Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
At the risk of leaving myself open to the possibility of a truly vicious gang-stopping at the hands of all the Marvel Comics faithful, out there... I've gotta say it: I think a whole lot of the Marvel "Big Gun" characters are better in concept than they are in actual, working execution.
The Fantastic Four (for me) fall into that category, once you've subtracted the Lee/Kirby glory days from the equation. The same (for the most part) for Spider-Man, once femme deluxe Gwen Stacy kicked off at the gnarled hands of the despicable Green Goblin; or for the Sub-Mariner, at pretty much any point post, say, 1972.
And you might as well go ahead and add "The Incredible Hulk" to the list while you're at it, I guess.
For my money... the only time the character has ever worked consistently
was during his fabulous TALES TO ASTONISH run, back in the 1960's. And
-- if you'll all kindly allow me to slip this noose from around my neck, and
climb down offa this here horsie -- I'll attempt to make the case for said claim.
Credited HULK co-creator Stan Lee has gone on record, time and again over the years, as claiming that the inspiration for Ol' Jade Jaws was Robert Louis Stevenson's immortal DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. The notion of a quiet, bookish milquetoast holding secret within his breast a savage and remorseless monster -- and then, accidentally, granting itt avenue for occasional release, into the greater "world outside" -- is, make no mistake, a potent and compelling one. (For an even more horrifying version of same, I heartily recommend noir novelist Jim Thompson's flesh-crawling classic, THE KILLER INSIDE ME). And -- in the earliest days of the HULK saga -- this is pretty much precisely the patch of farm land the writers of same chose to plow, to pleasing and considerable effect. The Hulk (the suppressed and seething sub-conscious super-ego of nerdy science boy "Bruce Banner") was a selfish and ill-tempered brute; one who knew exactly what he was about, thank you very much, and fairly reveled in the opportunity -- whenever such presented itself -- of making his puny alter ego's lifee the proverbial bed of nails, in so doing.
As the Hulk's antics, in those earliest entries within the canon, generally brought him into regular and violent conflict with the United States armed forces (in general), and with one "General 'Thunderbolt' Ross" (in particular) -- the latter being (O, the tortuous iirony! O, the tortured coincidence!) the blunt, tunnel-visioned pater familias of Bruce Banner's own true love; the perpetually weepy "Betty Ross" -- this was fairly easily accomplished, really. Inevitably -- in the ruinous aftermath of one of the Hulk's rampages -- Bruce Banner would regain consciousness somewhere out in the desert barrens of the American southwest: naked (save, of course, for the trademark pair of all-but-shredded purple pants; who dressed this guy during his "human" phase, anyway...?), confused and virtually certain that -- sometime within the last twenty-four hours or so -- he'd probably managed to well and truly hack off yet another super-villain, super-hero, or sovereign nation state for good and for all.
This LOST WEEKEND-style riffing was formulaic to the point of ritual, to be sure... but it was a formula which worked, nonetheless. Those early TALES TO ASTONISH stories -- as kubuki-like they may well have been, in their one-two-three telling -- rank among the most involving and nakedly emotional of all the classic, angst-drenched Silver Age Marvel offerings.
Much of
the credit, here, goes -- in chiefest measure; and rightly so, I might
add -- to the steady procession of superior artistic talents of whom the
series was justifiably able to boast, over the years. That no one
ever penciled as ferocious and uncompromising a Hulk as the creature's
stylistic "daddy" (Jack "King" Kirby), naturally, goes without saying;
but later contributions by the likes of Steve Ditko, Gil Kane and Marie
Severin were (in their own ways) equally as illuminating, if not quite
as "definitive."
Naturally
-- human nature being what it is -- suuch a sweet, self-perpetuating little
set-up (with all the inherent power and timeless elegance of an Elizabethan
morality play) couldn't last. Diverse (and lesser) sous chefs
have fiddled and faddled with the recipe over the intervening decades;
to no appreciable improvement, and (in some notable instances) considerable
detriment. The once-gleefully malefic Hulk went through an extended
period in the later 1970's (for instance) where he was portrayed as a rather
sweet-natured behemoth, who only flew into one of his requisite "rages"
when thwarted or manipulated.
While this misguided
attempt to render the character somewhat more "sympathetic" to the reader
may well have seemed logical, at the time... one need only pause long enough
to consider how far astray such an interpretation is from the baseline
conceptualization (a "sympathetic" Hyde...?) to realize how much of the
"ooomph" was vitiated from the premise, as a result. A monster (whether
self-stylized as such or otherwise) who doesn't -- on some level -- terrify
might as well pick up his lunch pail; punch the time clock; and call it
a day.
Recent events in the Hulk's own solo title (under the creative aegis of the relentlessly inventive Mr. Peter David) have been something of a mixed bag, interpretation-wise. Granting the monster a more highly-developed degree of animal cunning (as well as a truly jaw-dropping -- at times -- native cruelty) has been a step in the right direction, certainly... but: a mind-bogglingly overlong (not to mention increasingly muddled) ongoing sub-plot involving an even nastier "future" incarnation of the Hulk by the name of (swear to Jesus) "the Maestro" has served merely to underscore that some comics characters are -- ultimately -- reeds too weak to support such high-falutin', time- and space-bending notions as "Are We All Predestined, Or What -- ?" Me: I'd have him back in the desert in a heartbeat -- turning buttes into salt flats; scarfing down live jackrabbits; and shaking a massive, jade fist angrily at the occasional USAF attack jet, bellowing his rage in a voice like the grinding of tectonic plates.
"Retro" is a perfectly acceptable choice of directions, after all, if
"moving forward" merely means you're about to go splat headlong against
the nearest creative wall.
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