Comic Book Herald

A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans

Hulk

Abomination Reading Order!

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Picture this: it’s 1967. You are an artist named Gil Kane, and you are working at Marvel on the comic book Tales to Astonish. Stan Lee just asked you to create a new bigger, badder, meaner antagonist for the Hulk, and you’re racking your brain, trying to come up with the right design. When suddenly, genius hits: “What if the Hulk was a weird scaly fish/lizard guy?”

This is the story of the Abomination, one of the Jade Giant’s most recurring foes, always ready to cause trouble for Marvel’s Gamma heroes (as we will soon see on our screens with his return to the MCU in Disney+’s She Hulk), and whose most important characteristic is his ability to be an eternal pain in the Hulk’s green posterior. [Read more…] about Abomination Reading Order!

Death Is Never The End in The Immortal Hulk

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Immortal Hulk is easily one of the most talked-about Hulk comics in some time, though the idea of a shockingly powerful, intrinsically misanthropic Hulk certainly isn’t without precedent. Indeed, much of what made the run so successful for all fifty issues was its willingness to move slightly away from standard Marvel Comics hijinks in order to embrace the weird sci-fi and horror concepts that were baked into the concept from the jump.

Yet, taking it all one step further to address heavy subjects such as immortality in the Marvel Universe, as well as dealing with long-term trauma caused by childhood abuse, is what made this book something significantly more than a retread of the Hulk’s weirdest moments. Though this builds on what came before, there has never been a comic quite like The Immortal Hulk. [Read more…] about Death Is Never The End in The Immortal Hulk

All Smash, No Pass: The Best Hulk Comics Of All Time!

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An intelligent, sensible man strapped to a gamma-born bulldozer (or is it the other way around?), Dr. Bruce Banner, first among the various other characters to carry the Hulk name at Marvel, is a ticking time bomb.

A founding member of the Avengers, a father, a friend, and a deeply flawed man, the Hulk has more in common with DC’s Swamp Thing than Marvel’s own Man-Thing does. A man out of time, out of place, and with a dangerously close connection to something primal. His best stories understand this, the unique position he commands both physically and philosophically in the comics sphere, and they deliver on that promise with a marriage of the intense depth that come from both Bruce’s raw humanity, and yes, a whole lot of Hulk smashing. These are the best Hulk comics:
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The Leader Reading Order!

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When it comes to Hulk villains, there is no greater match for the Jade Giant than the Leader. Like Bruce Banner, Sam Sterns got his powers after being bombarded with gamma rays, but instead of his muscles growing like the Hulk’s, Sterns gained incredible intelligence and a brain the size of a soccer ball.

As The Leader, Sterns matches the Hulk brains-for-brawn, but it doesn’t stop there. In many ways, Bruce Banner and Samuel Sterns are two faces of the same coin; one is a self-loathing and guilt-ridden man who wants to be left, while the other is a would-be Ruler of the World, reveling in the strength of his own grey (green?) matter. One man seeks isolation to protect the world from what his strength and rage might do; the other puts himself above other people because they’re not as smart as him. And while other the Hulk villains — from General Thunderbolt Ross to the Abomination — might have come to blows with the emerald enforcer more frequently, the Leader is the one who feels like his true nemesis.

With The Leader featuring in both the end phase of Al Ewing’s Immortal Hulk and promotional material for the upcoming M.O.D.O.K. show (and perhaps in Disney+’s She-Hulk?), now is the perfect time to catch up on Samuel Sterns’ comic book history, from 1964 to today. [Read more…] about The Leader Reading Order!

The Maestro (Future Hulk) Reading Order!

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A character with a 60-year history set in a multiverse will see countless alternative versions created to support the story creatively and/or commercially. The ability to take an already successful character and make fundamental changes without impacting the original character is a valuable tool. The Hulk is no stranger to this idea and this has allowed the character to be taken to unique places. We have seen a “Nerd Hulk”, a “Punk Hulk”, Worlds where Hulk and Banner have been successfully separated, and whatever the hell Ultimate Hulk was trying to accomplish.

The Maestro stands apart from the other variations and has created his own gamma footprint in the Marvel Universe. The Maestro is the nightmare future scenario where a Post-Apocalyptic Hulk and Banner live as one with Banner’s intelligence and the Hulk’s strength aligned, and a malevolent dictator forged. [Read more…] about The Maestro (Future Hulk) Reading Order!