SPOILERS AHEAD for Hulk: Smash Everything #3!
It’s really easy to get mad at something that wastes your time. If a book, a movie, or even a comic book can be undone by one quick deus ex machina, then what was the point? That happens in Hulk: Smash Everything #3. He’s magically teleported from the predicament he was in at the last issue, falling into the heart of a black hole, right back to where he was, in front of The Leader, the character who sent him there.
But what if the story that leads to a magical reset button is so freaking cool, that you just can’t get mad at it? What then? Well, then you get Hulk: Smash Everything #3 and you smile from ear to ear.
It’s a Ryan North penned book, so you know there’s going to be freaky body horror stuff, and when Hulk crosses the event horizon of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, he stretches and spaghettifies in a way that would make even Reed Richards blush. Exposed muscle fibers rip and contract as Hulk is pulled from the front and squeezed on the sides by impossible-to-imagine amounts of pressure. This comic is gnarly, as Hulk is put through what most sci-fi writers speculate is maybe the worst way to die.
Marvel
But it’s Hulk, so of course he doesn’t die. He reassembles himself on a subatomic level. Once his quarks become hadrons and his hadrons become protons, he reconstitutes his body, held together by rage and stubborn ferocity, he does what knows best: he smashes. He smashes for so long, I had to look up a word that Ryan North used to describe the amount of time. Vigintillion. It means 1063. It’s cool learning new things.
As the universe approaches its eventual heat death, he finally breaks free from his infinite prison, changed once more by the physics of his situation going from a point of infinite pressure to none.
I don’t want to spoil what happens after, so I won’t, but needless to say this book is ridiculous. It’s insane, and it’s so much fun. Scientific jargon that should slow the pace of the story down doesn’t. There’s almost a rhythmic cadence to the ways Hulk dies and gets reborn a thousand different ways, and Ryan North effortlessly explains the processes that are happening on the page.
Marvel
Vincenzo Carratú’s art and Federico Blee’s colors also help this feel more musical. When Hulk tumbles through the event horizon, there’s one page where he’s bisected by the accretion disc and it’s the last time he has a corporeal form for a bit. When he’s atomized, the page is sparse, and looks like a cosmic miracle (which, y’know, it is), until he’s violently reborn. He’s reborn again around page 13 and that’s when it stops being a treatise on the cosmic horror of physics and becomes a superhero comic steeped in punches and time travel.
It’s a visual treat with complex science explained clearly and it’s maybe the coolest thing Hulk has done in a book in years. This miniseries may not be contributing to the greater narrative of the character, but between surviving the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs) last issue, and now surviving the biggest black hole in the galaxy, it’s definitely contributing to the mythos of the character. When Hulk is smashing at the core of Sagittarius A*, each smash gorgeously becomes its own panel, framing the action around his rage, delivering on the promise of the book’s title.
It’s easy to get mad at something that wastes your time. Thankfully, while Hulk: Smash Everything #3’s last page puts Hulk back where he was at the end of last issue, it doesn’t feel like nothing happens. Everything happened. The entire lifespan of the universe happened. The most important thing that happened though?
Hulk smashed. Hulk smashed so good.
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