BHOC: INCREDIBLE HULK #239

INCREDIBLE HULK had kind of hit its stride for what would remain of the 1970s and the early 1980s. it was a solid and entertaining read, but not anything extraordinary. Well-crafted but forgettable. And much more attuned to the impulse buying audience in terms of not getting too bogged down with ongoing storylines than many other titles, which steered strongly into serialization. It’s not to say that INCREDIBLE HULK had none of those things, but the prevailing wisdom seemed to be that the audience for the title was largely made up of more casual buyers, many of whom may have been drawn in by their familiarity with the live action CBS television program. So accordingly, the book shifted somewhat in that direction. This shift, it can be argued, went on for too long and was responsible for the book being considered a bit of a bore as the fan-driven Direct Market gained greater importance, a series with a limited premise that kept it from becoming anything better. future creators, in particular Peter David, would overcome that sentiment, but it would take a while.

I have to say that this is a brilliant splash page image, one that hooks you into the story immediately, even moreso than the cover. This picks up on last issue’s semi-cliffhanger, in which the Hulk fell into a slumber while situated atop Mount Rushmore, the famous landmark. This gave the authorities pause, as any move to attack the Hulk would inevitably damage the monument–as might the creature himself once he woke up. Now you’d maybe think that a sleeping Hulk would revert back to his more manageable Bruce Banner persona, his rage dissipating in slumber. But that isn’t what happens here, so apparently the Hulk is still upset enough by his recent travails that his gamma-spawned form remains in place even while he sleeps.

Regular series writer Roger Stern was continuing to have fun exploring the childlike psyche of his unstoppable protagonist. At this point in the continuity, rather than being an alter created by Bruce Banner’s splintered psyche, the Hulk had been shown to be an entirely separate entity from Bruce Banner, and so that’s how Stern continued to depict him. He was in essence a big child, quick to anger but ultimately relatively gentle in his own way, when he wasn’t being provoked (which was infrequently.) The Hulk also had a strange moral core that caused him to do the right thing eventually, even if he was for a time misled by others who wanted to turn his great strength to their own benefit. This was all carried off with the assistance of Sal Buscema, whose depiction of the Gamma Goliath became the standard for the character during this era. The Hulk was Sal’s favorite assignment, and he remained with the series for a long while, giving the book an almost-unequalled visual consistency.

So as the story opens, a military unit from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas is awaiting orders concerning how to engage with the slumbering Hulk–or even whether they should do so at all. They get in contact with Hulkbuster Base in New Mexico, which scrambles a fighter squadron led by SHIELD agent Clay Quartermain. But they’re a half-hour out from Mount Rushmore, and a lot can happen in that time. Consequently, the unit sends a pair of special forces commandos to scale the mountain and reconnoiter the area. Also in the vicinity is Goldbug, a super-villain with a gold motif. The two commandos are packing tanks of sleep gas in the hope of being able to keep the Hulk tranquil, but Goldbug, desiring the Hulk’s help for his next scheme, fires a laser beam that awakens the Green Goliath, placing the commandos in jeopardy. The pair immediately surrenders to the Hulk, which confuses him. But Goldbug shows up and encases the pair in gold, suffocating them, then draws the Hulk up to his flying bug-ship before Quartermain’s planes can arrive.

The Hulk really wants to go out there and knock the pursuing planes from the sky, but Goldbug suggests another plan. He extrudes a pair of handholds from the interior of his ship and tells the Hulk that by gripping them, he can share his power with the craft. The guileless Hulk does this, unaware that this was Goldbug’s plan all along–to entrap him and make him the new energy source for his craft. Once the Hulk had grabbed on, he’s encased in a stasis field that keeps him from moving, powered by the gamma radiation from his own body. With the Hulk as his power source, Goldbug is easily able to outdistance the pursuing Hulkbuster Base planes and venture forward towards Goldbug’s true objective: he wants to locate and loot El Dorado, the legendary city of gold.

Using his newfound power source, Goldbug is able to locate El Dorado and fly to it. Unfortunately for him, his benefactors in the creation of his latest craft were They-0Who-Wield-The-Power, a cabal of shadowy do-anything plot devices that had been created years previously in the pages of MARVEL TEAM-UP as a way of linking a series of disparate stories that otherwise didn’t have anything to do with one another. The mystery of who and what They were had been lingering for some time, and so Stern has decided to deal with that question and wrap up the dangling plotline. As Goldbug approaches El Dorado, They indicate to one another that he’s done what they desired, bringing the Hulk to him, and they short-circuit the equipment in Goldbug’s ship that’s preventing the Hulk from escaping. So the brute breaks free, and in moments the bug-ship is destroyed, a byproduct of the Hulk’s rage.

But the Hulk and Goldbug are fine–a leap from the Emerald Behemoth carries them to the ground far below. The Hulk intends to smash Goldbug into paste, but he’s interrupted by the appearance of an Acolyte of El Dorado, who greets the Hulk as a prophesied savior. The High Priests of El Dorado had foretold his coming–Goldbug realizes that this is They, the ones who provided his technology, and he’s terrified at the prospect of coming face-to-face with them. But even though he has misgivings, the Hulk allows himself to be led through the mists towards concealed El Dorado, and that’s where this issue is To Be Continued. All told, it’s something of a slight issue, where a bunch of stuff happens but none of it is particularly noteworthy or meaningful.

The Bullpen Bulletins page for this month has Stan Lee plugging the impending ODYSSEY magazine briefly before going on to promise that Marvel’s television productions will henceforth be at least co-produced by Marvel, allowing greater fidelity to the source material. In essence, this was a stealth announcement about the founding of what would become Marvel Productions, the animation house run by Marvel throughout the 1980s. Unfortunately, Stan’s hopes for greater adherence to the comics turned out to be so much wishful thinking for the most part. But Stan himself did get to narrate a bunch of what the outfit produced. There’s also the typical gossip about the creators attending conventions and experiencing weddings and childbirth, as well as specific plus for a variety of upcoming Marvel books. While this page was becoming a bit of a shadow of its former self, and there’s a sense that nobody is putting an whole lot of effort into it anymore, it remained an important part of the reading experience for me. This was the closest I could come at the time to being an insider in the field, so these glimpses into the inner workings were something I enjoyed.