Sunday, April 20, 2008

Who Are You Going to Believe?

Heaven knows, I give Bendis a lot of grief around here (deservedly so, but...). Yet I'm man enough to admit when he's right about something.

That something? The insane idea that Greg Pak has been putting forward that no one has ever died in one of the Hulk's many rampages.

It all started when Amadeus Cho, also known as *ahem* Mastermind Excello, came on board. And to convince Hercules and his little band of heroes that they should help Bruce Banner crush the Illuminati, Cho came up with the little chestnut that no one had ever died because of the Hulk. Not a single person. Here, check out this from Incredible Hulk #110 (2007):

Math means falling buildings never kill anyone!!And from #111:

Hulk...much less deadly than Iraqi insurgents
Loophole alert!And he's even gone so far as to have someone else state that there's never been a single casualty from the Hulk (sorry, I couldn't find it...).

Now, you can give Bruce Banner all the props you want to, but some things are way beyond instantaneous mathematical calculation in the heat of battle, no matter what Cho might say. If you've seen the results of enough military helicopter crashes, it strains credibility to believe that knocking them out of the sky could never result in a casualty, no matter how careful you did it. If you saw the results of the evacuation of New Orleans, it's not conceivable that you could evacuate a panicked city 10 times that size, and then fight 10 or 12 monstrous battles there, and not have a single person inadvertently die.

Sure, Pak adds enough caveats to try and cover his ass, like "never killed an innocent," or "self-defense," or "that was a war" or "as long as your brain hasn't been tampered with." So any exception you can find, Pak can argue it somehow doesn't count.

And that bugs the frak outta me, for some reason. Probably because it's yet another attempt by comic writers to have their cake and eat it too: they want to write a book about a destructive monster, but somehow have him still be a hero. Look, Hulk can destroy the biggest city on Earth, yet magically no one ever dies!! See, he is a good guy!! We want him savage, but still basically a nice guy. Next: Galactus can eat a planet, but miraculously, his brilliant mind ensure that there are no casualties. It's cheap, lazy writing, not to mention morally questionable: let's have all violence and zero consequences!

But Bendis didn't get that memo. Look at New Avengers: Illuminati #1 (2006)...not the mini-series, but the one-shot that served as a prelude to the Civil War. Commander Hill is lecturing Tony Stark about the Hulk's Las Vegas rampage, which happened in Fantastic Four #533:

Bendis says Hulk is almost as deadly as the Stamford explosion!!
Hulk...threat or menace?So, despite Cho's having "studied every recording and report of every fight" the Hulk "has ever been in," I guess he missed that one, eh? Except Stark says "How many this time?" That certainly implies deaths other times, right?

Then later, when proposing exiling Banner to the Illuminati:

Who ya gonna trust, Cho or Stark? Hmmm
All agree: Hulk=dangerSo, according to Bendis, innocents have died in Hulk rampages (and a dog!!). And it's not the first time. And more people will die.

And if you think about it, isn't that the only thing that makes sense? If no one had ever been injured in a Hulk rampage, why would Tony & Reed et al have bothered to blast Hulk off Earth? If he was no threat to human life, why would the military have wasted a kajillion dollars worth of equipment trying to destroy him?

So Pak's idea doesn't even make sense in terms of his own story. If no one ever, ever died because of the Hulk, there was no reason for Planet Hulk, no reason for World War Hulk. And no reason to lock up Bruce Banner afterwards, either.

I know Marvel writers don't bother to read each others' work, and doesn't have editors who actually coordinate things, so this all really could be a case of "didn't get the memo." But looked at as two writers arguing about the implications of a character's actions, Bendis clearly wins this one.

So see? I'm not irredeemably anti-Bendis...until the next issues of Avengers and Skrullapalooza, at least...

3 comments:

  1. Another ridiculous conceit behind "Math Hulk" is the tendency of so many writers to possess an almost child-like understanding of intelligence, who has it, and how it works. In other words, to this childish viewpoint, somebody who's an expert in Gamma radiation (as Bruce Banner is/was), he would therefore be an expert in all possible areas of science and mathematics because...well...because he's SMART!

    I also get the same vibe from Mark Millar's take on characters like Tony Stark or Reed Richards. They're not only smart, but omnisciently smart...knowing all things about all concepts and outcomes, which is where you get Millar's hopelessly chiched "I invented twenty six clean-burning vehicles before breakfast" nonsense and, I would submit, Greg Pak's ridiculous contention that some aspect of Bruce Banner is constantly crunching numbers while the Hulk is in full rampage-mode.

    Just laughable.

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  2. I could give them a pass on Reed, because being a mega-genius is part of his character (not to mention various writers over the years have implied the cosmic rays also enabled his mind to "stretch," increasing his already formidable intelligence).

    But Tony Stark suddenly being "a futurist?" Please.

    And even if you grant Banner full control, how could he possibly know if some fool didn't refused to (or couldn't) evacuate and was huddled up hiding in a building he destroyed? How could he know that the section of town he knocked out the electricity in didn't have some old or sick person who then died because of no air conditioning? I don't care how brilliant Banner's (or Cho's) number crunching is--to avoid every potential casualty, you'd need omniscience, not mere genius.

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  3. There's a big problem with the "more realistic" version of the Hulk, though, which is that if Hulk is killing innocent people on his rampages, Bruce Banner should just put a bullet in his brain, no?

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