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The Tragic Gamma Green Romeo

Some books take a while to reach the reader with their fundamental and meaty awfulness. Some types of melodrama go out of their way to remind you that the terms pathos and pathetic share the same origin. Some types of comics go out of their way to inspire readers to ask, "Does Marvel have some kind of weird thing about incest?"

Both of these forces collide in a particularly grating Incredible Hulk Annual 2000. And, though I won't rehash the principles of what I originally said defines a Truly Awful Comic, I will note that this piece qualifies by managing to insult creator, publisher, and purchaser all in a single and fairly concise package.

The Perpetrators

Fans often like to think of comics professionals in terms that divide them into categories of "talented" and "untalented," but such simplistic models don't always represent an accurate overview of the career of a comics professional. As with previous columns in the Truly Awful Comics series, we must note that this particular piece came from the hands of comics pros who, in other contexts, have something resembling good reputations. But, in art as in economics, something like the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns exists; this, for fans, means that everyone strikes out once in a while.

For this piece, then, the batters who missed the ball included writer Paul Jenkins and artists Mark Texeira and Richard Clark, who, though certainly not responsible for the awfulness of this piece, nonetheless failed to give it the appropriate visual feel. For a story of this sort, however, my imagination fails me in any attempts to define what constitutes the "right" visual feel. Perhaps seeing Hulk Annual 2000 left behind, unpurchased, provides the necessary conditions for the right feel here.

Again, the Rampage

At the beginning of this piece, we encounter the Hulk, in his baby-talking, purple-pantsed seventies incarnation. Readers would wait months before a comic explained exactly how the Hulk had returned from the blended version appearing in Incredible Hulk to the more simplistic, and more thoroughly exhausted, version that appears here.

That element, in itself, would qualify this piece as disposable, since few of the stories that center on the Hulk knocking some stuff down, then fighting with someone (with the Hulk devoid, as always, of the understanding of how his behavior brought on hostile reactions from a cold and thankless world) without an ornate web of super- and sub-plots do well among the canon of comics classics.

However, to bring in some appeal, Marvel decided to throw in the Avengers. After all, this helped make the first drag-down bust-up between the Hulk and the Thing a classic way back sometime around Fantastic Four #26.

Had they left matters there, this comic would have not entered the index of dreadful comics, and I would have quietly, mercifully, allowed readers to forget it, and the talent involved to go on to other things, hopefully healing the bruises on their reputations in the process.

The story, unfortunately, had to have a twist, and with this twist, it warped itself into the world of Truly Awful Comics.

Primate Studies, the Internet, Synthezoids, and Explanations

Writers sometimes exhaust novel ways to introduce exposition, and we can forgive them for occasional experiments that, though not really compelling in themselves, do provide a variety from approaches like long-winded captions or oddly incongruous thought balloons containing paragraphs of missing pretext necessary for ongoing scenes to begin to make sense.

This story, perhaps because editorial waters have shifted since a day when the Hulk could wear shredded purple pants and leave a trail of destruction as big as all outdoors without needing much explanation, decided to impose some reason on the Hulk's rampage, and the revelation came through the vehicle of the Vision.

Did the tragic synthezoid hero use his higher-order intellect to decipher obvious clues from the Hulk's behavior to diagnose a cause? Did the Vision, instead, base a hypothesis on previously-established behavior in the Hulk's history? Or, perhaps, did the Vision demonstrate his subdued but always-present human personality traits and come to a conclusion with simple insight?

No, no, and no. The Vision used a wireless Internet link (somewhere in his anatomy, we must suppose) to do research on orangutans. And this showed him an explanation for the Hulk's behavior.

Why, then, according to the Vision, has the Hulk begun another onslaught against real estate and occasional passerby? In essence, the Vision redacts from his between-rounds studies of Internet lore on orangutans, because the Hulk wants to mate.

The Mating Urge

Bad enough, you say? Does the aforementioned sequence induce involuntary shudders, accompanied by unwanted images of green-skinned swingers in singles bars practicing pickup lines in fractured baby talk? Well, the writers did not see the story so far as quite bad enough, so they added a new quirk.

The Hulk, it seemed, recognized himself as belonging to a green-skinned volk that included only two females he had ever encountered. The first, Jarella, died way back before comics had completely lost their Silver Age vitality. The second, however, exchanged blows with the Hulk as one of the current members of the Avengers.

The Hulk wanted to mate with his cousin, the She-Hulk.

No, that said exactly what it seemed to say. And Marvel seemed completely serious in this turn of events, even if they softened the impact somewhat by making it unclear whether the Hulk fully understood what the kind of companionship he sought involved. No jokes about inbreeding in Arkansas followed (the need to insult someone, perhaps, already fulfilled with the multiple affronts to the reader offered by this piece).

They really and truly seemed to mean it. The Hulk had gone on a rampage because of a gamma-powered equivalent of spring fever.

The Sappy Tragic Ending

Given her blood relationship and (evidently) a better ability to sympathize with the specific burdens of Gamma-Americans, She-Hulk incorporates the Vision's unsavory revelation into her analysis and strategy of the Hulk's behavior. Thoroughly bruised by an earlier sequence knocking heads with her far more formidable, and evidently thoroughly randy, cousin, she bears the marks of a good beating, including the kind of shiner that would have gotten the Hulk thrown in jail for spousal abuse, had he already achieved his amorous aims with his fairer, smarter cousin.

Sacrificing the last tatters of dignity that attached to her character, She-Hulk therefore looks less to The Art of War and more to Mae West routines for inspiration in how to cope with green kinsmen who won't take no for an answer; yet, at the key moment, when the Hulk stood ready to bash her over the head and drag her, over his shoulder, to a cave somewhere and violate 99% of the rules of the Comics Code Authority (past, present, and future), she turns her back to him and fails to make the appropriately submissive gestures of a green primate keen on mating.

This provokes an eloquent soliloquy of self-pity on the part of the Hulk, in fractured English, fractured logic, and dubious sentimentality, followed by his departure. As the heartbroken Hulk bounds away, She-Hulk dwells on the unfairness of it all, with tears streaming down her eyes.

Disgust That Grows on a Reader

The first time I read this piece, disbelief colored most of my reactions. It shocked me, though not for an excess of graphic detail of violence (even though the She-Hulk's bruised-up face did seem somewhat disturbing, particularly in the context of delivering cheesy pick-up lines from some comic-book singles bar). The surprise came in my reaction to the notion that a writer might imagine someone wanted to read such a story.

From there, I drifted somewhat into indifference. Not a good story, honesty compelled me to admit, but not bad enough to merit documenting in the picky paragraphs of "Truly Awful Comics."

Nonetheless, as time wore on, that dirty feeling the story inspired grew on me, the same way mildew might grow on a poorly-ventilated bathroom's wall. It never became particularly strong, but the bad taste left in my mouth when thinking about this annual demonstrated considerable staying power; something about the story makes me, even now, want to bury my face in a stack of sickeningly sentimental Hallmark cards in the hope that the detergent properties of such material might cut through the fundamental greasiness left in the memory by stories like this.

Return to the Quarter Bin.
Email the author at ouzomandias@mailexcite.com.

Column 222. Completed 10-FEB-2001.