Category: Hulk
-
Bickering. Jones concludes the series with Bruce and Logan bickering. Why are they bickering? Because Wolverine first appeared in a Hulk comic and Jones is trying to tie into their long history together? Who knows–Wolverine sure isn’t remembered for his Hulk appearance. The resolution is tightly paced, with Jones first using humor to get through…
-
Jones maintains a great pace through Six Hours. He’s got his four plot lines going–Bruce and Logan, the villain (the Shredder, because apparently Eastman and Laird don’t know how to copyright), the captive pilot and the missing boy’s parents back in Florida. It moves really well; Jones doesn’t cover a lot of time, but he…
-
Kolins goes more into detail this issue than he did in the first. The exterior Canadian mountains are precise and intense; it makes Six Hours a distinct-looking comic, even when Kolins occasionally has problems. He doesn’t deal with movement particularly well. The story is reasonably successful, although Jones introduces an absurd villain and gives him…
-
Writer Bruce Jones takes great care plotting out this first issue. He reveals the significance of the Six Hours title towards the middle of the issue, during the first intense, action set piece. There are a couple of those set pieces, with the beginning of the issue instead dedicated to setting up the supporting cast.…
-
It’s hard to feel bad about Doc Samson getting his butt kicked after he just lectured the Hulk on the importance of corporal punishment for children. Did Jones even think about what he was writing? Did his editors read the scripts? Braithwaite and Reinhold are back on art. Sometimes they’re a little better than usual,…
-
Here I thought Darick Robertson and Tom Palmer on the art would help…. It does help for a while. But the issue’s double-sized and once Doc Samson shows up, maybe a quarter of the way in, the art starts sliding. Jones reveals the mastermind behind all of Bruce Banner’s troubles. It gets sillier when the…
-
I don’t like finishing a comic wondering what the heck I’ve just read. Getting through this issue of Hulk isn’t just troublesome because of the incredibly uneven art–Braithwaite and Reinhold spend the least amount of time on the big fight between Hulk and Iron Man–but through the constant stupidity. Jones boils down his resolution to…
-
Watching Braithwaite try to do depth in panels gets painful fast. Bruce is pointing at Tony Stark in one panel and the hand is at exactly the same depth as his body. Maybe it’s Bill Reinhold’s inks, but there’s something definitely off with the art. Also off is the story. Bruce Banner is still helping…
-
Deodato has some kind of painted thing going on. It’s not good and it’s often unclear what’s going on–and there are real problems with montage–but at least he’s not doing the little panels for big action. The issue continues with the Iron Man guest appearance. There’s a strange fight scene where Bruce is in Iron…
-
Bruce is in L.A., no matter why, and he runs across a Tony Stark press conference. So they fight and team up. They fight because Tony can’t recognize Bruce in his sunglasses. Very convenient disguise. There’s a lot of talking, some confusing art from Deodato–though he’s better than usual–and more of Bruce being able to…
-
Deodato is back once again. And, once again, the art is bad. This time there’s a lot Deodato can’t do. He can’t do the talking heads, he can’t handle Bruce willfully turning into the Hulk for a quick emergency. And it’s too bad, because the issue’s a reasonable done in one where Bruce meets up…
-
After spending the first third of the book setting up the best Hulk fight since he’s been on the run–the way Jones paces out the banter between Hulk and evil spider-clone Hulk (don’t ask) is perfect–Jones trashes the whole thing. He goes back to his talking heads model. Down to no one really having anything…
-
Jones gets the whole cast together and things finally start improving. Braithwaite draws Bruce as this vaguely awkward, aging pudgy guy. It’s a very interesting visualization of the character; it goes to making him seem a little less familiar even. Oddly enough, the second half of the issue has Jones’s most traditional use of Bruce…
-
It’s a Hulk without even Bruce Banner. And I can’t figure out why. Usually when Jones takes forever with an issue, there’s at least an imaginative conversation going on. Lots of literary references, whatever. But not this issue. Here’s it just Doc and Betty arguing while Nadia Blonsky is in danger. Where’s Bruce? He left…
-
Jones gets a far better art–Dougie Braithwaite on pencils, Bill Reinhold on inks–and decides to celebrate. Of course, his celebration is dragging his cast through the dirt. He’s got Bruce emotionally pounding on Nadia, who’s a fine enough regular supporting cast member so it’s too bad Jones didn’t establish her more, and then he’s got…
-
Here’s the thing. If Jones had structured this series better, been less concerned with diversions like the Absorbing Man, he might have been able to do a fantastic storyline regarding the Banner, the bunnies, Doc Samson, the evil conspiracy. It would have worked. The issue works to some degree just because Jones lets the characters…
-
Oh, good grief. When Deodato goes for artistic it’s a really bad page. Also when he goes for Hulk action. Hulk rips open a mountain. Is it any good? Nope, it’s boring. But the issue is otherwise not bad at all. Between the Hulk smashing the evil organization, which brings those two parts of the…
-
I guess this issue’s an improvement; the series is so far along at this point it’s hard to tell. But the banter between characters goes away a little. Doc Samson and Sandra (she’s the regenerating spy who started out Jones’s run or somewhere towards the beginning) don’t have any banter. It’s just Mr. Blue and…
-
I can’t think of a more boring artist to do night scenes than Deodato. All of the art seems hurried, though some of it couldn’t be. Jones introduces little monsters who hunt Mr. Blue and Nadia. Except, of course, this issue is also where Jones reveals Mr. Blue’s identity. He could have hinted at it…
-
Deodato uses a lot of six panel pages. Not just for conversations, though there are a lot of conversations this issue, but he uses them for action too. Big action at the size of a thumbnail, how rewarding. It’s not even good small sized big action. Deodato skimps on the details; the smaller size is…
-
Poor Bruce Jones. He gets back to the conspiracy storyline, brings back in Doc Samson–reimagined as some kind of super-spy–and generally gets the series moving again towards something. Sure, Banner barely has anything to do but the narrative works. Jones splits it between Banner, Samson and Nadia (the Abomination’s wife) and ties them all together…
-
I don’t tend to go on at length about bad art. Well, maybe I do sometimes. But not often. This issue features the Hulk versus the Absorbing Man. Fernandez might draw the Hulk bad, but the Absorbing Man? Oh, he’s a disaster. From the panel Creel gets out–maybe even a few panels earlier where an…
-
There’s no nice way to phrase this observation so I’m going to just go ahead–Jones gives his female characters, in particular the New York paralegal or whatever she is, way too much credit. Unless he reveals her to be a trained law enforcement officer (like most of his strong female members), it’s just absurd. She…
-
Here's Jones's problem, at least with this arc–he can't tell this story with the Hulk. So far it has little or nothing to do with the bigger conspiracy story, it's just about Bruce Banner getting involved with the Absorbing Man's ingenious plan to free himself and kill a bunch of innocent people in the process.…
-
Much as I enjoy Fernandez's art with setting and people, he's not a good Hulk artist. The Hulk has very, very awkward proportions. Pudgy almost. Muscularly pudgy. But since it's a Bruce Jones Hulk there's not much Hulk action. Instead, he splits the comic between Bruce (Banner) and his new lady friend recovering from an…
-
Leandro Fernandez to the rescue! Not just regular Leandro Fernandez either, but doing a walking and talking scene through Central Park at twilight. It’s a gorgeous issue. And Fernandez alone isn’t responsible for rescuing Jones and Hulk (it’s just one issue after all). Jones opens from scratch. Banner on the run. He’s in New York,…
-
And here’s that double-issue long Hulk fight Jones has never done before and now it’s clear why… Because he’s no good at it. Jones and Deodato have a rhythm to the fight. There’s the fight, there’s the side action (sometimes the Abomination’s wife, sometimes the bad guys in a helicopter). Those are usually six panel…
-
I haven’t talked about Deodato’s tendency towards wide faces because there have been more interesting things to talk about. Not anymore. Sadly, Jones’s stalling has continued and gotten worse–this issue and the previous easily could have been wrapped into one. What happens this issue? Bruce finds out about the girl, whose motives are simple and…
-
Jones slows down the pace a lot. Deodato gets to draw the Hulk for a while and the Abomination is still an undetermined factor in the story–Jones and Deodato are laying on the ominous foreshadowing–but it’s a breather of an issue. Bruce bonds with Nadia, who is also warming to him. Even though she’s working…
-
I do admire Jones’s dedication. He resolves my concerns over the appearance of contrivance by revealing the conspiracy to be even more convoluted than he had previously suggested. But he doesn’t stop with the conspiracy, he makes this issue’s plot even more convoluted and surprising. The issue has a couple strange turns of events–not to…
The Stop Button 