The Hulk's Smartest Enemies Hatch an Intricate Plot!

 

Fall of the Hulks/World War Hulks (2010)

            The life of a former comic book aficionado is a strange one.  I followed the Incredible Hulk comic book for a few years as a youngster, absorbed in the tale of a genius whose altruism causes his transformation into a being of pure, brutish, strength and rage.  One of the joys of comic fandom is that, whenever you jump into a new comic, there are back issues, and former stories, available to discover.  For instance, I relished learning that the Hulk was initially grey, the change to green made for purely illustrative purposes, later retconned into the Hulk’s “evolution.”  Several other people had become “hulks,” altered by the same Gamma energy that Bruce Banner initially experienced, by the time I came to the comic.  Various gamma powered enemies and frenemies appeared in the comic books, each slightly different in some way from the original Hulk.  When I stopped reading the monthly comic, I lost track of the story.

Much later, my ears perked up at tales of a story called Planet Hulk, published in 2006.  Reading that story caught me up somewhat to what had occurred in the Hulk’s world since my fandom days.  After an extra-destructive rampage, ending with the Hulk destroying much of Las Vegas, the smartest heroes in the world (naming themselves the Illuminati) conspired to trick Bruce/Hulk into boarding a rocket.  The rocket launched and sent the Hulk to a planet across the galaxy.  Planet Hulk tells the story of the Hulk, unable to turn back into Bruce Banner, rising from a slave and gladiator to a rebel leader of a worldwide revolution on this planet.  He rules, marries, and sires offspring.  The shuttle that brought the Hulk becomes a monument.  An internal issue causes it to explode unexpectedly, killing the hulk’s bride. The Hulk blames all of this on the Illuminati members who initially banished him, and wages war on Earth and its heroes.  That story is called World War Hulk and has the Hulk and his cronies beat the crap out of everyone in the Marvel universe.  Eventually, the Hulk is beaten via a gamma-power draining weapon, allowing for Bruce’s imprisonment.

This brings us to this story, that of the Fall of the Hulks/World War Hulks.  Using the power drained from the Hulk, various gamma-enhanced super-beings are created, tools for their respective creators.  It is a complex and fun story, which sees the Intelligencia, the cabal of hyper-smart arch-criminals responsible for draining the Hulk’s gamma power, plot and achieve the capture of the smartest minds on Earth.  Initially conceived as a team to help plunder the Library of Alexandria from the Eternals that cared for it, the Intelligencia now sought to utilize the brain power of these geniuses to help compute their evil schemes.  As usual, I will refrain from giving away much of the plot structure.

Their plans and schemes are complex, as suited to such smart villains, and only someone with the brains of Bruce Banner can stop them.  The Hulk has always been a great blend of insane power and destruction at the hands of the Hulk, and brilliant science and humanity coming from Bruce.  It is what drew me to the comic as a youth, and what keeps me checking in every few years to see the amazing stories the good people at Marvel craft.  I recently read the more current Hulk comic of Immortal Hulk, which is amazing.  I look forward to more!