World War Hulk

The Comicologist — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 06:53:57 +0000

World War Hulk was the first major cross over story line to be published by Marvel comics since the conclusion of the Civil War arc. World War Hulk consisted of a five issue main series, written by Greg Pak and illustrated by John Romita Jr., as well as three other limited series, World War Hulk: Frontline, World War Hulk: Gamma Corps, and World War Hulk: X-Men, and appearances in other regular Marvel series.

World War Hulk picks up from where the one-shot World War Hulk Prologue: World Breaker finishes. The plot is a culmination of a series of events spanning the preceding 12-15 issues of Incredible Hulk, in which the Illuminati (Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Black Bolt and Dr. Strange), trick Hulk into being sent into space and subsequently exiled to the planet Sakaar, as seen in the Planet Hulk series. Planet Hulk is a must read, particularly if you want to figure out what is going on in World War Hulk.

As the World War Hulk series begins, Hulk and his 'warbound', a motley group of survivors that have been with the Hulk since his time as a gladiator on the planet Sakaar, headed for earth.

Hulk is hell bent on revenge, blaming the Illuminati not only for his exile, but also holding them responsible for an explosion (long story, but basically the spaceship Hulk arrived on blows up) that all but destroyed Sakaar.

First stop on the Hulk's tour of pain is the moon. He pops in to visit Black Bolt, taking some punishment but ultimately beating Black Bolt to a pulp. The Hulk then heads to Manhatten where he demands that the Illuminati surrender to him, and that the city be evacuated.

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Next up, Iron man appears in the Hulk Buster armor, but doesn't really put up much of a fight. Hulk hands him a beat down, and Stark Tower is destroyed in the process. The Fantastic Four then cop a clobbering. Dr. Strange ups the ante a little by calling on the support of a demon, Zom. Strange replaces his busted hands with spiked maces, but even with the demonic assistance, still gets busted up.

With the four Illuminati fitted with "obedience disks" they are unable to use their powers. It's at this point Hulk decides to start up his own gladiator road show, forcing the four fallen 'heroes' to fight to the death. What happens next? Well, you'll need to read the book, but lets say that Sentry gets involved, and the Hulk gets angry enough to destroy a whole planet.

As a stand alone story World War Hulk is good, but read in isolation, it would suffer the same problems that Civil War did. Whilst Civil War had significantly more 'tie-in' stories that you needed to read to make sense of it all as a whole, World War Hulk is not quite as extreme, however, there are still things you'll miss if you just read the five issue World War Hulk series on its own.

Plot wise, things are not all that deep, it's very much an action based story. Following on from the epic Planet Hulk series, it doesn't seem quite as strong. That's not to say World War Hulk is bad though, just that Planet Hulk was very good. The last issue in this series raises a lot of questions, and leads to a whole heap of repercussions in the Hulk-verse moving forward.

What did I learn? Do unto others as you should expect them to do unto you. In otherwords, if you're going to ruin a massive green guys life, you should probably expect him to come back and ruin yours.

Would I recommend this? As a followup to Planet Hulk this is required reading. As a starting point for new readers, I'd suggest picking up "Prelude to Planet Hulk", "Planet Hulk" and then this, otherwise you may find yourself a little confused.