BHOC: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #78

This particular week, I also picked up the latest issue of MARVEL SUPER-HEROES which reprinted stories published a number of years earlier in INCREDIBLE HULK. Since the Hulk now had his own television series, this reprint title began performing better as young viewers sought out the Green Goliath’s adventures in print. Marvel tended to blurb the books of any character who had an active TV series, whether live action or animated , as “Marvel’s TV Sensation!” to help cement the connection, and this issue of MARVEL SUPER-HEROES was no exception. But none of this really mattered to me, I bought the issue by rote because I had been buying it every month for a while already.

When it was first published, this issue became something of a keystone adventure for several future developments, most of which didn’t happen within the Hulks series at all. But all of that was far off in the future and not readily apparent here. What was apparent relatively early on was that writer Roy Thomas was using this issue to wrap up dangling plotlines that he’d begun in the DOCTOR STRANGE series that had lain fallow since the good Doctor’s magazine was discontinued. This is a thing that the very continuity-conscious Marvel creative staff used to do routinely, typing off the characters and situations from defunct series in more stable titles. It did make the Marvel Universe feel a bit more interrelated, though I don’t know how wise it truly was to saddle a healthy title with finishing up the business’ of one that mad met its maker.

When I first read this story, I was a bit confused by the appearance of Doctor Strange in it. I had no knowledge that, for a short period of time, he’d adopted a new costume with a full face mask (the better to make him look more like a classic super hero and appeal to more readers, was the thinking) so I didn’t understand why Doc looked that way, or even that it was a mask. I wasn’t even certain this was the same Doctor Strange, and I approached him more like he was somebody like Abin Sur or Tomar-Re in Green Lantern–some other person who was pounding the same beat as the Strange I was familiar with. Roy had begun his clean-up of Strange’s final business in the pages of SUB-MARINER, where the Doc sacrificed himself to seal a portal that would have allowed the immortal Undying Ones access to the mortal world.

This issue opens with a group of young people having found the unconscious Bruce Banner after witnessing the end of his fight with the Absorbing Man in his other identity of the Hulk. These folks are all members of a cult that worships the Undying Ones, and they intend to use Banner as a quasi-sacrifice. They send Banner to the realm of the Undying Ones in the hope that, in his Hulk form, he’ll be able to defeat the deadly Night-Crawler who guards the boundaries of that realm. And when she protests this course of action, the High Priest tosses Sister Barbara into the void as a bonus. Sister Barbara is actually Barbara Norriss, who would one day become the human host for Brunnhilde the Valkyrie in DEFENDERS–but that was still in her future.

At the time this story was produced, the influence of Jim Steranko was being felt profoundly throughout teh field, and so creators were attempting more graphic tricks in their storytelling. So when Banner becomes the Hulk again in response to the danger to himself and Barbara, their foe the Night-Crawler uses his Scepter of Shadow to enshroud the area around them in utter darkness. But the Hulk is nothing if not single-minded, and he’s able to destroy one of the floating rocks that dot the landscape, one of its fragments thereafter used by Barbara to shatter the Scepter of Shadow and restore their sight. But the furious battle between the Hulk and the Night-Crawler continues, and gets even more ridiculously large–to the point where the Hulk destroys the entirety of the Night-Crawler’s realm in his rage and power.

With nowhere else to go, the trio find themselves within the Realm of the Undying Ones, materializing atop the enchanted snare that has kept Doctor Strange a prisoner for all these many months. As the Night-Crawler moves to engage his eternal foes directly, Sister Barbara makes a choice, she begins to climb down into Doctor Strange’s cell, which grabs her up and spits him out. Strange argues for a moment about Barbara’s sacrifice–but only for a moment. And then, with the Undying Ones distracted by their battle with the Night-Crawler, Strange magics both himself and the Hulk back to their own reality. It’s noteworthy in that this story represents the first meeting between the Hulk and Doctor Strange, who will go on to have a long association in the Defenders.

And in a final page that seems way too rushed and unsatisfying, Bruce Banner awakens within Dr. Strange’s sanctum, where his host provides him with a new set of clothes. Strange also tells Banner that he’s decided to retire as a sorcerer in order to return to life as a surgical consultant. This is a relatively unmotivated shift for a character who had dedicated himself for so many years to teh mystic arts and the defense of humanity–but given that he didn’t have a series any longer, Roy was perhaps looking to take Strange off the canvas a little bit. This period of retirement wouldn’t last for very long–both Roy and others really liked Doctor Strange, and moved to bring him back into the spotlight again very quickly. But for the moment, this really seemed like the end of Doc’s era.