By: Jeff Parker (writer), Gabriel Hardman (artist)
A-Bomb back-up by: Jeff Parker (writer), Mark Robinson (pencils), Terry Pallot (inks), Antonio Fabela (colors) & Ed Dukeshire (letters)
The Story: The redemption of Red Hulk continues, Thor shows up, mayhem ensues….
What’s Good: I can enjoy decompressed storytelling when it is done well, but when you have Bendis and Fraction writing a significant portion of the Marvel U, you have a lot of stories that are crawling along. They are well written, but they are nonetheless not fast. Jeff Parker is the other side of that coin. His stories just rip along at a breakneck speed. Last issue (Hulk #25) introduced us to this concept that Red Hulk was going to be redeemed somehow and tossed him into a team-up with Iron Man against some weirdly altered humans.
Well, that very cool story wraps up by about page 10. Even though it is fast, you don’t feel shortchanged. Parker writes a lot of script for these issues, but it is all serving the story instead of humorous, pitter-patter dialog. In some ways, it is almost a throwback to comics of yore when the story was explained via dialog between two heroes. But, even though it is a quick scene, Parker still works in a nice moment between Red Hulk and Iron Man as Tony tells him a thing or two about redemption (and Tony is one of the more qualified heroes to discuss the subject). It is an achievement to get as much character development into this story considering the pacing.
Some comics would have stretched this Iron Man story across many issues, but not Parker. From there we blast right into the next threat as Thor shows up leading to a great scene between Red Hulk and Thor and a team-up in space. It is just really a whole bundle of awesome.
And in case you thought the story was enough, we’re not done yet as we also have art by the wonderful Gabriel Hardman. Hardman is one of those stars at Marvel where you should just buy whatever he is currently drawing because it is going to look nice. His characters always look great, he mixes up panel shapes and layouts nicely, does interesting things with perspective and lighting and doesn’t skip in details like the rubble blasting around with a wall gets smashed. Lots of artists can draw a Hulk, many fewer can draw a wonderful scene of him blasting through a wall with rubble flying and not get lazy on the rubble.
What’s Not So Good: The only concern that comes to mind with Jeff Parker’s writing is, “Slow down before you hurt yourself!” or “Save some energy for later!” It seems like he is just a mutant who has more creative ideas than the normal human, but you do worry that he’ll just collapse into a quivering pile of goo at some point because his Atlas titles and Thunderbolts titles are exactly the same frenetic pacing.
It also may not be a great idea to have back-up stories in this title. After reading the epic smashing action of the main story and seeing the Hardman art, the back-ups just feel tacked on and silly and that is really unfair because they aren’t bad at all. The A-Bomb story is humerous, but that’s all and it would be better to see Marvel use the web comic route for things like Hulk school bus. Why not move the A-Bomb story to Incredible Hulks since that is the “Hulk Family” book right now?
Oh, and boo on the printer. This issue had a duplicate set of the first ~10 (and last ~10) pages AND there was no credits page to credit whoever did the pretty coloring and lettering (since Parker writes some big word balloons). “Here I sit, broken hearted, thought I had a double-sized issue of Hardman art and only…”
Conclusion: Epic action served up at a frantic pace with great, great, great art. This book might have the championship belt for “best title that Marvel is currently publishing”.
Grade: A
– Dean Stell
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Conclusion