Saturday, January 9, 2010

Comic Book Roundup!

This is becoming a rather pleasant tradition of mine. On Fridays I got to books a million prowl the shelves and find things I want to read and then enjoy them. Lots of things I am curious about but not really curious enough to buy.

So without any further ado.

Red Hulk/Green Hulk books 1&2- Loeb is a superstar writer, or so I am told. I read the Ultimatum book by him though. Utter shit. Utter utter shit, and what the fuck is with all the cannibalism? Jesus christ it is just gets distasteful after awhile. Anyway who cares. This is about the hulk books. The Hulk is a charecter that has always interested me. I really like the idea of it, a brilliant scientist turned into a hulking green moron whenever he gets angry. It deals with all sorts of ideas like interalization, repression, anger, and there is a beautiful sort of exerstential horror to it all. The hulk is less of a hero, or a villian but more of a charecter, a living force of nature who can potentially destroy the planet just as easily as he can save it. Its an amazing concept. Even more interesting is that there is a whole family of gamma irridated people who run around, some of them look out for each other other times they fight. Together though they are all cursed with this debilitating thing that keeps everyone on the run or ostracized. Unfortunatly it is bungled by just about every writer. Loeb being no exception. There is hardly any interplay between Banner and the hulk, and when there is it is always hightly overwrought. Like handwringing cyclopse shit. Ugh. The rest of the marvel universe also gets treated exceptionally poorly throughout the book. Thor for example. No one can pick up Thor's hammer. So Red Hulk instead just sort of jumps with it into space so he can throw it there, since you know there is no gravity. See that is just stupid. Thor is a god, son of both Odin and Gaia. He doesn't need to bend to rules like that. Like the way he flies, it doesn't really make sense. So all the sudden making his hammer vulnerable to gravity is, well it is hulk fan service.

Oh well. Despite all the bitching I just did I read both books cover to cover and enjoyed myself. They are mindless and involve a lot of people hitting each other and blah blah blah. Also the identity of the red hulk actually forms a decenently compelling mystery, along with the question of Doc Samson's true motives. The fight scenes are fun and I dunno I enjoyed it. Its just that it could be so much better. It could have real depth and horror to it. Instead it is exactly the opposite. Oh well.

In other news...The Deadpool/Thunderbolts crossover? What the fuck! Andy Diggle should be perfect for the thunderbolts, but he isn't. It is crap. I don't understand why so many people love Deadpool so much. I guess it is the whole "we are 12" sort of thing. I don't know I read the whole thing but it was PAINFUL.

I didn't get a chance to read The Secret Warriors though which made me upset because it looks exciting. Oh well next time then.

2 comments:

evan said...

Have you read or looked into Dr Jeckel and Mr Hyde? I haven't, but it seems like that story might have the stuff you want from the Hulk

thekolo said...

The actual book or is there a comic based on it? At any rate I've read the book, and while the victorian writting style generally annoys me I did enjoy it very much.

One of the things I very much like about the hulk though is the whole family aspect to it, something that is underused in the comics and really isn't seen else where.