Hulk And His Anonymous Friends: Indestructible Hulk #6 Review

Editor’s Note: Hulk spoil!

Let’s start off with this: that’s a great cover. But since I am emotionally no older than 12 years old, all I keep thinking is that if you obscure Thor’s hammer, what you’ve got is a spectacular pin-up of The Hulk after a horrific night of Taco Bell.

Second: I really wanted to like Indestructible Hulk #6. I am generally a fan comics that are written by Mark Waid, and as a dude who was reading comics back in the 80s, I will buy damn near anything pencilled by Walt Simonson, particularly an issue that you can tell based on the cover features Thor. For a generation of comic geeks, having Simonson draw Thor is appointment comic reading second only to maybe seeing Todd McFarlane draw Hulk.

And having read through the issue a couple of times, it turns out that seeing Simonson draw Thor again is one of two good reasons to read the book, the other being the final panel, which I’ll get to in a minute. But otherwise, this is a decompressed first issue of a longer arc that asks more questions than it answers, but in many cases not teasing the mysteries well enough to make them compelling rather than incomplete and confusion. And worse: while, again, it’s nice to see Simonson’s Thor again, his storytelling choices take characters that are meant to be enigmatic and instead makes them cannon fodder.

This one’s only okay, guys. On a good day.

Bruce Banner is still working for S.H.I.E.L.D., and he has assembled a team of lab assistants who, we are told by narration, are all harboring secrets that mean they are leading double lives in the way he himself is. What are those secrets? Fucked if I know; Waid only shows us one of them mixing pills into her Perrier, preparing to either take a dirtnap or to watch The Wizard of Oz in sync with The Dark Side of The Moon. Anyway, the team of scientists is experimenting on a sliver of Thor’s hammer, using it to open a portal to Asgard in search of other materials not on the Periodic Table. What materials? Dunno, but based on Pill Girl, it might be Mescaline. Anyhoo, the team armors up and goes through the portal, and being a story now set in Asgard, they are quickly surrounded by Frost Giants, because Odin forbid that, in a land filled with drunken gods, someone teleport in to a bar. Enter Thor, who is dressed in the way he was back in the 80s, and who seems to have no idea who Banner is. Thor is quickly incapacitated, leading Banner to Hulk Out and attempt to lift Thor’s hammer… with surprising results.

So I’m gonna start out with the positive experiences about the book, which mainly includes that last splash: that is one hell off an ending. That page alone is enough to get me to come back. And then there’s Simonson’s art, particularly when it comes to Thor. Waid did a clever thing in making this story take place in some alternate or past version of Asgard, allowing Simonson to draw Thor the way he did back in the day. The visuals around that character cause a nice nostalgia, and Simonson depicts Thor as he was back in the day: a warrior god, but one who enjoys a good laugh and battle or battle’s sake.

But beyond that? Hoo boy, this book has a few problems. The first being this team of scientists that Banner has put together. We are told that they all have secrets, and there is the implication that we are meant to be intrigued by their backstories… but here the art is the problem. With the exception of Pill Girl, we are introduced to all these characters at a distance in a wide shot, making their faces unseeable. Then Simonson shows them all in mirrored goggles, the again at a distance, and finally in armored helmets. Even Pill Girl is introduced by way of closeups of her hands and one eye; we only see her face clearly in three small panels. So the overall visual effect is to take these character who we are apparently supposed to be invested in, and make them as interchangeable and anonymous as Stormtroopers. And considering Waid gives us no information about these character beyond their names (and that Patricia Wolman was close to suicide before S.H.I.E.L.D. called), it is impossible to give much of a fuck about any of them. Which is a problem, considering we spend the entire issue with these anonymous, faceless drones. I’m sure Waid intends to give us more detail about these characters at some point as the story unfolds, but none of that helps me right now, and the effect was that I wound up flipping back and forth, trying to figure out who was who, until I finally just started powering forward and waiting for someone to Hulk Out.

And this is a pet peeve, but every time someone sets foot into Asgard, do they have to be attacked by Frost Giants? Granted, I’m not the biggest Thor fan in the world, so maybe I’m missing beautiful and detailed stories about the residents and wildlife of Asgard, but it seems like the minute anyone sets foot in the place, BAM! Attacked by Frost Giants. It would be like if every time someone came to America they were immediately stampeded by buffalo, or if the second someone set foot in France they were beaten down by treaties of surrender. Sure, you need some kind of antagonist in Asgard to make things interesting, but I’m a little Frost Gianted out at this point.

Indestructible Hulk #6 isn’t a terrible book, but it is terribly flawed. We’re given mysterious characters that we’re supposed to be intrigued by who instead are as visually interchangeable as Lego guys, in pursuit of a MacGuffin that exists purely to put Banner in Asgard so that Simonson can draw Thor again, and all put together seemingly for that one final image, which is interesting enough on its own to make me want to see what happens next month… but that is the only thing that makes me want to check in again.

And frankly, that final image just isn’t worth the cost of this particular book. Just check in next month for the aftermath, and if you’re curious? Just take another look at that cover and remember that is isn’t a picture of Hulk after a night of too much cheese.