BHOC: INCREDIBLE HULK #214

Brevoort History of Comics

This issue of INCREDIBLE HULK was also included in the SUPERHERO GIFT PACK that I received for Christmas in 1978. The timing on that PACK was very precise, as the issues contained within were mostly all ones that I hadn’t seen in the 3-Bags that were used to sell nine month old comics through department stores and chain stores, and which had been a source of recent back issues. I’m guessing these books all came from the same print run as the ones intended for 3-Bagging. Whether that means that these titles all had a larger print run or that there were fewer 3-Bags containing these particular issues, I could not tell you. But it would have been very easy to crack open that box and find ten comics that I already owned and had read, and that really wasn’t the case.

This issue was towards the end of writer/editor Len Wein’s run on the series, a character that he later claimed was his favorite in the Marvel line. And Len did his typical reliable job with the series, adding pathos as well as action and building out a solid cast of semi-recurring players. Artist Sal Buscema, meanwhile, was just starting on his own long run on the book, and was here inked by Ernie Chan, who added a lot of texture to Sal’s work. This combo is kind of burned into my brain as the primordial look for the Hulk, especially of this period.

The story opens with the Hulk and his buddy Jim Wilson making their way back to the apartment Bruce Banner has rented for himself following a bout with SHIELD’s Quintronic Man robot. The Hulk calms down, reverting to the form of Banner. But when he and Jim enter the apartment, they’re surprised by a figure in a cape. This is Kropotkin the Great, a new supporting player being introduced by Wein. He’s a magician, a showman, and this was his apartment until he was evicted for lack of payment of the rent. Nevertheless, he’s come back to reclaim the personal effects that he left behind, and he gets into a multi-way argument with Banner, Wilson and landlady April Sommers. But it’s never a good thing for banner to argue, and before you know it, his blood pressure begins to spike.

In order to conceal his identity from April, Banner hurls himself out of a window, transforming to his brutish alter ego before he hits the ground below. Much to Jim Wilson’s consternation, the Hulk then leaps away, leaving him behind. Meanwhile, the novice super hero Jack of Hearts has turned up to pitch in with the clean-up of the aftermath of the Quintronic Man battle. When one of the clean-up crew needles Jack about not having been around for the fight itself, he vows to track down the Hulk and bring him to justice. Which means that we now have all of the ingredients for a typical Marvel dust-’em-up of the period, so it isn’t long before Jack hurls himself at the Hulk in midair.

The remainder of the issue is pretty much a fight between the two characters. Jack of Hearts had been created by Bill Mantlo in the pages of the black and white DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU magazine, of all places, and he was something of a pet character of Bill’s. Apparently, Len Wein also liked him well enough to ask for him to appear in this issue of INCREDIBLE HULK. I don’t know that I entirely buy Jack being able to hold his own against the Hulk for this long, especially as he’s still pretty inexperienced. But that was the formula, and Marvel stuck to it. And especially in INCREDIBLE HULK, action was the name of the game. The promise of the premise was a spectacular fight in every issue, and for years the title delivered exactly that.

Jack fluctuates between being overconfident and in over his head. His battle with the Hulk rages out towards the waterfront, where the FDNY are attempting to control a raging fire on a moored freighter. Their efforts are hampered by the two super-guys barreling into their midst, and before you know it, the pair wind up on board the flaming freighter, even as it’s being towed out to sea in order to prevent any damage to the mainland. The Hulk is heedless of anything apart from the crushing need to smash his colorful foe.

As the battle climaxes, with the Hulk seeming to down Jack of Hearts at last, the freighter explodes. Minutes later, Jack pulls himself from the water, explaining that the blast propelled him high up into the sky. But the Hulk would have been at ground zero and couldn’t possibly have survived. Hah! You don’t know him very well, do you? But anyway, that’s where this issue wraps up, with the title character seemingly demised, but a promise of a next issue

The GREEN-SKIN’S GRAB BAG letters page for this issue includes a missive from future Marvel writer Kurt Busiek, in which he enthuses about the look of Ernie Chan over penciler Sal Buscema. Smart fellow.

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27 thoughts on “BHOC: INCREDIBLE HULK #214”

  1. Read in isolation, lively fun. But the whole shtick, right down to Jack’s regrets at the end, had been done too many times to work for me (it inspired a fanfic parody HULK VS. THE GREAT GAZOO).

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  2. This was when I still liked Jack. When Mantlo made a Peter Parker supporting character secretly an alien, Jack half alien, and had Jack now wildly, dangerously, overpowered. Killed all interest in Jack for me.

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      1. After reading his Captain Canuck I wanted to see him at Marvel and then only saw him on the worst mini Mantlo ever wrote. All the awesome things by Mantlo that I loved and that’s what happened. Ugh.

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      2. With you on all of that. So disappointing on so many levels. On the upside George came back and did an awesome Captain Canuck mini in 2016

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      3. I see I’m not the only one who wasn’t a fan of the Jack of Hearts mini-series. I hated him being turned into a half-alien, especially since Rom’s energy analyzer didn’t detect an alien in him ( granted it pre-dates the mini-series ) [ Rom#12 ( November 1980 ) beautiful Michael Golden cover ] — ( Page 12, “Energy! The youth is Human, but his body is composed of pure, incredibly explosive energy, my neutralizer nearly killed him by doing that for which it was named .. neutralizing his power.” ). Since the law of Conservation of Energy says that energy is neither created nor destroyed — that makes Jack of Hearts like energy beings like Wonder Man, Count Nefaria, and Atlas.

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      5. If a Marvel writer wanted to restore Jack of Hearts to a full mutated human status that Rom’s energy analyzer says he is, they should look to Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode Second Skin for inspiration ( Major Kira Nerys is kidnapped and surgically altered to look Cardassian as a ploy to uncover a high ranking Cardassian as a dissident ). The Contraxians in the Jack of Hearts limited series also had an agenda ( to get Jack to rekindle their sun’s dying energies ), so they too could be lying. Plus it would be easy for them make half their bodies resemble Jack’s.

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      6. Anything is possibly but I would guess that with Bill’s current status his literal last word on a character he created is unlikely to to be overturned.

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    1. It got a redesign for just that reason but some reason was changed back to the old one. IIRC Perez was one of those who voiced his displeasure with it even though he drew the original.

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      1. Ron Lim put Jack in a new costume in Silver Surfer volume 3 #78 ( March 1993 ) which I hated. I don’t know if he got his original costume back in that series or in Quasar#15 ( October 1990 ) where he is seen on the Stranger’s laboratory-world.

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      3. Simplifying Jack’s costume is a bad idea. Then all you wind up with is Jack in a not-as-cool costume. And then someone kills him off, because they think he’s boring.

        And then later, someone brings him back. And they bring him back in the original costume because it’s awesome and it’s what people like best about him.

        And then some artist wants to change it, and you’re off on the road to him being killed off again.

        Artists were born to suffer. Jack’s costume was born to be awesome.

        [Oh, and while George has drawn the Jack of Hearts, he wasn’t the one to design the outfit — that was Keith Giffen. Dave Cockrum did a standardized design of it to serve as reference for others.]

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      4. I’ll take Jack’s tunic over his “leggings” over Superman’s over-underwear. I liked it when the Black Knight traded in his “one-sy” for a tunic, too. But a character has to be written interestingly, too, right? If not, the character will get shelved (if it doesn’t have it’s own series already), or the book will canceled, or the writer replaced. Worse than Jack’s classic suit is Starfox’s 80’s look. OMG. Ugh.

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      5. Kurt Busiek used more words than I was going to, but I left out I like Jack of Heart’s original costume. Plus I wasn’t a fan of Olivier Coipel’s Jack of Heart’s costume — neither his or Rom Lim’s says Jack of Hearts to me.

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    2. He looks like he’s one of DC’s Royal Flush gang (card theme) who decided to strike out on his own. Or that maybe he should be a Batman villain, teaming up with the Mad Hatter and similar. And to me, “Jack of Hearts” doesn’t sound like a hero name, at best it has more of a roguish connotation (“The knave of Hearts, he stole the tarts …”).

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      1. Timely Comics’ Ace Gang or as Roy Thomas called them The Card Killers ( the title from Sub-Mariner Comics#21 ( Fall 1946 ) first story — they had 2 Jacks ) pre-date the Royal Flush Gang in look.

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  7. This issue was my first issue with the Jack of Hearts and I remember when the original Handbooks came out how disappointed I was that they said Jack could only lift 600 pounds [ The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe#5 ( May 1983 ) ] cause Jack is clearly demonstrating greater strength than that on page 16. Plus on pages 16 & 17 he causes the Hulk pain when he lands on his back with his feet. If he could only lift 600 pounds then he could never sent the Hulk flying with a punch ( Page 16 ).

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  8. I remember seeing Jack of Hearts briefly in some comic as a kid and always wanting to know more about him. Probably I had just skimmed through a friends comic or at the store. Years later I did read more comics with him, and was disappointed.

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      1. There was nowhere to go but up after the Johns run on Avengers. What happened to Jack was a rare low point there.

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