The current volume of The Incredible Hulk has a uniquely broad sense of horror, pivoting from the cyclopean to the surreal, embracing both gore and body horror, and, with City of Idols, dropping into prehistory before jumping to the modern day.
It seems unlikely that such a book could do all of those things well, and yet somehow, The Incredible Hulk excels in its varied approach to horror. City of Idols begins with a trip into the far past to tell the story of Enkidu, a sort of biblical precursor of the Hulk. The story has a bit of dark fantasy to it, touching almost upon the sword and sorcery energy of a good, chilling Conan tale turned up to eleven and replacing serpents and sorcerers with dead gods and grotesque, violent angels.
The book tells this story with the same verve and energy as the story of a pack of Las Vegas werewolves; both concepts are handled with full commitment to their styles, much in the way that previous entries in The Incredible Hulk committed to Man-Thing or Ghost Rider.
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It’s that commitment to the bit – a sort of wholehearted episodic care – that makes The Incredible Hulk so phenomenal. Each strange new narrative avenue is given careful consideration, and incredible artistic craftsmanship is applied to highlight the grotesqueries. This volume sees Danny Earls take on the bony wrath of a child priestess, while Nic Klien leans into gory transformations and fleshy abominations.
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Writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson accentuates the vastness of horror by never quite screwing the lid down on Hulk and Banner themselves – always at odds, one of them seems always to be trapped in the anguish of their own personal hell – this is a book about horrors within and without. Hulk may be a monster, but the monster of a monster is just a selfish man.
The central thrust of the story has been Charlie, however absent she may have been. This volume features the battle for her soul, even as Banner and Hulk see their souls tormented. Charlie’s role in things has always felt a bit tenuous. In the beginning of the series she seemed like she might simply serve as the Doctor Who-style companion, a pair of human eyes through which we could see the uncanny central figure. That shifted, in Soul Cages, to a child damsel in distress. City of Idols offers us a new, more active role: a monster herself.
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It’s a compelling turn and a compelling cliffhanger to the volume; what does a monster do with a monster sidekick?
The book also features a handful of Hulk-adjacent backup stories from the landmark 800th issue of Hulk, and while crafted by incredible creators, they reside here almost as a formality – they needed to be collected, too, even if they don’t serve the vast horror going on in the central narrative.
The Incredible Hulk Vol. 4: City of Idols continues to place Hulk in a wider context of horror – this series isn’t just about the Hulk, it’s about a world with enough horror to excuse a monster. From ancient, dead gods to a pack of werewolves, The Incredible Hulk creates a world that feels equally at ease of containing all of that evil and more.
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