It’s been over 60 years since the debut of some of Marvel’s most foundational characters, whose origin stories are some of the best-known stories in modern fiction. Over the course of those decades, comics have told (and retold) moments like Bruce Banner’s gamma bomb mishaps hundreds—if not thousands—of times.
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Initially, these retellings were meant as gentle reminders, convenient catch-ups for readers who didn’t have the good fortune of reading Incredible Hulk #1 (or Amazing Fantasy #15, etc). Over time, however, constant rote repetitions of the same historic moments have grown stale, tedious, almost a waste of precious storytelling real estate. Creative teams must find something new and revelatory to justify a trip back to those earliest stories – their inclusion, now that they are familiar to even the least comic-book literate of consumers, must have ground-shaking context. Fresh insight is required.
Despite its novel framing – Doctor Strange inducing an astral-projection flashback in Bruce Banner – the visitation to the Hulk’s first moments in Hulk & Doctor Strange #1 finds nothing new to tell us. Sure, there’s some waffling as to the source of Hulk’s anger, but the result is pat and uninspired.
Marvel
The story goes like this: Banner, certain that gamma radiation takes what is within a subject and dials it up (She-Hulk, pure of heart, became more virtuous; Abomination, already morally corrupt, became much worse), cannot ascertain why the bomb made him angry. He feels that Doc Strange (who plays such a small part in the story’s proceedings that it’s barely fair to bill him in the title) can somehow help him understand his anger.
Marvel
The thing is, we already know plenty of reasons why Banner is angry. Peter David’s legendary run on the book in the 1980s and 1990s provided plenty of psychoanalysis of the character, and one major insight learned was that Bruce’s father was deeply abusive. He grew up under violence, and so the gamma bomb amplified that violence. This is to say nothing about supernatural revelations in Al Ewing’s Green Door era, or even the compelling horror examination of the character in the current volume by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and company.
So what does Hulk & Doctor Strange offer up? That Hulk’s anger is an anger at death. That in the moment of the explosion, Bruce’s mind turned toward his mortality (and, distantly, the mortality of hapless Rick Jones), and somehow this creates a rage monster who rejects death in favor of life.
This is a pretty baseless new take, given that the Hulk generates death.
Hulk & Doctor Strange sends us back to a classic moment, but it doesn’t do anything to justify reexamination of one of the most iconic moments in popular culture. It barely justifies its promise of its titular team-up. While the artwork (by the talented Germán Peralta) is capable and clean, it does nothing groundbreaking with the iconic gamma blast. The book feels toothless, self-indulgent, and unnecessary.
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