After a promising but a bit inconsistent first issue, the Incredible Hulk was in a position success-wise that could go either way: many popular and strong series started out scrambling, but found their footing a few issues down the line. On the other hand, finding that kind of success would require winning over the reader with intentional and consistently good issues, and since we already know the series only lasted for six issues, we can draw the conclusion that the Hulk failed to do so. In this retrospective series, I'm looking for the particular failings behind that lack of lasting success, and the signs are already sprouting up in the next two issues.
The Incredible Hulk #2:
"The Terror of the Toad Men!"
- Writers: Stan Lee
- Artists: Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko
- Editor: Stan Lee
- Publication Date: May 1, 1962
- Cover Date: July 1962
The second issue of the Incredible Hulk is tonally similar to the first, which is not entirely a good thing, considering the first issue struggled to fit together two tonally conflicting sub-stories. The same thing happens here, though there’s differences that make it both better and worse at the same time.
On one hand, we have the still spooky gothic narrative of Bruce Banner and his involuntary nocturnal transformations into the Hulk. This works arguably even better here than in the previous issue thanks to Jack Kirby pretty much exclusively – the Hulk we see stalking the wasteland is more frightening and imposing than what we saw last time, and the action of him giving the US Army a run for their money is also more interesting than the surprisingly sparse action of the debut story.
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| Art by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. © Marvel Comics. |
However, whenever we switch over to the invading Toad Men, the vibe changes into that disposable pulp scifi filler again, much like it did with the Gargoyle. I can’t really say the story doesn't "belong", as in these early days there wasn’t an established template for these kinds of stories yet, and honestly ridiculous invading aliens was more of a staple in comics in the early 60s than many tropes we consider a given nowadays.
The problem is that it feels like it has nothing to do with the Hulk, and in fact this book would not only work, but be better if you cut out the Toad Man story entirely. If you did, this becomes a natural continuation of the previous tale, with Thunderbolt Ross now insisting on hunting down the Hulk and declaring his distrust of Banner (here exacerbated by Banner’s presence in a downed alien spacecraft).
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| Art by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. © Marvel Comics. |
The scenes of Hulk tearing through the town are intense and scary in an entertaining way, and Jack Kirby makes some great decisions with the way he uses the environment – such as railroad tracks – as props. Banner earns back his reputation by repelling the Toad Men’s unnecessarily convoluted attack plan, but even that feels like I’d rather just have him be mistrusted by the authorities, if that meant we didn’t need to deal with the Toad Men at all.
We end the issue in an appropriately chilling panel of the Hulk sealed for the night in an underground vault, with a somber Rick Jones watching over the device holding the vault intact. This end is gloriously in line with the beginning and middle sections where we actually zoom in on the terror of Banner’s condition, but the reader barely has time to absorb its implications with the rest of the page being occupied by the ultimately way too easy and vague sequence of firing the Toad Men to the garbage bin of history where they belong.
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| Art by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. © Marvel Comics. |
The writing and storytelling of the Hulk is still good when it’s good here in issue #2, but you can already see a part of the problem emerging: Stan and Jack had no idea how to write a complete story in the framework they set up for the character. They’re constantly relying on conventional pulp tropes that have certainly served them fine in other stories, but here it’s clashing hard with the somber, frightening, paranoid tones that actually make the Hulk stand out. This wouldn’t be the only problem that would ultimately prompt Marvel to pull the plug on the series, but it was definitely a component.
The Incredible Hulk #3:
"Banished to Outer Space / The Ringmaster"
- Writers: Stan Lee
- Artists: Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers
- Editor: Stan Lee
- Publication Date: July 3, 1962
- Cover Date: September 1962
The third issue is a kind of patchwork of three separate stories, or two and a half, if you adjust for the middle story being just a re-telling of the Hulk's origin. That story happened a mere two issues ago, which just goes to show how the comics-reading public in the beginning of the 1960s generally wouldn't have been expected to faithfully read every issue, and finding old issues of a new and un-established magazine might have been relatively difficult.
I consider this issue the weakest of the first three, for reasons that take a little bit of dissecting to nail down. The anthology format isn't necessarily a problem in itself -- in fact it might have been a good idea considering the trouble Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had producing a full-length Hulk story without a weird stylistic left turn midway through. This book also doesn't even really suffer from the tonal multiple-personality disorder that plagued the first two, but rather sticks with a relatively consistent vibe throughout. It even introduces a couple of impressively strong new narrative ideas.
Each of the two main chapters (we'll exclude the origin, which we've already covered) has a particular problem all to its own that dilutes what good elements they had going for them. The first story is primarily about General Ross cooking up a plan to shoot the Hulk (now more brutish than before) into space, and tricking Rick Jones into helping him do it -- this setup is brilliant, and worthy of recognition as a very strong narrative kick-off. There's no filler alien story or goofy make-believe science here, just a plain space rocket that the reader understands as a vehicle into space. That's why it works without clashing with the tragic, creepy tone that was honestly one of the strongest components of early Hulk, whenever it was allowed to exist.
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| Art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. © Marvel Comics. |
The plan succeeds, and Rick realizes he got played by Ross. This is where the story, admirably engaging and interesting so far, just takes a nose-dive into the ocean: Rick twists a knob on a control panel that he somehow has access to, which brings the spacecraft crashing back to Earth. That's literally the entirety of the "climax" of the story, and it happens just as quickly as I just described it.
This solution to what was honestly a fantastic storyline almost feels like Stan and Jack not wanting to do this story after all, but the first part was already printed. It's immensely disappointing that we don't actually get any conflict or challenge, Rick Jones literally presses the Win button and the story bails out just when it was getting good. It's disappointing even with the most generous lens, and arguably insulting to the reader.
There was a great opportunity here to take a bit of time to get to know Rick, and develop his character, while Banner was stuck in space. We could have explored his reaction to being used by Ross, and maybe he would have had to be a little bit resourceful and clever to return the favor by tricking Ross in turn into bringing the Hulk back. Making it a Rick story would have been bold, but it would have been much stronger than whatever this was.
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| Art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. © Marvel Comics. |
There are a couple of actual consequences to this plot thread though. While in space, the Hulk is bathed in radiation that causes him to no longer revert to Bruce Banner during daytime. Another new element is that while using the control panel to bring the Hulk back, Rick triggers some kind of vague electric pulse that connects him to the green monster. For a moment, we don't know what it means, but by the end of the chapter it's revealed that Rick can now mentally control the Hulk. The catch is that whenever he sleeps, he loses control of his new pet, and Hulk goes on a rampage.
Now, in complete honesty, this premise kinda rules. It's basically the same template as the original Hulk concept -- if you lose control, bad things happen, and you bear the guilt -- but with the twist that the monster is now external. Rick doesn't dare sleep, for fear of unleashing the Hulk on the world. This is a fertile ground for melodrama and conflict.
The reason it still doesn't work is that it doesn't have anything to do with the core logic of the Hulk as it was established so far. It's only the third issue, and we're already changing the rules that were just laid down over the past couple of months in publication timeline. Combined with the removal of the day/night cycle as a key element in the Hulk's design, the change is drastic enough to pull you out of the world. You become aware of the lack of consistency, which discourages investing in the story. Infamously, the Hulk also develops an ability to fly at this point, but even Stan and Jack realized (or learned from feedback) this was too much, and retconned it into "jumping" in following issues.
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| Art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. © Marvel Comics. |
The latter story is about the Ringmaster and his traveling circus robbing small towns by hypnotizing them. I like the premise just fine, and unlike the previous chapter, it doesn't break the internal logic of the comic book in any way. It even fits in the gothic vibes of the Hulk -- a creepy circus with immoral motives is a shockingly good match for the tone. That's a big step up from the Gargoyle and Toad Men stories from the previous issues.
The problem this time is that the story just isn't very good. The main weakness is that it's very messy in how it deals with the newly introduced remote-controlled monster concept. Rick Jones goes to the circus (as you do when you find out you're mentally linked to the personification of destruction), and as the Ringmaster is about to hypnotize the audience, Rick is aware enough of what's happening to send a psychic message to the Hulk, calling for his help. You'd think the story would be about the Hulk going berserk with Rick not there to keep him under control, or maybe even the Ringmaster gaining command of the monster, but instead the Hulk just comes in to save Rick, and promptly loses to the circus folk.
The Hulk becomes an attraction in the circus, bound by iron chains, and there he remains until the FBI arrives, having tracked the Ringmaster down through the various towns he has robbed. Rick enters the circus with them, having snapped out of his trance (even though the other victims of the Ringmaster never did), and hearing his voice breaks the Hulk out of his stupor. He breaks free and destroys everything like he does, and finally he and Rick leave the scene. The resolution is as unsatisfying as the setup was flimsy, leaving a disappointing aftertaste. The Ringmaster in itself isn't a particularly fascinating villain, but the stylistic cohesion in the circus motif at least suggested we might get something interesting here.
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| Art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. © Marvel Comics. |
Issue #3 is a middling book for entirely different reasons compared to the previous two, and unfortunately the more consistent tonal identity isn't enough to compensate for stories that have a lot of strong parts, but end up as just a pile of scrap rather than something solid. The wholesale revision of the Hulk's internal rules is a misstep that was surely intended as a way to open up broader storytelling potential, but such changes must be done with extreme caution in order to not betray the reader's interest. That's what I feel happened here: rather than make the Hulk feel more dynamic, it cut him loose from the narrative laws of the book.
Around here, we can start to see what really went wrong with the Incredible Hulk: compounding the tonal dissonance, we're now losing narrative cohesion as well. Considering how at the time it would have taken a while for sales numbers to produce usable data for the publisher, it might have been around this time that the fate of the series would be sealed. But we still have a few more issues to go, and issue #3 won't be the last bit of narrative whiplash we get before it's all done.
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