Incredible Hulks 618

Marvel and DC’s business strategy to the symptom of plummeting sales seems to be this: spin off your most popular characters into second and third and fourth books. Spin-off the spin-offs. Then involve them in one long, universe-threatening, cross-over.

So now we have The Incredible Hulks (plural) involved in The Chaos War.

It’s much as you’d expect. Everyone in earth has fallen into an endless sleep except, somehow, most of the superheroes. Demons stalk the earth, because death has been banished.  Except there’s a little bit of death that’s hidden away which, if found, could cause everyone that’s currently asleep to die.

Yes, it’s overinflated, humourless gobbledygook.

Anyway, here comes the extended Hulk family into all of this. It seems Betty Ross is now a Hulk. And Rick Jones. And here’s She-Hulk. And Son of Hulk. And some other character that’s a dead ringer for the Thing. They all look as though they’ve been living on a permanent diet of anabolic steroids and have essentially interchangeable personalities. Returning from outer space, they’re contacted by Doctor Strange, battle The Abomination, who has returned from the dead, and fight some demons as well. It’s basically a lot of people hitting each other over the course of twenty pages, while serving the higher purpose of the overall Chaos War plot. And lucrative sales figure.

With this in mind, it’s difficult to judge Greg Pak’s writing. I was less than impressed, but these convoluted crossovers are probably not the best circumstances in which to shine.  The art, on the other hand, is rather good, in its own fashion. It’s by Paul Pelletier, who’s apparently been around for ages, but this is the first time I’ve knowingly encountered his work. Stylistically, it’s heavily indebted to the Image school of art, so it shares their hyperactivity and exaggeration. So far, so bad, except that Pelletier carries it off with aplomb and with art that’s technically sound. Some of the background details suggest that, actually, here’s an artist who’s able to produce much more interesting work, stripped down and maybe a little reminiscent of the sort of art Paul Smith used to produce.

In addition to the main story (and I use the word story in the loosest sense here), there’s a back-up strip, telling how Rick Jones became the hulk character A-Bomb. Yes, A-Bomb. There must be a paucity of decent names for superheroes these days.

Anyway, the content is slight, but the art, by another person I’ve never heard of, Yacine Elghorri, is rather lovely to look at. It’s like Moebius without the airhead new age philosophy attached and it’s particularly striking when seen in the context of a superhero comic.

In summary: this comic has a thoroughly banal script, and rather superior artwork. And I’ll be keeping an eye out for more of Elghorri’s work, because the sample shown here suggests someone with considerable skill that’s deserving of a better showcase than this run-of-the-mill comic.