Hulk: Smash Everything #4 isn’t nearly as crazy as the previous issue, for better and worse. It’s hard to top Hulk falling into the black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, taking all the time of the universe to break free, and then defeating Galactus before the next Big Bang. Like that’s generally one of the coolest sentences ever written, so you’ll be forgiven for thinking this issue isn’t as crazy as it could be. That said, Hulk: Smash Everything #4 has something the last issue didn’t: an audience.
Transported back to Earth (impressively around the same time he left it) at the end of last issue, Hulk finally gets to confront the Leader, the person responsible for sending him through hell this whole series. The Leader uses magic to teleport away from Latveria and strands Hulk just outside of Doom’s Castle.
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Back in New York City, the Leader is apprehended by Doctor Strange, Iron Man, and the Fantastic Four quite easily. He almost seems relieved to be brought in by people he can talk to, but one leap later Hulk drops onto Manhattan and even the heroes are terrified. They quickly call in the rest of the Avengers and they realize how outmatched they are.
A quick plan form Wanda and Dr. Strange sends Hulk to the Antarctic shelf, stranded beneath the ice cap. When Hulk realizes he can’t jump free, he decides to burrow down. Punching, slamming, and, well, smashing his way towards the center of the Earth. Before long the Antarctic tectonic plate cracks in two. Not long after that, the planet cracks in two.
Hulk bore his way through the center of the Earth to free himself and now the core of the planet is spewing out like a geyser, destroying the geology of the planet, irreparably disrupting the climate, and very quickly threatening all life on Earth.
Now, as cool as this is to see, it’s not nearly as cool as surviving the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs or breaking a black hole in two at the end of time and stealing the Power Cosmic from Galactus, it just isn’t. But the key difference is that in Hulk: Smash Everything #4, is the audience that Hulk has cultivated on his temper tantrum. Doing this in front of people, in front of the Avengers no less and seeing the look of fear on their faces adds a tension that wasn’t present last issue.
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Last issue, as a reader, you wanted Hulk to win. This issue, even if he’s right, you want him to lose. Awesome has turned to awful at the drop of a fist.
The transition of Hulk from underdog hero to wild dog has been fun to watch, even if it’s no longer fun for the Marvel Universe given the consequences of his actions. At one point during the book Hulk yells “Now you see what happens when you not leave Hulk alone. Now you see what happens when everyone mean to Hulk”.
While this is hardly new material for the character, the dude has been purposefully tortured by the Leader for the last three issues so it’s hard to not sympathize with him a little bit. Assuming things get wrapped up nicely in the final issue next month, this series so far has proven to be a great classic Hulk story for those not as interested in the Eldritch folk horror take happening in Infernal Hulk. It’s loud, it’s absurd, and in every issue so far Hulk has done something I’ve never seen him do. What more could you ask for?
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