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@ Floppytown-- Hulk #25

100 words just wasn't enough for my thoughts on Hulk #25.  Thankfully I've got my own blog to go into a bit more detail.

There's a moment just before Red Hulk jumps off into battle, where he's almost thanking Steve Rogers and Bruce Banner for the opportunity he's been given for redemption-- that moment almost made the book for me.  The biggest problem I had for the book was that it seemed to be rehashing Hulk #2 from just a couple of years ago, having the Red Hulk fight Iron Man.  And next up is Thor?  It almost looks like we're going in circles.

My other own personal issue is that between this and the recent incarnations of Atlas, I think Jeff Parker is a better writer than he's given the opportunity to be.  Now I don't know if it was his own storytelling tendencies or some mandate from on high, but I would have liked to see him have the time to establish his take on Hulk without bringing in so many other characters.  And that was my issue with Atlas as well, where it felt most like a team-up book (Atlas and the X-Men, Atlas and Namor, Atlas and the Avengers..) rather than an straight-forward Atlas book.  I understand in these times that the X-Men and the Avengers sell more books than Atlas but that first Agents of Atlas miniseries was so smart and strong because it skirted the outside boundaries of the Marvel Universe.  It was the underground book.  But in a day and age where you need to have a success with issue #1, there's no time or opportunity to be underground.

Like Atlas, Hulk is in a nice position to be an underground book but Captain America, Iron Man and Thor showing up right off the bat make it anything but a potentially sleeper hit. 

And I hate that in that review I didn't get a chance to really mention Gabriel Hardman's art or Betty Breitweiser's coloring.  There are a handful of artists working in the mainstream now that draw by creating light and darkness on the page and Hardman's firmly in that camp.  I love the way he creates images with light rather than with line.  I wish more artists could follow in his footsteps that way.