We’d previously devoted a piece to spotlighting and examining two of the lost pages from a story intended for INCREDIBLE HULK #4 that Marvel mainstay Larry Lieber had fished out of the trash after an irate Jack Kirby had torn them in half and discarded them back in 1962.
They turned up in an auction of some of Larry’s possessions at the Heritage Auction site, allowing a much clearer look at them, one that allowed us to decipher some of the border notes that editor Stan Lee had jotted down as he walked through the story with Kirby so that he’d remember what Jack told him he was intending with certain images, characters and moments. Since that time, another two pages from that same story have shown up in the same place, so that will allow us to do the same thing for them. So let’s go!
These two pages are from slightly later on in the story, Pages 11 and 12, but they do give us the opportunity to reverse-engineer some of what must have happened in the missing opening sequence. Here is what Lee jotted down on these pages:
PANEL 1
CAN’T ANSWER RICK’S THOUGHT WAVES BECAUSE HE’S IN A COMA
CRASHED INTO TOWN BLDG IN FOG
PANEL 2
BEGINNING TO STIR AS THOUGH TRYING TO ANSWER SILENT CALL
PANEL 3
NITE OF BIG GAME
(Looks like there’s another border note here obscured by the tape holding the two halves of the page together.)
PANEL 4
EVERYTHING OKAY–BALL IS NORMAL
There aren’t any notes on Panels 5 or 6, but what’s going on in them is pretty straightforward and obvious.
The scan of PAGE 12 at Heritage is cropped in on, eliminating the border space where any notes may have been visible. But the images are a lot easier to see than what we had before, and it’s clear that after the game-fixer’s ringer group of goons disguised as high school players engage in dirty tactics and continually clobber Rick, his increased state of anxiety and pain strengthens his mental connection with the Hulk, waking the slumbering monster from his coma and causing him to leap (fly) out into the night towards Rick’s side.
And since I’ve got it, I may as well include this lesser scan of the fifth page that Larry had, PAGE 13. It isn’t impossible that this one will turn up at Heritage as well at some point, but for now, we can still make out a few small things in terms of Lee’s page notes:
PANEL 5
UNDER (which seems like a not about the shadow and the fact that the Hulk is lifting the bleachers.
PANEL 6
CAREFUL–IF YOU INJURE ME I’LL GO TO HOSPITAL–NO BLUE CROSS–
Comics.org says [ The Incredible Hulk#3 ( September 1962 ) The military captures Rick and Ross convinces him that they need the Hulk to test a new experimental rocket for national security. Rick tricks the jade giant into the capsule but once it is shot into space, he realizes that Ross deceived him to get rid of his foe. Rick overrides the programming and returns the rocket to Earth but not before Banner ( he transformed back to his human form when the rocket came into view of the sun ) is doused with further radiation. The Hulk is now unable to revert to his human form and is under Rick’s control but only while Rick remains awake. ] — The Hulk being tricked into a rocket bring to mind Grogg [ Strange Tales#87 ( August 1961 ) first story — Miklos Koslov lures Groog into a Soviet rocket and launches it on its mission to Mars ] which Tom not to long ago wrote about. I guess the Illuminati must have remembered General Ross’ experimental rocket plot cause they did their own version of it in leadup to Planet Hulk storyline. I’M STILL CONFUSED as to how Rick got mental control of the Hulk, was the new douse of radiation Banner got radiating from his body so that the Hulk imprinted on the first person he saw? ANIMAL IMPRINTING: is a rapid genetically programmed learning process where a newborn animal forms a deep social attachment to the first moving object or parent it encounters. ALSO, I wished I had remembered the Main Bad Guy in these discarded Hulk pages, cause he has the style of mustache that superpowered Martian ( Sram which is Mars backwards ) has.
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Those basketball player ringers that wear masks to look like high school students, reminded me of an earlier Jack Kirby work with another group of mask wearing men that altered their appearance too: Fighting American#2 ( June-July 1954 ) The League of the Handsome Devils! –Big Deal ( Sleppinger ) and the Handsome Devils ( a group of muggers, counting Big Deal there are 7 of them and their real faces would go unnoticed in Deviant Lemuria or the Morlock tunnels ).
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Jack Kirby’s caveman brow for the Hulk seen here, John Byrne brought that back when he temporarily took over The Incredible Hulk series ( Can’t remember if added it before that either in The Incredible Hulk Annual#7 ( August 1978 ) or in Marvel Team-Up#53-54 ( January-February 1977 ).
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Rick happens to be at the missile control panel (security being a bit laxer in those days) and the cosmic radiation somehow causes a ‘shock to travel back to earth’ that hits Rick and makes the psychic connection. We also see the Hulk start demonstrating his ability to fly after this incident – though Lee keeps writing it as ‘leaping’ (and emphasises this in one of the letters pages, in response to readers who are obviously confused by imagery that shows the Hulk floating, changing direction etc in mid-air.) It all seems to be part of a misguided early revamp of the character, but it didn’t last long. Perhaps Lee changed his mind after seeing the way the concepts looked on paper, or perhaps Kirby tried to do something solo without getting the okay.
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i kinda wish this story had been printed- not because its’s great or even good, its not, it is some super silly fun with rad kirby art though, the hulk tussling with local thugs who fix high school basketball games- i wish it had seen print because it would make for great absurdity and fun in referencing it as in continuity (continuity with a capital c of course) somewhere along the way in a story (looking al ewing’s way)
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Man ‘o man I love those muted colors on that Hulk #4 cover. Kind of weird that the content of Hulk stories were still such a work in progress because everything on that cover from the art, to the cover, to the masthead is so confidently resolved.
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Hulk had such a tortured birth Makes Daredevil look like a cakewalk!
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That cover! On the right side it looks like Hulk’s carrying a mannequin.
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You mean Mongu the fake alien looks like he is carrying a mannequin.
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Ha! The 1st appearance of Dum Dum Dugan, who apparently had become quite a rotter by that point. Presumably this experience put him back on the straight & narrow.
(Yes, I know that’s not Dugan. Might as well be, tho’…)
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Earlier, I too had a Dum Dum Dugan thought. Writing this sent me looking for images of the MCU’s Phil Coulson and atlastales.com Yellow Claw#3 ( February 1957 ) scan of the 3rd story “The Yellow Claw Captured!” with a FBI agent on the right with dark glasses — the Men in Black government agent look. I do like the Kirby art on these pages.
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Heh. Coulson’s a lot more generic looking than Duggan… That whatever you call it mustache & bowler hat are mandatory. I expect the figure in the Hulk story didn’t have red hair, but in black & white it could go any direction we like.
The figure in the Hulk story certainly constitutes a prototype of the Dum Dum Duggan look, but it’s likely Kirby had used the design before somewhere…
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If the rest of the pages ever turn up, it’d be nice to make a deal with the Kirby family and finish it up, as a treat for fans. Rick Jones and the basketball team deserve it!
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Kerry Callen inked, colored, and parody-dialogued page 11
https://13thdimension.com/resting-comfortably-the-incredible-hulks-incredible-visit-to-the-hospital/
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I really like Kirby’s pecils on these pages and I think Kerry Callen did an excellent inking job on page 11. The inkwork complements Kirby’s fine linework and doesn’t overpower it. On the other hand, I don’t like the coloring all that much, even if it is how it would have looked in 1962.
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Assuming this was supposed to be a 14 page story, what happened to the other 9 pages? Did Kirby keep them? I don’t know of any other comic of that era that he would have repurposed them into. Did he discard them with these pages and they are still in Lieber’s collection? Did he even draw them?
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The basketball panels are so well done, you almost forget the pre-Mission Impossible ridiculousness of these fine young athletes really being weathered thugs in facemasks. Almost.
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