Marvel 2005 Week--Incredible Hulk #85!!

Remember that one time in 2005, when we had the best President ever?

What the...??

Oh, yeah.

You can't discuss Marvel 2005 without discussing the House Of M event. Which, just to be random, would have been much cooler if it was House Of Monkeys, a reality show starring Hugh Laurie doctoring to a tribe of super-powered apes. Sigh.

But for those who've blacked out the pain, House Of M was an event wherein the Scarlet Witch, who used to point her hands at things to make boxes fall apart before the bad guy could throw them, essentially became the world's biggest cosmic cube, and remade all of reality into a world where mutants dominate. Hey, Wanda, haven't you seen the comics racks? We were already there...

Anyway, aside from the House Of M mini-series proper, most of the Marvel series played along, either by running House Of M miniseries of their own, or running HoM stories in the series proper for an issue or two. And Incredible Hulk jumped into the deep end, devoting 4 regular series issues to the adventures of Bruce Banner in the HoM universe.

And who created this?

Ahhh, Peter David. You just can't keep him away from the Hulk, can you? After his nearly-decade-long run, he comes back for a year, sandwiched between Bruce Jones' run and the Planet Hulk stuff. And he throws himself into this House Of M stuff with gusto.

First of all, Hulk is the president...of Australia.

Mutants rule the world, and the government of Australia (Exodus, Pyro, the Vanisher) were particularly oppressive, rounding up and exterminating uncooperative humans. At the same time, Bruce Banner is hanging with an aborigine tribe in the outback (the one that doesn't have Bloomin' Onions). They have adopted him as one of their own as he is learning to be at piece with himself--hence, the snake tattoo. Obviously, there's going to be a clash, as the evil government forces chase some mutants into native territory. Bruce Hulks out, and ends up teaming with Monica Rappacini, leader of A.I.M., and her daughter, the new Scorpion, to oust the mutant and take over Australia. Which become the sole human-run government in the world, and a refuge for the growing exodus of humans who want to get away from mutant rule. And that's only the first two issues...phew...

And that scene with Hulk freaking out over paperwork? Didn't really happen...

What? Bruce Banner in bed?? With a woman?? Well, yeah...but he's still as broody as hell:

But, when you're knocking boots with a hot evil scientist, AND it turns out its not the first time you've hooked up, well, I guess there are some advantages of a re-worked reality.


Meanwhile, Scorpion finds some of her moms goons rousting a human refugee...


Man, A.I.M. gets to dress a lot better in this universe. No beekeeper suits?!?

Anyway, we find out not everything is wonderful at the heart of Hulk's outback paradise:

Now, some scenes of a man who can't be bothered to put on a shirt while ruling a country:

And when the world's mutant governments are refusing to trade with Australia?? Bruce breaks out the diplomacy.

You know, for a guy who's constantly moaning about what hell it is to be the Hulk, Bruce is sure willing to play the Hulk card an awful lot...

Yet when his advisers suggest that the people would like the Hulk to make an occasional appearance, Bruce flips out:

But, when Scorpion comes to him with tales of evil experiments, Bruce goes undercover with her to investigate. And again, for a guy who likes to whine that a "stubbed toe" could set off the "atomic bomb" inside of him, Bruce sure likes to put himself in situations where that stubbed toe is damned likely. Ahh, the screwed up psychology of Robert Bruce Banner...

They discover the cliched hidden entrance to evil labs...

And after a couple of pages of "humorous banter," they find the mother lode:

Yes, Hulk's girlfriend, the leader of an evil scientific organization, is performing evil science. Who woulda thought??!? I mean, building a cyborg army out of unwilling refugees isn't that evil, is it...?

I've been skipping over a lot of David's trademark funny stuff, so let's take a look:

Haha, because alarm klaxons that are easy to ignore would be a good thing, right, Bruce?? But, despite all his earlier reservations, Banner throws himself right into Hulk smash mode:





And as he confronts the head scientist at the complex:



And of course, because it's Peter David, we can't help but end the issue on a joke:

Hahahahaha, it's funny because she's making a pop-culture cliche reference to a ten year old movie, which is obviously still hilarious to David...and it's a movie which probably would never have been made in this universe (we'll learn elsewhere that man reached the moon in 1955 in this universe, and the program was never named Apollo, and...)!!! Hahahahaha!!!

Then again, it's probably a fitting final line, because House Of M ends with the world's biggest re-set button being pushed (unless you were a mutant), and none of it will have any repercussions, and it will all have never happened, and Peter David will leave as soon as House Of M is over, so since none of it matters, why bother to come up with an original or funny joke--or even one that makes sense??

That's what you get from publishing an "event" that is functionally only a big-ass issue of What If?--it's pretty hard to care.

Beware--there will be more House Of M later this week...

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

Or, actually, in another alternate universe...

I always liked Tony Bedard's run of Exiles, because man, could he go nuts. In this issue, the Exiles team helps Curt Connors' Science Squad (Connors, Tony Stark, Hank Pym, and Boilvar Trask) on Earth-3752 use the giant mecha Red Ronin to fight Fin Fang Foom.

And there's no re-set button in sight.

Marvel 2005 Week--Fantastic Four #530!!

Well, we've done a number of Marvel Weeks over the years, but we haven't really touched upon the 21st century...until now.

Well, let me get the surprise out of the way up front: I didn't hate JMS' run on Fantastic Four. Heck, I actually enjoyed it, for the most part.

Now, I know I've been pretty critical (editor's note: understatement) of his DC work, which has been, well, amazingly terrible. But, with the caveat that I haven't read much of his Spider-Man stuff, I was down with most of his Marvel output, and Rising Stars, while wildly overrated, was at least a good read.

JMS had the misfortune to come right after Mark Waid's heralded one and just before Dwayne McDuffie's all too brief stint, which had the effect of making his one run seem less by comparison. But despite some flaws with pacing (3 issues for a Hulk-Thing donnybrook? Really?), and plotlines that just sort of vanished (The Thing is rich!), JMS clearly seemed to get the balance between real-world and cosmic that the FF needs.

Yes, the creeping lateness that seems to plague many a JMS title crept in (only 9 issues of the FF published in 2006). Yes, his treatment of Reed during Civil War was terrible--but it's not clear how much of that was forced on him, as others had apparently decided Reed would be Tony Stark's unquestioning lapdog. That doesn't excuse JMS' hamfisted "my uncle was wrong" characterization, but he was dealing from a deck stacked against him.

But all in all, JMS's 15 issue run is nowhere near the worst ever on the FF...hell, it was nowhere near the worst of the century.

On with our story:

Ahhh, good old cosmic rays. Our creators?

Let me just say, I think Mike McKone draws purty:

To help out Ben's recap: the government has discovered that the exact same conditions of cosmic rays etc that created the FF is happening again, and they want Reed to help re-create his rocket and send up a team of soldiers so they can become cosmic-powered soldiers.

Reed thinks that's a pretty damned bad idea, so while he pretends to play along, he secretly sabotages the government project, while running home to take the FF up into the storm.

You see, he has intuited that the cosmic ray storm was actually a message (!), and if the same people who received the first one go up to answer the second one, that will prove to the sender that they're intelligent, and they can have a heckuva first contact. Hey, that's why Reed is smarter than all of us.

And it seems to be working...although JMS can't resist making a 21 year old pop culture reference to help explain it:

And then they find a big-ass thingie:


Which deposits a visitor on the ship:

And after Johnny and Sue engage on some purty flame-and-force-field heroics to save the crashing ship...


...we meet our hitchhiker.

Of course, the military shows up, as the FF landed on a military base AND the government is pretty cheesed about that whole sabotage business:

Of course, there's a panicky soldier who accidentally fires:

And:




Which unleashes a a firefight, which unsurprisingly, the advanced alien is winning:

The military withdraws, and Ben reveals that he's been in telepathic communication with the dude, and the soldiers aren't really killed:


Why Ben?

Awww...and for the record, I'm not the chucklehead who came up with that hard to read white-text-on-black-background word balloon concept for our cosmic guy.

Anyhoo, the alien proceeds to reveal his origin, which plays a bit like Krona's:






Yeah, yeah, scientist seeks forbidden knowledge, abused by his people, accidentally becomes all-powerful. He got away, but his people pursued him "on a religious crusade to keep [him] from telling others what [he] knows." Of course, the story is frustratingly vague about what he discovered, why is was forbidden by his peeps, and why they're so hell-bent to suppress it...but then again, it has to be, with that of story. But the end result is the same:

Alien invasion. Great.

This is only issue 4 of a 6 issue arc, but long-story short--Reed and the alien end up in hyper-omniscient-ville, travel back to the beginning of the universe, their "inquisitiveness" was the "spark" that launched the Big Bang, and that Reed's presence there was what shaped the cosmic rays to have their particular influence on the Four. Oh, yeah, and Reed was able do some tinkering to reboot events so he wouldn't have to sabotage the government program and become a traitor. Oh, second yeah, all he experienced restored his faith in humanity, or some such. And we discussed the difference between the search for knowledge of the search for truth. And...

I simplified that all a bit for you. You're welcome.

Yeah, kind of pretentious and silly, but in a fun and harmless way, and purty as all get out to look at.

So, JMS' FF run: not as bad as I had remembered. Not bad at all, actually.

To bad about that Civil War nonsense, though. At least it lead to Ben's wonderful adventures in Paris...

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

You know it's odd, but while the X-Family has had multiple titles forever, and while the Avengers is an ever-growing empire, Marvel's first family has almost never had multiple titles, except for this brief little period:

You know, I never understood why this was a "Marvel Knights" title, as opposed to just another Marvel Universe title. It didn't seem to me to particular involve the "more mature themes" that were the raison d'etre of the imprint. I'm sure there was some reason...maybe the just needed to publish a certain number of titles to justify the imprint...

Anyway, I enjoyed Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's run on the title, although most people never seemed to have noticed it...

Tell Your Newstand Vendor That A Giant Talking Rabbit Sent You!

So, you're a crimefighter with a little time on your hands between fighting arch criminals. What do you do?

Hmmm, I don't know. If I were a ten year old boy in the body of a powerful adult, I might find several more important things to do besides read a long-running competitor of Popular Mechanics. And no, I'm not even talking about the dirty stuff, you perverts!

Well, OK, there's two endorsements. Still, given that Captain Marvel Jr. could be flying around with actual airplanes (and rockets, and flying saucers, and...), maybe the appeal of building model planes for this particular celebrity endorser is somewhat less than it would be for a more pedestrian spokesman.

But I will admit, it's an impressive array of folks pitching this magazine to me. You got anybody else?

A super-powered anthropomorphic rabbit telling me what to read? SOLD!!!!

Ad from Bulletman #14 (1946).

Friday Night Fights--Where Is Thanos Style!!

Let's get cosmic this time for Friday Night Fights.

Thanos has reared his ugly head, and the Silver Surfer has traveled to Titan to seek some advice from Mentor on how to deal with the guy.

But, if Thanos is alive, well, guess who else is going to be joining the party??

Now, in this incarnation, Drax The Destoyer is...well, single-minded is the way to describe it. Dumber than a bag of hammers is another way.

So arrogant jackass Norrin Radd and self-styled god Mentor basically ignore him and his request for the tiniest tidbit of information:

And again:

In fact, they keep acting as if he's not even there, some dumb animal they can ignore. Not a good idea.





Surfer, meet wall.

Even Spacebooger had to chortle as that whiney jerk the Surfer got his, for once.

Norrin was considerably less Radd in Silver Surfer #37 (1990), written by Jim Starlin, drawn by Ron Lim, inked by Tom Christopher.

Now go vote for whomever you believe to be the winner. Don't be shy...