I guess the John Byrne Fantastic Four Visionaries is done, most of his Uncanny X-Men stuff is in the Masterworks, so what is next? This collects his only work on The Hulk (so I don’t know why it is volume one when there will be none after this). I guess all that is left is his Alpha Flight and She-Hulk work.
-Incredible Hulk #314- Hulk returns to Earth (where was he? I don’t know, though Wikipedia tells me he was involved in something called Crossroads of Eternity) and he lands in the Rockies, kills a deer, then heads for New Mexico. Samson learns of this and shows up to try and help Banner. Hulk can talk, he isn’t completely beastial, and Samson tries to get through to Hulk, which fails. Hulk then starts hallucinating (thanks to Banner?) and sees old foes from the past. This allows Samson to sucker punch Hulk and knock him out, vowing to save Banner. It’s a good beginning, as Byrne retells Hulk’s origin, shows old foes, and there’s a semblence of Banner still in there for Samson to deal with.
-Incredible Hulk Annual #14- This is a huge annual (40 pages) written by Byrne and drawn by Sal Buscema. It takes place between panels of Hulk #314 as a ship captures Hulk. There are three people, a young professor named Daniel Kortz, an older woman named Nancy Kelloway and fat-ass named Hubert St. John. They run experiments on Hulk in the goal of trying to recreate their own monster. Kelloway starts having second thoughts about it and Kortz just laughs at her for being too soft and for loving him. Hulk stays drugged but manages to escape and battles previous experiments of gamma beasts which he beats, then they melt. Kelloway soon shows her feelings, gets smacked around by St. John, and leads to her asking for Hulk’s help. St. John is pumped with gamma blood and becomes an even bigger, fatter beast. He kills Kortz, then starts suffering from the huge amount of weight and falls on Kelloway, killing her. Hulk’s friend (Kelloway) is dead and Hulk is alone, again.
-Incredible Hulk #315- Banner struggles with trying to contain the Hulk in a dream passage. Soon, we see Doc Samson working on seperating the Hulk and Bruce Banner, which actually works! Banner is one entity, and the Hulk is another. SHIELD steps in and takes Hulk which Samson has a problem with. He sees Hulk as a tabula rasa to make into a weapon. Of course, Samson messes up, Hulk is free, and Samson vows revenge. Betty Ross returns at the end, too.
-Incredible Hulk #316- She-Hulk (Banner’s cousin) shows up and learns of an experimental procedure that will help Banner gain his thoughts back, to break him out of his coma. They decide to do it, and Banner is now awakened, and is fine. Meanwhile, Hulk is rampaging and the West Coast Avengers (at this time is Iron Man, Hercules, Wonder Man and and Namor) battle Hulk. They are interrupted by Samson who wants to tackle him alone. He is just driven by revenge now and isn’t thinking straight. Obviously, the Avengers see this as fine and let him go fight the monster.
-Incredible Hulk #317- Banner calls together a team of noted scientists who can’t find work to be his Hulkbuster team. He wants to stop Hulk once and for all. Samson has a confrontation with the Hulk (which lasts 6 hours) where Hulk comes out on top and jumps away. The Hulkbusters decide if they want to join Banner’s team and they decide they have nothing else to lose. Banner shocks everyone by proposing to Betty at the end of the issue.
-Incredible Hulk #318- Betty struggles with her decision to marry Bruce as Samson again has a run-in with Hulk. The Hulk was actually a fake one used by the Hulkbusters and so after its destroyed by Samson, they use Samson as their test run. It ends miserably for them as one of their members die and Samson is oddly unaffected. Samson leaves them mourning and runs after Hulk again. In other news, Ross accepts Banner’s proposal!
-Incredible Hulk #319- Rick Jones shows up to attend the wedding as two concurrent tales run through the comic. The first deals with Hulkbusters and Samson battling Hulk, which ends in a standstill and Hulk running off again, and Banner and Ross’ wedding. The ceremony goes well until the missing Thunderbolt Ross shows up in a rage, shoots Rick Jones, and wants Banner to leave. Betty talks sense into her father and the wedding goes on (with Jones lying on the floor, refusing medical attention until the wedding is over).
-Marvel Fanfare #29- Hulk meets a friend in the desert who calms him then uses drugs to cause him to hallucinate. Hammer and Anvil show up and attack the green giant and Hulk fends them off. A shadowed man shoots Hammer in the face, killing him, and since Anvil is bound, he dies, too. It seems that Hulk’s friend is not what he seems, as Hulk finds a mask of him on the ground. Who was he? I don’t know, and I don’t know if we’ll ever find out.
-The Bottom Line- I have to point out one gripe before I begin. All these volumes should include some sort of introduction or preface to let us know what was going on with these characters at the time. The recent Onslaught volumnes have them, the Marvel Premiere Hardcovers have them, the Masterworks don’t but they are chronological and don’t need them, but Hulk returns from somewhere and even though Byrne is starting off a new story, a look at what happened prior to this would be handy. I pointed out that this is Byrne’s only work on Hulk and I have to be honest, it is a little underwhelming. It is a short arc that accomplished a lot (Banner married Ross, Thunderbolt returns, Hulk is a separate entity) but it seemed that a lot of things seemed off. Doc Samson, a psychiatrist, is oddly uncaring after freeing the Hulk, not caring when a Hulkbuster dies in a battle with him, fighting the West Coast Avengers, and being highly irrational. I don’t think he would be a trusted psychiatrist if he kept this up. The unthinking Hulk was a nice idea but unfortunatley this volume featured no closure on that aspect of the story, as Samson failed in bringing Hulk in and he is still on the loose. I don’t know how much longer the two were seperated, perhaps an afterward of what happened next would’ve been nice. Byrne’s best work in Marvel came when he drew X-Men and perhaps one of his best known runs was on FF (which was also great) but Byrne’s version of Hulk was hardly groundbreaking or even visionary. It certainly is nothing compared to Peter David’s run. That being said, I think it would be a great idea for Marvel to collect all of Byrne’s work in collections like these. We already have the Uncanny X-Men stuff in the Masterworks and the Visionary FF volumes collect his work, but runs on titles like Alpha Flight, Namor, She-Hulk and Captain America would ne nice, too. Still this isn’t essential reading in either Hulk lore or Byrne’s work, and is just a mild recommendation to avoid at the price for just a few issues.
