A Delusional Flashback: The Hulk Is Dead, Long Live...John Byrne's Hulk?

I thought it might be a good time to throw a new spotlight on another time the Hulk was threatened with death...by acclaimed writer/artist John Byrne!

If you haven't read the below articles, well...they're new to you!

John Byrne & The Hulk That Might Have Been (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Post-Script)

Delusional Honesty will return later this week, with a long-delayed review of Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

~G.

John Byrne & The Hulk: A Post-Script

Hey, folks,

A while back, I posted a four-part analysis of John Byrne's original tenure on The Incredible Hulk that found some measure of popularity and acclaim. (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4) Interestingly, former Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, who recently began blogging thanks to his friend JayJay (Janet) Jackson, today posted an article that answered a fan's question and at the same time raised another interesting point surrounding Byrne's departure from both Hulk and Marvel altogether for DC's shores in mid-1986.

I've heard all the theories out there about John Byrne's 1986 exit. The main literature out there tells that he may have felt that he had no choice but to leave due to the editorial climate. In my previous blogs, I pointed to comments made by Byrne that he and Editor-in-Chief Shooter had initially agreed to the direction he had in mind for the Hulk, but after the issues came out Shooter refused to let that direction continue as-was. A reply from Brian to the fourth entry suggested an alternate explanation, that it was less over the book's direction and more a disagreement about the storytelling device used for what would have been issue #320--the story that eventually became Marvel Fanfare #29, told entirely in splash pages. By some accounts Shooter didn't like that a story would be told in such a way and killed the story, driving Byrne from the book. It seems, from Shooter's commentary, that the latter is closer than I suspected.

There's a major caveat in this blog entry. Now, I suppose in light of recent comments made by Gary Groth at The Comics Journal website about how Shooter may have distorted the facts about Marvel's 1980s dealings with Jack Kirby, the details of this chain of events may also be suspect. I'll go ahead and repost Shooter's musings just the same, and you can make your own judgments. If you care to read further, the full text is at his blog.

During the nine plus years that I was EIC at Marvel, only three times did an assistant editor come to me privately to complain about the editor he or she worked for. Two times, it was an assistant of [Denny O'Neil's], two different assistants. The complaint from both was that Denny left too much work to them, and spent the day writing his freelance scripts.

[...]

[A] number of issues from Denny's office made it into print that had serious flaws or things that were unacceptable -- including several by John Byrne.

After one particularly bad incident, I finally confronted Denny and told him he'd better start doing his job. That very day, I think, a John Byrne Hulk job came in, finished, lettered and inked, that was all splash pages. Denny thought I'd go ballistic when I saw it, so he rejected it! And he told John it was because I, Jim Shooter, didn't approve.

John was the one who went ballistic. He quit, contacted [Jim Galton] the President of Marvel and demanded I be fired. The President called me and asked who the hell John Byrne was, and to please keep these people from bothering him.

[...]

At any rate, as previously stated, when the above happened, Publisher Mike Hobson ordered me to fire Denny, and I did.

Here's the twist ending. I never even saw the rejected book! I assumed that Denny had given it back to John. I didn't even know why Denny had rejected it, only that he did. I didn't know it was all splash pages. Months later, Al Milgrom found the rejected book in a drawer and brought it to me. He liked it. So did I. I thought it was great. Al looked into the situation and found out that Byrne hadn't been paid for it, got him paid and ran the job in Marvel Fanfare. (Fanfare jobs paid rate-and-a-half, so it turned out to be a good deal for John.)

Know this: John and I weren't on the best of terms before all of the above happened. I had objected to some things he'd done in the books, and nixed a few things he'd wanted to do; and he had objected to my objections. So, maybe he would have left Marvel eventually anyway because of me.

If true, this situation explains not only why we had a new writer/artist with issue #320 in Allen Milgrom, but also why editor O'Neil was gone, replaced in the same issue by Bob Harras. It makes a degree of sense, since it seems highly unusual for two major creative shifts to occur in the same month.

Thoughts?

~G.

John Byrne & The Hulk That Might Have Been (4)

It's getting ridiculous, right? Not to worry, this truly is the final segment of my analysis of John Byrne's plans for The Incredible Hulk--the fourth of a planned trio of articles! (That wasn't a misprint.) This time out, I want to go further with Byrne's plans for his revamped Hulk as well as explain reasons possible and definite for his premature exit from the title. Again, I'll quote as needed from magazines like Amazing Heroes, Comics Feature, Comics Interview and Marvel Age. Enjoy!

As mentioned previously, Byrne intended to kill the original Hulk who'd been separated from Banner, and then turn around and transform Banner into a new Hulk who would hearken back to the original Hulk of the first six issues by Lee, Kirby and Ditko. According to Comics Feature, the purpose of his own first half-dozen-odd issues--everything that saw print, plus a few unpublished stories--was to "get [Hulk] back to a point where I can say the last 100 issues didn't happen." He'd hit "a point that [would] essentially be issue seven of [the original six-issue] run. Then [we'd] go from there." He was also quick to point out that while he would be taking the Hulk "back to basics," he would remain green. Drastic plans? You bet. Necessary? Who can say?

Now, in my last entry I mentioned that I didn't think that Bruce Banner's "New Hulk" would figure into the death of the original one. Allow me to explain my logic with more information from Comics Feature. "One of the elements we're going to be getting into," said Byrne, "is that the world is going to come to believe that Hulk is dead. So Hulk is going to be functioning as kind of a secret identity for Banner. We're going to get back to the 'creature of the night' that he was in the first few issues, because you can't have Hulk as a secret identity if he's running around at high noon. He's going to be lurking in shadows." He didn't seem to specifically be making references to nighttime as catalyst for the change; rather, he obviously intended to use the original Hulk's death to "put the genie back in the bottle," so to speak, and make everyone, for the time being, unaware that Banner and the Hulk were again sharing one body. He couldn't very well do that while having one Hulk kill the other! How long he could keep the illusion going is anyone's guess--if you'll remember, the Hulk only kept a "secret identity" for a few years (1962-1966, until "unmasked" in Tales To Astonish #77). Could it really have worked? I have trouble believing it, but Byrne does make a good point about again making the Hulk a "creature of the night" to mask Banner's involvement.

Unfortunately, without the death of the old Hulk being the impetus for the birth of the new one, that leaves me without a reasonable hypothesis for why Banner decides to make himself into a new creature. Although Byrne made it clear that he would transform into a new Hulk before the old one passed, the reasoning yet escapes me. Can anyone shed some light on this? I know, I gave an idea that Banner's scientific curiosity about applying what he had learned during his years as the Hulk back to himself, a kind of "if I knew then what I knew now" bit, and that works okay. But I was hoping for something a little more in the vein of Bruce's original sacrifice to save Rick Jones a la Incredible Hulk #1.

At the very least, from the way he was acting in the issues that were released, I'm moderately certain that Byrne had planned for Doc Samson to die in his obsessive quest to kill the Hulk--perhaps even killing the Hulk at the cost of his own life upon discovering, as we did in Marvel Fanfare #29, that the Hulk wasn't truly mindless after all. Again, who can say? Just a feeling I have, but I also feel that it would have been more difficult keeping the Hulk's continued existence a secret with Samson still hanging around. Maybe it's me.

Also, in my last article I made mention of both the "creature of the night" Hulk and a Hulk with a measure of Banner's intellect. Again, Byrne clarified in Comics Feature: "Hulk's intelligence is going to come and go...You're going to have a nasty Bruce Banner who fluctuates towards being a virtual mindless brute occasionally. The situation is essentially, Banner is in control of Hulk as long as he lets Hulk out periodically. If he doesn't let Hulk out occasionally, there will come times when the Hulk breaks out. In the former situation he's in control, in the latter he's not." With regard to the transformation pattern, "While we're setting this up he doesn't realize that he needs to let Hulk out. By the time he realizes that it's a necessity. Hopefully, I'll have figured out how to get around that," he said, cautioning "that's not coming around for about two years anyway." He hoped to end up with a Hulk who was "about 60% hero and 40% bad guy. He does good things, not always necessarily for the right reasons, and sometimes he does out and out bad things."

What else would come of the new status quo? Byrne wanted to introduce "The General," in his words "an automated tank, which is the first foe of the new Hulk," as well as bring back one of the Hulk's first foes, the Metal Master (first seen in Incredible Hulk #6, but most recently seen in Rom #30). "When everything looks as if it's finally settled down and everything's happy, we cut to a warehouse in New York, where we find the adamantium statue of the Hulk [that Alicia Masters created as tribute to the Hulk in The Incredible Hulk #279]...where it's been gathering dust all these months [since the Hulk picked it up and chucked it at Thor in #300]. And slowly it stirs, steps off its pedestal, and crashes off into the street." Adamantium is metal, of course, and since the Metal Master controls metal, well, you can see where this is heading, right? Breaking out of my stoic comic historian persona for a moment, I just have to say: that idea is really cool and I really regret we didn't get to see it. (That said, a "New Hulk" vs. "Adamantium Hulk" battle also eliminates most remaining doubt as to whether Banner's "New Hulk" would be involved in killing the old one, as it was highly unlikely Byrne was planning back-to-back "Hulk vs. Hulk" battles.)

Byrne hinted at other less-realized events, including the return of the Abomination. "[He] intrigues me, and I am, bringing the Abomination back, but it won't be the same Abomination. He'll look the same, but it won't be Emil Blonsky. In fact, I'm going to have my Legion of Abominations, which should confuse everybody." Plus, in Comics Interview he expressed interest in returning another of the Hulk's earliest foes, the Ringmaster, wanting to get back to the "incredibly scary" aspects of the character from that first story in Incredible Hulk #3, where the villain would "[put] entire towns into hypnosis-induced comas." In Marvel Age #31, he also voiced intent to write a Hulk/Fantastic Four crossover, as at that point he never thought he'd leave the latter book.

Interestingly, although Byrne admits not particularly enjoying everything that wasn't an invention of Lee and Kirby, he did drop hints (again, in Comics Feature) that he would be bringing in some elements from the popular 1970s live-action TV show starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. "I'm thinking of possibly tossing in a reporter who's trying to track down these things that could only be caused by the Hulk. He won't be trying to prove there's a Hulk, but will be saying that things are clearly not what they appear to be. This is the guy who answers the questions when someone picks up their first issue and goes, 'What's going on here?' This guy's going to ask the same questions." While it's possible Byrne was in fact grooming a she, Dianne Bellamy (the reporter who followed Samson) for this role, there's really no conclusion to be made. Still, it might have been interesting having a Jack McGee-like character in the mythos.

Before any more inroads could be made to Byrne's new status quo, he left, or some argue was driven off the book. I've heard the story that during a cab ride he pitched one hell of a story to then-Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, who told him to go ahead, take the book and put his plan in action. Then, soon after he started doing the book, Shooter changed his mind and told him he couldn't do what they agreed upon. That's Byrne's side of the story. I'm sure Shooter's side of the story involves Byrne making significant changes from the initially agreed-on premise, with that change of plans directly leading to the creator's exit. (I'm not going to assign any kind of devious blame, but based upon what I've outlined above, the "death" of one Hulk and Banner's changing into Byrne's turn-back-the-clock-to-issue-seven Hulk might have been quite the sticking point. Whereas "death" in comics today is relatively common, in the mid-eighties it just wasn't so. It's also interesting that the plan was to literally kill one version of the character and magically replace him with the version Byrne wanted to write. Although more drastic measures have been taken with characters in the nineties--Clone Saga anyone?--again, such measures were really unheard-of in the eighties.)

It's interesting that Byrne's presumed stated goal--to kill the Hulk (regardless of how he was replacing him)--is so similar to the turn of events that led to the published ending of "The Dark Phoenix Saga" in Uncanny X-Men #137. As told in Phoenix: The Untold Story, Claremont and Byrne's originally stated ending was to keep Jean Grey alive but leave her powerless. However, when Shooter saw that Dark Phoenix had committed genocide in an earlier issue, he voiced objections at the light punishment, resulting in a new ending with Grey committing suicide in a moment of lucidity. Compare the death of Dark Phoenix with Byrne's Hulk having become a mass murderer (with reporter Dianne Bellamy explaining in #316 that "Loss of life [in Stoneridge] may yet mount into the hundreds") and it seems Byrne may have been counting on Shooter to agree with him that this Hulk needed to be killed--we'll call it "The Dark Phoenix Syndrome." Perhaps Shooter didn't want history repeating itself, especially in light of Jean Grey's return in Fantastic Four #286 at nearly the same time as all these Hulkish goings-on, and that's why he pulled the plug. You've got to admit, the timing is all a bit hinky.

Whatever the case, the next writer/artist, Al Milgrom, inherited the thankless task of picking up the status quo from where Byrne hastily left it, and would be on the book for ten issues (with a fill-in writer for #328) before Peter David assumed control of a book it's said nobody else wanted with #331. And the rest, as they say, is history. I sometimes wonder whether the specter hanging over the book--the fact nobody wanted to work on it which led "the direct sales guy" David to be tasked--had more to do with some animosity in the comics community over Shooter having fired Byrne than any actual disinterest in the Hulk character. We'll never know.

Regardless of other creators' reticence to work on Incredible Hulk following Byrne's exit, you can't deny that his short stint paved the way for virtually all that would occur over the coming years. When Al Milgrom came aboard, he immediately introduced elements that made it necessary for Banner and the Hulk to re-merge, making both sick the longer they remained apart. The only major rampage of the mindless Hulk that Milgrom wrote (#321-322) resulted in no loss of life. When they re-merged, the Hulk gained substantial intelligence, becoming closer to his original self than in many years. Then, re-exposure to the nutrient bath combined with Rick Jones' having been simultaneously dropped in the tank led to strange inversions of Byrne's concepts: the return of a crafty, grey-skinned Hulk (#324) who would be subject of the book for four years into David's tenure; and the introduction of Rick Jones as a second, green-skinned, long-haired, slow-witted "New Hulk" to effectively take the place of the recently-departed savage version (#325).

The new Hulkbusters would continue to be a staple of the book for some time, until Samuel J. LaRoquette and Craig Saunders were recruited by the Leader to serve as his Rock and Redeemer, respectively, during the "Ground Zero" storyline (#340-346). David addressed and resolved Betty's tryst with Ramón, her lover during the Hulk's exile from Earth, within a few issues (#334), at the same time exploring some of what Byrne discussed regarding Banner's emotions all sublimating the Hulk's rage. The longest direct result of these six issues was the wedding of Bruce and Betty, which is a plot element to this day, through her issues with the merged Hulk, her death by the Abomination, subsequent resurrection by the Leader, and development as Red She-Hulk.

However, more important than virtually all the rest of my points about Byrne's intended direction is his vision of the Hulk himself. If Byrne had his way, we would never have seen a returned grey-skinned Hulk. We'd have instead gotten a green-skinned version of same, akin to many of the early issues. (Though Byrne showed that the Hulk had indeed been grey-skinned upon his birth, according to Amazing Heroes he would have kept him green--returning to grey skin is at this time entirely attributed to Milgrom.) Byrne's visage of the Hulk raises an interesting question: with a Hulk only distinguishable from the classic savage version via demeanor and physical appearance, not color, would the future of the character have been drastically changed? Simply put, did Milgrom's turning the Hulk ash-grey as in his original appearance predispose Peter David to offer Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder as an explanation for the character's origins and varying appearance? I find it difficult to believe any suggestion of multiple incarnations and personalities would have gained traction if the Hulk hadn't changed color during the Milgrom period. (It's easier to suggest that different colored Hulks equal different personalities.) It's possible an entirely different version of events would have unfolded if Byrne had been able to continue his schemes. Can you imagine never involving MPD/DID in the Hulk legend? Never having a "merged" incarnation? Never having the Hulk wear anything but purple boy shorts? Think about it a moment and let it boggle your mind.

In the final analysis, John Byrne's Incredible Hulk is a series to be appreciated less for what he did to advance existing plotlines and more for what he set in motion for future writers to pay off. As above, although it's taken writers like Milgrom and David to do so, the ideas Byrne provided set up conflicts and developments to advance throughout years. He might well be a visionary in the truest sense, or as seen here, he may only be a visionary for what he suggested and other writers carried through. It's difficult to tell as we never saw him reap what he had sown. Is it better or worse for Byrne to not have achieved his original intents on Incredible Hulk? I'll leave it to you to decide.

(Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Postscript)

~G.

Bibliography

• Byrne, John. "Re: JBF Reading Club: The Incredible Hulk #314." Online posting. 1 May 2008. Byrne Robotics - The John Byrne Forum. 24 Mar 2011 <http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=25324&KW=incredible+hulk&PN=0&TPN=2>
• Byrne, John. Hulk Visionaries: John Byrne Vol. 1. New York: Marvel Publishing, 2008.
• Salicrup, Jim. "John Byrne." Comics Interview 25 (1985): 85, 103. Print.
• Sanderson, Peter. "The Big Switch." Amazing Heroes 76 (1985): 26-35. Print.
• Schuster, Hal. "Talk With John Byrne." Comics Feature 37 (1985): 55-58. Print.
• Zimmerman, Dwight Jon. "The Marvel Age Interview: John Byrne." Marvel Age 31 (1985): 10-12. Print.

John Byrne & The Hulk That Might Have Been (3)

Welcome back! This article is the third in a series analyzing creator John Byrne's 1985-86 tenure on The Incredible Hulk. In the first section, I gave a loose idea for what Byrne intended to do during his time on the book. In the second, I gave an in-depth review of each of the eight issues he actually managed to finish before Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter gave him the boot. This time out, I'm going to say a few words about those eight issues as they stand and then give some of Byrne's ideas about the direction of the book that never saw print (save hints in interviews in books like Amazing Heroes, Comics Feature, Comics Interview and Marvel Age, which I'll quote as needed).

The most interesting thing I can state about John Byrne's Incredible Hulk upon this recent reread and having read the various interviews is that by itself, it's relatively inconsequential. I don't mean this in a bad way, in fact, quite the opposite: what the writer/artist brought to the character was grist for the mill. The Hulk himself became a mindless cipher, perhaps less interesting than at any other point during the series' run, Mantlo's tenure included. The one real, salient event that came out of the book during these eight issues was the marriage of Bruce and Betty, which Bruce would only have allowed to happen once he was free of the immediate specter of the Hulk. The rest of what occurred during these issues can best be called "set-up." But, you might ask, set-up for what?

What really occurred during the six issues of the main title? We discovered the Hulk talked like his old self, but was more brutish, more disconnected with Banner than ever before. Doc Samson exploited that disconnect and literally separated man from beast, leaving Banner cured and the Hulk a raging, mindless beast nobody had to think twice whether to kill. Banner founded a new group of Hulkbusters, each one a new character--nearly as blank a slate as the Hulk himself now was. Doc Samson became a guilt-ridden one-man army, obsessed with ending the new mindless Hulk's threat that he blamed himself for causing; the next generation's General Ross. And Betty Ross finally reconciled her existence, the choice between Bruce and her estranged father not really a choice at all. Then, in a coda that was to have been the issue after the last one we got, we learned the Hulk wasn't as mindless as we were all led to believe. (You can see that "Incredible Hulk #320" was clearly marked in pencil behind "Marvel Fanfare #29" on the original art pages.)

I hope you remember how I made a point of Banner's dialogue with Rick Jones in issue #319, of his fascination with the metamorphosis, and his desire to have found a way to be both man and beast, Banner and Hulk, right from the beginning. Then, he told Rick he had no intention of going back. Why do I not take Bruce Banner, eternal scientist and experimenter, at his word? Perhaps it has to do with Byrne's comments in Amazing Fantasy. Although the issue numbers change, his intentions remained: "From #318 on things start to get squiffy. Issue #318 is where we first see the new Hulk, and #319 is where we see the last of the old Hulk." Huh? New Hulk? Old Hulk? While Marvel fans of the era may remember that Rick Jones also became a Hulk in 1986, that event didn't occur under Byrne's watch but rather that of his successor, Al Milgrom. No, for reference on this "New Hulk" I must direct fans to the rather unusual appearance of the Hulk in John Byrne and Josef Rubinstein's illustration for his entry in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, Deluxe Edition #5:

While you might at first not see the difference, take a closer look at the version above and compare it to what Byrne drew during the six issues in his run. He's bulkier, so much so that he appears shorter. The hair is not the shaggy 'do of the Buscema period. As the artist states, "Avengers #1 is my definitive Hulk. [...] I think the Kirby style of that period, the Kirby-[inker Dick] Ayers look, was very well suited to a character like the Hulk." The tall, muscular look (like "a big Arnold Schwarzenegger," he notes) was "a mistake. He should have stayed slab-like, inhuman-looking, like he was in those early issues. And that's what he's going to be getting back to looking like, as of #318, because he's going to undergo a physical change. That's where he gets turned back into what he looked like in the first couple of issues, and in Avengers #1." He also noted that the Hulk would be at reduced strength levels once this change occurred. And there's that issue number, #318, again. Are we getting a clearer picture yet?

For his brief talk of a "New Hulk," Byrne also spent much of the article discussing his take on the Banner/Hulk dichotomy and the nature of the metamorphosis. "[I]f the Hulk is the Hulk all the time, he's not as interesting as he is if he's a regular, ordinary guy who turns into this monster." This statement appears to indicate he wasn't committed to the Hulk as a separate creature from Banner. "Since I'm going back to the original Hulk, they will be separate sides of the same being again." Further: "I'm getting back to that reason and rage, the two elements of any normal human being. In the Hulk they are clearly separated into two distinct beings: Banner is reason, and the Hulk is rage. Bruce Banner is a nebbish. He's a wallflower. He's a scientist whose life stops at the test tubes. Betty [...] was starting to coax him out [of his shell] a little when the Hulk came on the scene." He credited former Hulk writer Roger Stern with the idea that gamma rays brought out one's repressed self. "[I]n Banner they release all this repressed rage, which is there, as far as I'm concerned, because he was a wallflower and a bookworm. So Banner becomes this raging behemoth, the Hulk. [...] Jennifer Walters, when she becomes She-Hulk, becomes a swinger. The Abomination wanted to kick ass; that's what comes out in most of us."

Even more curiously given that for the issues we saw, Banner and Hulk were separate beings, Byrne stated that he would be playing up the "Jekyll and Hyde" aspects of the character, acknowledging Stan Lee's basis for the character as a blend of Stevenson's character and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In Comics Interview, the writer said, "[B]y about the eighth issue, we will be back in a situation where he will be the creature of the night and he will be locking himself in the little room under the lake and pounding on the wall." Then, in Amazing Heroes: "...Banner's changes will be voluntary for the most part," he said, while Sanderson added "Banner will find an easy way of turning into the Hulk at will while retaining his full intelligence." Added Byrne: "For a few issues, it's going to seem very much like the Hulk Bill [Mantlo] was doing." However, Banner "will become drunk on [becoming the Hulk] because he's never had this kind of control over the Hulk, where he can turn into the Hulk for as long as he wants to." Eventually, "Banner will willingly become the Hulk, but it will become anathema to him, the way that [turning into Hyde] did to Jekyll, realizing 'I'm becoming this scuzzy guy and I can't help myself.'" Sanderson said "At times too, Banner will become the Hulk when the Hulk wants him to, not when the Banner side of him wants to."

Later, Byrne intended to create an "emotional schism between Banner and the Hulk" where "a lot of Banner's dark side will go into the Hulk, including, essentially, his sexuality. [...] It's not so much that the Hulk shows the sexual side, but that Banner has lost [it]. Lust is one of our quote--darker--unquote emotions, and all of our 'darker' emotions go to the Hulk, who sublimates everything into rage. So Banner will [become] progressively more aloof and standoffish...towards Betty. Betty will notice, yes, he doesn't get mad, he doesn't get upset, but he also doesn't get particularly loving. It's as if he's turning into a robot, when Banner is completely in control."

So, you might ask, if Byrne's Banner were still the Hulk, and he were to introduce a "New Hulk" an issue before the "Old Hulk" were seen for the last time, "What the hell is going on?" Reading the Comics Feature interview, the answer becomes quite obvious: "The World's trying to destroy [Hulk] like they've never tried before because now there's no threat to Bruce Banner. We were always holding back in the past; we were always worried about killing Banner if we killed Hulk. Now we can kill The Hulk." The Hulk who has been separated from Banner must die!

Who would kill him? Well, the new Hulkbusters and Doc Samson certainly seemed ready to deliver the killing blows, if their appearances in the extant issues were any judge. There's an important point I want to make, later, about why Banner himself couldn't make the killing blow but would, in fact, rig up the gamma rays and make himself into a new Hulk. And this situation would leave Banner and the Hulk exactly where Byrne wanted them to be.

I can definitely see Byrne's purpose in reducing the "original" Hulk to a mindless monster such as he did with his second issue, as it allowed us to extricate all empathy from the creature and put readers in the same frame of mind as Banner: this was a monster with no redeeming values, killing indiscriminately, who was separate from Banner and who had to be destroyed. It's interesting, then, that the last Byrne story in Marvel Fanfare featured a Hulk with some access to his original memories and personality. Meant to be Incredible Hulk #320, as mentioned earlier, it threw a spanner into the above philosophy and makes me truly wonder if the path to the "New Hulk" was as cut-and-dry as I first believed. Ah, good questions without answers!

And it's these few lingering questions that I'll bring into the fourth and final segment of this treatise, due out tomorrow! The grand finale will include as much else as I could piece together about Byrne's aborted plans, as well as some potential reasons why he was let go from the book. I've also got some observations about how the future of the book may have shaped up very differently if Byrne had in fact been able to unfurl his full vision. Stay tuned, folks, I promise you this one's HULKLUDED once and for all!

(Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4 | Postscript)

~G.

Delays Suck (Or, Why You'll Wait For the Last Segment of Byrne on Hulk & Love Every Minute)

Patient followers!

Due to the fact some other superb articles of some relevance have been brought to my attention, the third and final part of "John Byrne & The Hulk That Might Have Been" is postponed until next week. That's the bad news. The good news is that meanwhile, I'll be bringing you some more reviews, from Jeff Parker & Gabriel Hardman's Hulk #30.1, to the UK's Death's Head Volumes 1 & 2 in preparation for next week's return of the titular character in battle against the Hulk in Marvel Heroes #33. I've got two segments of "Storm Warning," my comprehensive review of all things Firestorm, to finish, and I'm also going to review that stinker of an Avengers storyline, "The Crossing." I've also recorded a brand-new episode of the Spectacular Spider-Cast which should be uploaded very soon to tide you over. As if that weren't enough, I do want to start some movie reviews, so those should be coming too. My sincere apologies for the delay, but I know you'll find more than enough things to keep you occupied here in the meantime!

Speaking of things to keep you occupied: Enjoy another vision of things to come, with artist Andy Bennett's brilliant rendition of Satana, the Devil's Daughter, fresh from Pittsburgh Comicon 2008!

Tomorrow: Hulk #30.1!

Best,

~G.

John Byrne & The Hulk That Might Have Been (2)

Welcome back, ladies and germs, to my three-part analysis of John Byrne's tenure on Incredible Hulk. During this entry, I'll break down the actual run-that-was, issue-by-issue, adding my own observations while comparing against the narrative that the creator stated during his interview with Peter Sanderson in 1985's Amazing Heroes magazine. I'll frequently be quoting directly from the article in question. You can follow along with me through these eight issues by picking up a copy of Hulk Visionaries: John Byrne Vol. 1, still available from Marvel Comics. If your local comic shop doesn't have it, you can find one on amazon.com or my preferred online haunt, InStockTrades.com.Ready? Onward!

The Hulk we see in the first story (#314, the only issue of the run that features Byrne's planned three-chapter structure) is, on the surface, the same savage incarnation as had appeared in the last half of Mantlo's Crossroads arc and throughout virtually every Hulk story between 1966 and 1982. However, that incarnation took a darker turn following Nightmare's having attacked Banner's dreams and waking him, for the first time seeming more malevolent than merely childlike. This characterization continues into Byrne's run, with the Hulk brutally killing a deer without thinking twice. This Hulk is scary in ways he hadn't been since the early issues. During a battle at Desert Base, he doesn't just deny that he and Banner are one and the same; he grows angrier and stronger with each dig Doc Samson makes. However, Banner himself manifests differently this time, making the Hulk hallucinate old foes until he tumbles to the fact, counting on him to believe Samson, too, is a phantom, so that the psychiatrist-cum-hero can deliver a sucker punch to knock him out.

"Freedom" in the next issue (#315) advances the storyline while bringing forth a number of older elements from the series, beginning with the opening dream sequence based in the bunker Banner used to contain the Hulk during that first series when he transformed at night. It's not nightfall, but daylight, and the Hulk talks in his current cadence. Instead of Rick outside the chamber, however, it is Banner, dressed in an untattered variant of the same clothing the Hulk wears. The monster taunts Banner: "You cannot escape Hulk! Wherever you go, Hulk will follow. [...] Hulk is not a monster, not a demon you can run and hide from! Hulk is you! Hulk is your own dark thoughts...your anger, your rage!" The tableau climaxes with Banner getting further and further away from the Hulk, until the monster admits, "Banner is...gone...? And Hulk...cannot...think..." as at the same time, in the real world, Doc Samson's nutrient bath has succeeded in separating man from monster, Banner from Hulk.

Such separation has been achieved once before in Incredible Hulk #130-131, where Raoul Stoddard used the Gammatron and ended up splitting the two. However, at that time the Hulk was just as intelligent after the split as before, whereas this time, not only would both beings be incapacitated, traumatized by the initial separation event, but also this Hulk would take on the traits of the mindless Hulk incarnation first seen in Incredible Hulk #299 whom Bill Mantlo ostensibly got rid of midway through the Crossroads story. And for one wishing to move back to the original incarnation, Byrne curiously spent a lot of time with this version of the character. In fact, this Hulk was even less human than Mantlo's iteration. Outside of the Marvel Fanfare story, which I'll discuss later, this Hulk's only impetuses are destruction and rage. More than any scenario concocted before or since, this Hulk represents Banner's nightmare scenario: a behemoth with no regard for property or life, possessed of incalculable strength, durability and endurance, unable to be caged or to transform back to a human, powerless form.

It is this Hulk whom S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to predict will come from the separation and whom they attempt to destroy. Here, Byrne reintroduces agent Clay Quartermain, one of Nick Fury's agents created by comics legend Jim Steranko in Strange Tales who acted as Gamma Base liaison circa Incredible Hulk #187. Samson successfully rescues the Hulk from his planned destruction, thinking that the mindless creature can be studied and perhaps trained to eventually re-enter society as a fully functioning being. Instead, the creature awakens filled with rage, and quickly escapes, in so doing killing a team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents tasked with accompanying his transport. Doc Samson's new raison d'être, then, becomes tracking down and killing the Hulk so that he may assuage his own guilt at having released him. And we'll soon find he isn't the only one interested in killing the Green Goliath.

"Battleground," the next story in #316, coalesces a number of threads begun two issues before, beginning with the return of Banner's longtime love Betty Ross, now based visually on Byrne's then-wife Andréa Braun per interviews. This story also brings in Bruce's cousin Jennifer Walters, aka the She-Hulk, a subject of Byrne's fascination from his days on Fantastic Four and with whom he would more closely associate in over two years' worth of stories in The Sensational She-Hulk between 1989 and 1993. It's noteworthy to Hulk historians that Jennifer and Betty's first meeting occurs here, and it's due to the former being Bruce's last living relative to date. They decide to pursue an experimental treatment for the comatose Banner, which succeeds at waking him, preparing him for the next major step in Byrne's journey. At the same time, the Hulk decimates Stoneridge, New Mexico, a situation made worse by the arrival of four of the most powerful Avengers: Iron Man, Hercules, Namor the Sub-Mariner, and Wonder Man. They cause even greater destruction to the city during their battle which is broken up by Doc Samson, clad in a new costume, who convinces the Avengers to let him continue alone so that further damages may be avoided. (How this logic train works is anyone's guess.) The battle does result in a promise by Iron Man that, if Samson does not ably deal with the Hulk, he and the Avengers will return in full force--a promise fulfilled by subsequent writer Milgrom in issues #321-323.

Awakened from his coma, Bruce Banner continues to move the mythos in a different direction with issue #317. Some time has passed since the previous issue, during which he has convinced the government to give him a brand-new Gamma Base facility (after the old one was pretty well destroyed in battle with the U-Foes in issue #277). In an inversion of the original dynamic, he assumes control of the base and assembles a team of "New Hulkbusters" to help him track and destroy the creature he spawned. Garbed in red, white and blue outfits that can't help but conjure images of American patriotism, the new Hulkbusters team consists of Craig Saunders, an ex-Army demolitions expert; Hideko Takata, a geophysicist; Armand Martel, a xenobiologist; Carolyn Parmenter, an oceanographer; and Samuel LaRoquette, a survival expert. Betty makes the natural comparison between Banner's new attitude and that of her estranged father, the head of the previous incarnation of Gamma Base, with his new fanaticism toward the Hulk now that they are separate beings. During another battle between Samson and the Hulk which seems perfunctory at best--staged only to show us the Hulk is still out there and still a monster and still causing murder and destruction wherever he goes--the individuals Banner assembled make their decisions to join his team. Meanwhile, Banner makes a major decision it seems he can only consider while the Hulk is gone, proposing to Betty Ross.

The next issue, "Baptism of Fire" (#318), takes place a full two weeks after the last, and further lays the foundation for what would have been Byrne's grand epic even as Betty ponders her answer to Bruce's proposal. In the Amazing Heroes interview, the writer shed light on his perception of Betty as a woman swinging between extremes. One is the woman who "came from this very uptight, very strait-laced background. She was apparently raised by her father, who's this very bullheaded general. Her mother has never been in evidence; I presume she died very early. The other is the Betty Ross who tried to "find herself" out of the shadow of her upbringing, "where we have a lot of adolescent fantasies manifesting themselves on the part of the writers," Byrne says, "having her say 'I'm a liberated woman, so I'm going to grow my hair long, dye it blonde, and wear a slinky dress.'" Since her last appearances during Mantlo's tenure, "she's put herself through the wringer, and now she's coming back, [realizing] that [...] the only rock that she's wanted to tether herself to has been Banner. [...] When Banner and the Hulk are split apart, she perceives this as a chance to go back and say, 'Here I am, Bruce. Let's try it again.'" Originally per the interview, Byrne intended a "talking heads" sequence with Betty at Bruce's bedside while he was comatose, hoping he could stop her in the middle between her two extremes, calling their relationship "[t]he only healthy relationship these two can have." This sequence instead appears late in this issue, between Betty and one of Banner's new Hulkbusters, Hideko Takata, who takes on something of a motherly role. At the end of the issue, Betty agrees to marry Bruce on a page where her reply is the only word.

Of course, to arrive at the answer to Banner's proposal, there's much ground to cover in the rest of the issue, and it begins with the scientist's own analysis of the Hulk and his development throughout the years. For only the second time since the 1960s on-panel and the first time in dialogue, one of Marvel's writers acknowledges the Hulk's original grey skin color and gruff demeanor. (The first occasion was #302, but it's not clear if Mantlo intended the early Hulk to be colored grey, or if it was colorist Bob Sharen's contribution.) Elsewhere, Doc Samson again goes after the emerald behemoth, but only manages to destroy the new Hulkbusters' training robot in the creature's image (tattered purple pants and all). Furious that Samson interrupted their session, they instead took their frustrations out on him, in a battle involving the Hulkbusters manning a large robot. The robot falls, exploding into a ball of flame that kills Parmenter, setting into effect a grudge between Carolyn's ex-lover LaRoquette and Samson. (The real Hulk never actually appears in this issue.)

The wedding of Bruce Banner and Betty Ross is the highlight of the next issue, #319, but the issue would also be noteworthy for being Byrne's last on the regular title. "Member of the Wedding" juxtaposes the event in question with the Hulkbusters' first battle against the Hulk himself. Both events have their crashers; in the case of the Hulk vs. Hulkbusters it's Doc Samson, who thinks Banner and his "hired guns" should stay out of his way or else, while it's disgraced General "Thunderbolt" Ross, in his first appearance since nearly committing suicide in issue #291, who interrupts the Ross-Banner nuptials. Also returning to the Hulk mythos for the first time in over three years is Rick Jones as Banner's best man--and I could think of no other man more fitting for the role due to his long association with Bruce and Betty going all the way back to issue #1. Rick here is quite different from his modern characterization, less the sidekick to heroes like Captain America, Captain Mar-Vell and Rom, and more the golly-gee-whiz Southern boy of Lee-Kirby vintage.

Rick and Bruce's conversation in the middle is intriguing for the picture it paints of Banner himself and the status quo that was to come. Bruce sees the marriage in terms of a mathematical equation, wondering if love is enough to "make the equation positive." Rick tries to make Bruce see that he is now free, but the scientist responds, "Don't you understand, Rick? Fate gave me power. The greatest power seen on this planet in a long, long time. But I was denied the ability to harness that power, to make it work for mankind, instead of against it. As a scientist, I was always fascinated--even during my ordeal--by the mechanism of my transformation into the Hulk. Whenever I had the opportunity, I studied him, trying to learn what was happening, exactly what was happening, within my atomic structure." Then the haunting finish: "I'm almost convinced now that there might have been a way, right from the start, for me to be both Bruce Banner and the Hulk, and be completely in control of both forms." Interestingly, Rick expresses doubts, when in fact he was all for a Hulk with Bruce's intellect during the Mantlo years, wanting Hulk-as-hero so badly he exposed himself to gamma radiation, developing poisoning that eventually led to cancer (which the Beyonder subsequently cured in Rick's appearance immediately before this one). Banner reassures the youth: "Oh, don't distress yourself, Rick. I'm free of the Hulk. I intend to stay that way." Did he really?

After the above exchange, the wedding proceeds until interrupted by "Thunderbolt" Ross, brandishing a gun and calling for an end to the ceremony. To prove his seriousness, he even fires the .45 on Rick. This event, then, is what his daughter Betty finally needs to be able to fully embrace the wedding and all it represents, stating once and for all that she is fed up with being "daddy's little girl" and that she wants her own life, with Bruce, a man who showed her all men were not like the general. To stop her, she says, he must kill her. He collapses in defeat, and before him, the wounded Rick, Hideko and the priest, Bruce Banner and Betty Ross are finally married. Hence they possess a moment of happiness.

The two issues I've not covered so far in this analysis--The Incredible Hulk Annual #14 and Marvel Fanfare #29--fall outside the main arc that I believe John Byrne was trying to build, and as such I find I've very little to actually say about them. The annual, "The Weakness of the Flesh!", is really a classic Hulk tale in a new skin, with the savage, slow-witted Hulk captured by Hubert St. Johns, a scientist, and his team so that they can find out what makes him tick and then transform the scientist into a gamma mutate. Of course, the plan goes horribly wrong, with St. Johns getting his heart's desire but discovering it's not what he believed it would be. He and the others aboard St. Johns' airship perish, including a roomful of failed gamma mutates that the Hulk pummels to mush without trying hard. The issue has the distinction of being the most straightforward Hulk story of perhaps Byrne's entire tenure on the series, with Sal Buscema, recently released from duties on the regular monthly book, returned to draw this special issue, which seems completely apropos.

Meanwhile, "A Terrible Thing to Waste...", the feature in Marvel Fanfare, the high-end format spotlight book in Marvel's line, was Byrne's last story for the publisher for some time, released the month after his last issue of Fantastic Four. Likely the story meant for Incredible Hulk #320, it is told entirely in splash pages. For the first time since his separation from Banner, the Hulk finds himself doing something other than demolishing a town or kicking Doc Samson's ass all over the desert. He befriends someone who appears to be an elderly Native American. The man exposes him to vapors that cause him to hallucinate--"An odd thing," the caption notes, "for a mindless beast to do." The Hulk is attacked by his old foes, Hammer and Anvil, but before much can come of the battle, the Native American shoots Hammer. Because the energy synthecon that links them also links their life forces, Anvil dies also. The Hulk hears the assassin's rallying cry, "Justice is served!" but of course is unaware that the man was the Scourge of the Underworld, responsible for a wave of executions of Marvel's super-villains at the time. He confusedly sees the discarded clothing and mask Scourge wore and, picking up the mask, says one word that casts doubt as to whether this Hulk is truly mindless: "Friend?" It's a spanner in the works in an otherwise unremarkable story that makes me think this story might have been part of a shift away from the themes Byrne was establishing, as perhaps an alternative to what had evidently been shouted down by editorial leading to his hasty departure for DC. Perhaps again, the story was designed to take place earlier in the timeline--but in that case, why the repeated references to a "mindless" Hulk?

Next up, in the third and final entry: I put the whole thing together. Once more, say it with me: "HULKINUED!"

(Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Postscript)

~G.

John Byrne & The Hulk That Might Have Been (1)

Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking about divergent paths the Hulk might have taken in his long, storied history. My attention kept turning to what is arguably the biggest turning point of them all, which should be familiar to all accomplished Marvelites who read the series in the 1980s. Of course, I'm talking about the time when Bill Mantlo came full circle with his renovating of the Hulk, taking him from the classic savage incarnation of his early run, retreading the traditional tropes; through a two-year period where the Green Goliath possessed Bruce Banner's brain; and finally a year-long period wherein the Hulk possessed none of Banner's intellect, becoming instead a nearly-mindless behemoth akin to a newborn just learning about himself and his abilities. When the Hulk found himself nearly where he began his journey under Mantlo's talented pen, where would the next writer take him? Who would chart that course, be it backward into potential stagnation, or forward into some bold new era?

It surprised everyone in 1985 to learn that John Byrne would take up that chore--the 1970s wunderkind who'd teamed with writer Chris Claremont on the most popular era for Marvel's Uncanny X-Men and who forged his own path as both writer and artist of Fantastic Four starting in 1981. The creative teams of The Incredible Hulk and Alpha Flight--a team whom Byrne created in 1979--switched places, with Mantlo and his artistic team of a young Mike Mignola and finisher Gerry Talaoc taking the reins of the latter, while Byrne both wrote and drew the former. (They even flip-flopped inkers, colorists, letterers, and editors!) Mantlo would take the disparate elements of Alpha Flight, a team that hardly ever came together as an actual unit under Byrne, and ended up writing that book for a few years (#29-67), a pretty lengthy tenure. Meanwhile, John Byrne took over after Mantlo's nearly six-year stint on Incredible Hulk, and after proclaiming bold plans in an interview with comics historian Peter Sanderson for Fantagraphics' Amazing Heroes magazine (#76), he stayed on just six regular issues (#314-319) and an annual (#14) before being replaced by the unjustly-reviled Allen Milgrom as result of what has come to be known as a classic squabble between Byrne and Marvel editorial. (Soon, Byrne headed off down the street to DC Comics, where he'd revamp Superman in the limited series, The Man of Steel. A few months later, he left Fantastic Four after working on it for just over five years, completing his Marvel obligations for over a year.)

John Byrne has always had an intense reverence for "the way things were," which is to say an affection for the very early Marvel Age (c.f. the Lee/Kirby period in Fantastic Four), and his treatment of Incredible Hulk was, on the surface, no different. His stated objective was to return the character to his roots: the original six-issue series that ran from 1962-1963 and was originally canceled to make way for another title in Marvel's tiny distribution deal with DC (claimed in many sources to be Amazing Spider-Man, but more likely Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, as its first issue shipped exactly two months after the last Hulk). Of course, he aimed to provide a consistency largely absent from those early issues (which had doubtless led to the original cancellation). He believed the Hulk had, in intervening years, accumulated a number of problems, all of which he could solve during his tenure.

The first problem was solved in the initial switching of creative teams with writer Mantlo. As Byrne stated in Amazing Heroes, "The Hulk has to be on Earth; he has to be somewhere that your average reader can relate to, even if it's New Mexico." Hence, the Beyonder, the godlike force behind Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars and its then-current sequel, Secret Wars II, tricked Alpha Flight into bringing the Hulk back from the Crossroads dimension (where he'd been trapped in the final year of Mantlo's run) to serve as host to the disembodied consciousness of their fallen teammate, Walter Langkowski, aka Sasquatch. (Langkowski didn't get the Hulk's body, naturally, but would eventually return in the body of another deceased Alphan, the very feminine Snowbird, during Mantlo's work in that series.) Returned to Earth, the Hulk now possessed "a quasi-mystical homing instinct [...] so that wherever he is on Earth, he is oriented to the place where he was created. He knows where it is. He can get there." This ability actually laid the foundation for later writer Peter David, who would later explain the ability away by saying the Maestro, the evil Hulk of an alternate future who'd died at ground zero of the original G-bomb detonation, was actually "calling out" to his younger self, absorbing gamma radiation so that he might reconstitute. (See Incredible Hulk: Future Imperfect and Incredible Hulk #460-461.) Regardless of the ability's genesis, the point was made that the Hulk could and did find the desert where he was born, and Byrne's adventures would take advantage of the original New Mexico locale, which is unique in comics in the Lee/Kirby sixties, Byrne's eighties, and now.

Another issue Byrne identified was the Hulk's very demeanor, which had shifted considerably from the original, malevolent creature who existed by night and often sought to conquer. Writers like Len Wein had developed the Hulk into an altogether different character--the "savage Hulk" incarnation, as later writers dubbed him, but which Byrne called something different. "I enjoyed Len's Hulk, the sort of capital 'G' Goofy Hulk. The slow-witted likable Hulk. I think it was Jim Starlin, or possibly Berni Wrightson, who said the Hulk was Marvel's Goofy," he said, referring to the Disney character--lovable and rather stupid, but with flashes of cleverness in his own unique way. Byrne preferred to liken him to Donald Duck, "because he reacts to everything at the same level, and it's all rage. Everything gets him angry." He wanted to restore the more primal Hulk of older vintage, constructing a scene in issue #314 where the Hulk kills a deer and just leaps away, whereas Wein's Hulk would have patted the animal on the head and said, "Nice deer." Here is where Byrne's vision seems least obvious in the seven issues we got, for in the majority the Hulk is much the same mindless behemoth we'd just gotten rid of in Mantlo's Crossroads story, although for vastly different reasons. (Mantlo's Banner committed psychic suicide, leaving the Hulk in a near-mindless state, whereas Byrne's monster was physically separated from Banner.) Only if we examined Byrne's unfinished plans would we see the hints of the original six issues in them.

Thirdly, Byrne wished to address the lack of a respectable rogues' gallery for the man-monster. In his first issue, he prominently featured five Hulk villains which he stated would never appear again under his tenure--the Leader, the Abomination, M.O.D.O.K., the Rhino, and the Juggernaut. Why retire them? "[B]ecause for the most part I feel they have been done to death. The Hulk has never really had a good rogues' gallery. He's tended to collect other people's bad guys, like the Juggernaut from The X-Men, like the Rhino from Spider-Man, and like Modok [sic] from Captain America." Remarkably, the six regular issues Byrne wrote and drew never featured an actual "Hulk villain"; in addition, the annual he wrote (#14) introduced a new villain who was killed in the same issue. The only villains Byrne wrote whom the Hulk fought before, Hammer & Anvil (from Incredible Hulk #182), only appeared in a story published several months after his run concluded, in the anthology title Marvel Fanfare (#29). But he had plans for at least one Hulk villain to return, with an unusual variant on another.

Because of the sheer length of this article, I'm splitting it up in three segments: this, the introduction, where I explain what I want to do; the second segment, wherein I review what Byrne actually accomplished during his eight-issue stint (counting the annual and Marvel Fanfare), comparing it with his intentions from the Amazing Heroes interview; and the final segment, wherein I cite the reasons for his exit from the book, chart the course he wanted to take in issues #320 and beyond, and compare that intended status quo to what eventually occurred. It's fair to say that the Hulk would likely be a very different character today if Byrne had been able to complete his journey. Although the stories themselves may be lackluster in certain facets, The Incredible Hulk #314-319 really are some of the most influential comics to feature the character in the 1980s, the pivot around which much of what follows revolve. In such a context, it's even more fascinating to think about those what-ifs, those might-have-beens.

As they said in the swingin' sixties: "HULKINUED!"

(Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Postscript)

~G.