alone story into the ongoing run.

The Bug-Alien at this point, not understanding the change between the Hulk and Banner, feels that it has no alternative but to dissect his captive in order to attempt to locate the element it’s looking for. This terrifies Banner, who swiftly returns to his gamma-empowered form and begins to fight for his life. After a brief scuffle, the Hulk is once again knocked insensate–and the alien uses this opportunity to gather samples of the Hulk’s fingernails. The Alien is looking for the secrets of food production, and figures that the key may lie within the Hulk’s physiognomy for some reason.

Anyway, the Hulk awakens just as soon as this process is completed and decides that he’s had enough. He smashes his way through the outer wall of the spacecraft and plummets back to the Earth below, landing unscathed by his experience. This is fine as far as the Alien is concerned, as he’s acquired what he needed: soil samples from beneath the Hulk’s nails that are fertile. By synthesizing this soil, the alien will be able to grow edible plant life and save his world with a new source of foodstuff. That is, as the last caption tells us, if he can locate his homeworld again, so long and so far has he traveled. The end.