This Man this Monster Monday : Red Hulk !

We are taking another trip in the way back time machine exploring the history of Marvel Comics not so jolly green giant during a period where there were a lot of hulks of different colours. Almost as if they wanted to make sure there would be no copycats from other comic companies.

That's right I am talking about the HULK run penned by Jeph Loeb, drawn by Ed McGuinness and embellished by Dexter Vines that introduced the Red Hulk to the comicbook reading world whom most people only know from the episodes of Avengers : Earth's Mightiest Heroes ( at least I am hoping that is where you know him from because the alternative would be that awful Hulk And The Agents Of S.M.A.S.H. tv show and that would be a real tragedy ) where he appeared. Which is still THE best adaption of the AVENGER comics be it on the big screen or on the small screen.

One reason why I decided to make this post is that to this day I have not gotten around to do an Ed McGuiness spotlight even though he is one of my favourite artists. Granted, lately he has not been on any good books and mostly did just a few pages in AVENGERS where the Avengers are totally unrecognizable and She Hulk is turned into a version of the Hulk which is really weird because She Hulk was a female version of the Hulk but instead of lots of muscles she got hot. Anyway, while the writing on those books is as bad as can be expected from Marvel's recent output Ed McGuiness art is solid and if anything I could do a post with older art.

Although my archive is currently in limbo which is another reason why I am making a post with the Ed McGuinness art I have at the moment.

Now I almost wrote that this was another favourite HULK story of mine but in preparation for this post I went back through the blog archive and I have to ask myself : was it really one of my favourite HULK stories ?

Because if we go back 15 years - has it really been that long ? - to my solicitations post from October in 2007 ( my longtime followers may remember that I made posts about the upcoming solicitations back then because they were still fun to do and you actually were looking forward to the new books they announced because it was something more than just Gwenpool comes out as asexual which means she can now reproduce like an amoeba ) I was very excited for the book to come out. I was a bit miffed about the ending of WORLD WAR HULK ( but who wasn't ? ) and disappointed because having Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness start a new HULK book meant that the ULTIMATES story with them that was supposed to follow right on the heels of the ULTIMATES run by Jeph Loeb and Joe Madureiras ( where it was confirmed that in the ULTIMATES universe Quicksilver did use his sister, the Scarlet Witch as his personal blow up sex doll ) was nixxed and I think it was turned into an annual instead.

But the prospect of a new book in which the Hulk mops the floor with the Marvel Universe was something I looked forward to. In hindsight that did not happen exactly because while he did mop the floor with most of the characters he came into contact with this was not the original HULK but the Red Hulk. So some of my predictions came true as well as that it guest - starred many sexy candidates from my COMICBABE BATTLE posts.

We are skipping my next solicitations post in which I mentioned Hulk because I mostly wrote about how disappointed I was about the ending of WORLD WAR HULK and the upcoming change in the INCREDIBLE HULK monthly book. As Marvel Comic scholars might remember they turned the title over to Hercules - continuing the numbering from INCREDIBLE HULK 112 to INCREDIBLE HERCULES 113 - and I was a bit concerned because aside from Bob Layton's iconic take on Olympus most famous demi god ( who really is a demi god because his mother was mortal not like with Thor where everybody now just ASSUMES he is a demi god because they have heard that crap somewhere when in reality Thor is a full blown god because both his parents were also gods as his father is Odin and his mother is Gaea ) most people at Marvel just write Hercules as a second - rate Thor. Oh ye of little faith, how was I to know that not only would this be one of the best and most entertaining HERCULES book in decades it would also be the last time where Hercules is written as it should be before woke Marvel felt the need to make Hercules bisexual ?

Which in these times means for male characters to be practically gay and for female characters to be practically lesbians. Because I don't know if you have noticed but whenever a male Marvel Comics character comes out as bisexual you never see him having sex with a woman again.

And if a female Marvel Comics character comes out as bisexual you never see her having sex with a man again. Because that would only further old stereotypes. Sometimes I ask myself if these writers at Marvel Comics know what bisexual means. Because bisexual comes from bi and sexual, bi meaning two since this person would have sex with a man or a woman opposed to heterosexual where one only has sex with a member of the opposite sex or gay / lesbian where one only has sex with a member of the same sex. But since they only use sexual orientation now to get big headlines I am not sure if it really matters if they use it incorrectly.

But the purpose of this post is not to talk about how Marvel Comics is failing now - as I think there are enough posts about that out there - but to remind the newer comic readers out there of Marvel's past glories.

Which brings us to my RELEVANT COMIC CONTENT post from January in 2008 where I wrote a raving review of the first issue. I also correctly predicted the secret identity of the Red Hulk - or El Toro Rojo how I like to call him - but before you get too excited that was only because I predicted four different people of being Red Hulk. Because the first issue leaves us with a mystery and at that point it could have been anyone.

Going back and rereading the post I am surprised how eloquent and on point I was with my analysis of the different candidates for El Toro Rojo.

So of course I had to ruin it by suspecting that Glenn Talbot was El Toro Rojo. Again there were many things that suggested that it was him - since the idea of Doc Samson being El Toro Rojo was obviously just a red herring ( pun intended ) - but I was still excited about reading the book when I wrote the first part of my End Of The Year review of 2008 . Which was something else I used to do that was fun which I don't do anymore.

On one side because it is not as much fun as it used to be and on the other side because I don't read any monthly books anymore besides TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE, Erik Larsen's criminally underrated SAVAGE DRAGON, Stan Sakai's USAGI YOJIMBO, whatever Terry Moore is up to and most of Weissblech Comics. Although I also had to stop buying those because I still have not managed to get social security or health insurance in the over two years I have been in Spain now and therefore I have no disposable income to spend on buying things like comicbooks.

Coming back to my past coverage of Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness HULK we come to the second part of my predictions for the year 2009 where I ask for the umpteenth time why it always takes Marvel Comics that long to implement a good idea. I already mentioned in the first part of my review of 2008 that having artists of the calibre of Arthur Adams and Frank Cho share art duties on the HULK from issue 7 to issue 9 is one of the best things to happen to the new title. But you have to wonder why Marvel Comics needed so much time to put two artists who on their own have serious trouble meeting a monthly deadline into a book together.

In this post I am lamenting the implementation of an all girls team of super heroes with the She - Hulk at the helm 40 frikkin years after the famous AVENGERS Lady Liberator story " Come On In The Revolution's Fine " by Roy Thomas, John Buscema and Tom Palmer came out. 40.

Going on we have some minor things about the new HULK title like a printing error on issue 12 ( which was especially annoying since it was one of the books by Marvel Comics that got the 3.99 $ price increase with no added extra pages just before this issue came out ) and pimping the HULK : RED AND GREEN premiere hardcover and I was still enjoying the book until June of 2010 where I am still buying and reading the book.

But obviously the thrill was gone. After issue 13 Ian Churchill took over the art ( with a new style that did not make fans happy as he changed his former put Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee in a blender approach for an Ed McGuiness / Tiny Toons hybrid ) in a story that introduced Red She - Hulk followed by Whilce Portacio - none of which I enjoyed that much - and even tough Ed McGuiness came back with issue 19 I was not feeling it.

I think that the whole Intelligencia storyline in FALL OF THE HULKS was too complicated for my brain and it is one of those stories that reads much better once the entire saga has come out and you can go : " Oh, well that explains that. Now it makes sense. "as opposed to when you are in the middle and everything seems to contradict everything else.

Because when I did my first THIS MAN THIS MONSTER post in 2014 where I waxed philosophic about my personal highlights in the Hulk's publishing history I mentioned that the only Hulk omnibus I was interested in buying was the one collecting the HULK run by Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuiness.

Especially since it includes some issues by Arthur Adams and Frank Cho.

For some reason they did not include the INCREDIBLE HULKS issues by Paul Pelletier that were part of the Intelligencia storyline which probably makes for a rather strange reading experience but you have the FALL OF THE HULKS and WORLD WAR HULKS hardcovers to fill in those gaps. Man, I think I missed the boat on that one because it was offered at amazon with quite the discount and for some reason I let the opportunity pass and I never found it again at such a low price. I have no idea if that is a good thing or a bad thing since I had to sell my comicbook collection later anyway so if I had bought it I would not have been able to keep it.

Speaking of keeping things this is one of the few posts I wrote recently where I can actually go through the old issues because way back when they came out I spent some time in Spain and since I couldn't go without them I had my trusty comicbook shop - the Sammlerecke in Esslingen - ship issues 1 to 6 and the KING - SIZE HULK to Spain and they have been here ever since. It is really a miracle that they survived to this very day.

And this is the point where I have to break things up for Today. As a resume of the run I have to say that the art in this ranges from top notch to above average while the story starts strong, falters a bit at the middle and finishes great. Definitely a recommend, one of the omnibus books I would buy - once I have all things sorted out and can buy comicbooks again - and we are finally coming to the art I selected for this spotlight.

Which is mostly from the DEFENDERS / OFFENDERS brawl in issues 10 to 11 as well as issues 4, 5 and 6 in which Red Hulk goes up against Thor.

Man, those issues show what a great artist Ed McGuiness is because he makes even the bulky armor costume Thor was wearing back then look good. Anyway, I am leaving you with the rest of the original art pages as for me, I am re - reading those six HULK issues and KING - SIZE HULK.