Joe Fixit is in charge, on the run, and running from space to Earth in this tale written by Al Ewing, pencilled by Joe Bennett, inked by Ruy José and Belardino Brabo, coloured by Paul Mounts and Matt Milla, and lettered by VC’s Cory Petit.
Zach Rabiroff: [The stage is now lit by a rotating disco ball casting mood lighting onto our writers. A life-size model of Robert Secundus has been constructed out of discarded sticks and twine, and perched in a chair next to a microphone. Zach stares into its eyes disarmingly as he speaks.] Welcome back! This is Times Immortal, your last and most important stop for Immortal Hulk analysis. I’m fill-in writer Zach Rabiroff, here again with my colleague Cori McCreery to discuss today’s adventure in body horror and atmospheric descents. Ready, Cori?
Cori McCreery: Gotta say, Zach, you’re starting to frighten me a little here. Now I’m starting to question whether Rob is on sabbatical after all.
[Ed. Note: This comment was followed by fifteen minutes of absolute silence after which Zach was removed from the stage and strongly urged to take a nap.]
Hugo Get ‘Em
ZR: This issue’s title-card quote comes courtesy of Les Miserables, Victor Hugo’s classic 1862 musical about Wolverine adopting Catwoman’s daughter. It reads:
Who could have bound the lamb to the wolf, and, what was still more incomprehensible, have attached the wolf to the lamb?
Reading those lines, you might think that this is one of those obnoxious rhetorical questions to which the correct answer is “God, stupid.” And you’d be right! But as usual, there’s something more going on here, too. The narrator of that line, Marius, is mystified that someone as beautiful and perfect as his beloved Cosette could be devotedly attached to her frightening, criminal father Wolverine (or Jean Valjean in the original French). To him, it’s as though nature has been turned on its head, and the vulnerable lamb has an inexplicable love for the animal that, by all rights, ought to be born to kill it. I think most obviously, that’s a description of what’s going on with the various aspects of the Hulk’s psyche: the childlike Big Guy of Bruce Banner’s youth protected by the outwardly vicious and uncontrollable force of the Hulk. Banner, lonely and at the mercy of the world for most of his life, has constructed his own protective ecosystem. He is the wolf and the lamb all at once, and rather than become a force for death, it’s been the source of his persistent endurance in life. Or am I just overinterpreting all of this?
CM: I think that’s a pretty good way to take that opening too, and is really illustrated pretty perfectly by the themes of this issue. As Big Guy has lost his protectors we see just how innocent and vulnerable he is. It also forces one of the last remaining personalities into that protector role, a role that he’s not necessarily suited for. What did you think of Joe playing the big damn hero?
ZR: I think the emergence of heroic Joe Fixit is one of the small but persistent pleasures of this run. It’s interesting to me because, as he was originally conceived, Joe was the aspect of Banner’s psyche that was effectively frozen in adolescence: if the classic Big Guy green Hulk was a sweet but tantrum-prone child, Joe was a brash, aggressive, libidinous teenager. I think what we’ve seen in this series is Joe finally starting to grow up. I mean, he’s the Hulk who said trans rights, after all! Of course, he’s also the Hulk who knows how to hold a gun like an ‘80’s action movie badass, and that doesn’t hurt, either.
CM: For someone who tries to steadfastfully avoid Peter David as much as she can, (yes I read all of X-Factor, shut up) it amazes me how much I’ve enjoyed Fixit in this series. Like he might actually be my favorite aspect of the Hulk, and that’s credit I don’t really want to give to dear ol’ PAD. But such is the power of Ewing. His characters are so very good and so very human.
ZR: Human is exactly right, and I loved the bickering sibling relationship between Joe and the Big Guy as both of them panicked in their own way over the Hulk’s predicament. The way this series has come to visualize the interactions between the various personalities of Banner’s mind is a constant joy. I’d read a whole issue of those guys just schmoozing, arguing, and getting on each other’s nerves. It’s like Sartre’s No Exit but with green muscles.
That Guy
ZR: For me, personally, there are few characters short of the Strucker Twins whose appearance inspires the singular combination of irritation and delight as Henry Peter Gyrich, erstwhile persecutor of the mutant race, and presently the commander of Gamma Flight. Ranking somewhere around #5 on the “ugh, that guy” scale, Gyrich is a singularly unsympathetic character. To be sure, his awfulness is rooted in principle of a kind: we saw way back in the days of Chris Claremont’s X-Men that Gyrich genuinely fears the national security implications of superpeople left free and uncontrolled by authority. But that kernel of rationality has festered into something disgustingly unrecognizable as justice or good governance. At this point, he’s persecuting for the sake of persecution, and it’s hard not to see a flicker of sadistic joy in the pain he’s managing to inflict on the Hulk during his interrogation scene. Since Ewing opened the door for Les Miserables metaphors, you could say he’s the Inspector Javert of this story; someone who’s drive to obey the letter of the law has made him utterly forget what it was the law supposed to protect in the first place. And you could also see him as a metaphor for all of the institutions of arbitrary, sneering authority that the Immortal Hulk has spent this series working to tear down. Because, as Gyrich flatly declares, “I’m the government, mister.” And that’s a hell of a thing to say at a time like this, no?
CM: Okay, but I have to know the other two ahead of him on your list of “Ugh that guy” assuming the Strucker twins take two spots. My own top spot belongs to Cameron Hodge, followed closely by Jamie Braddock. As with both of those characters, as soon as you see Gyrich, you know you’re in for it. These are just perfect antagonists, that are so absolutely fun to hate, and especially under a good writer they just shine. And yeah, Gyrich definitely seems like the kind of government stooge that bides his time and works his way up the bureaucratic ladder just waiting for someone in power that allows him to abuse his role as he sees fit. It’s why he makes perfect sense in the current political climate.
ZR: It’s almost nauseating to think how well Gyrich must have done for himself over the past four years, which might actually be the deliberate, unstated implication of his appearance here. But what makes him particularly compelling and repulsive as an antagonist, I think, is that he’s the ultimate political survivor. Despite a seemingly endless string of failures at his various assignments (if you can convince the Avengers and the X-Men to hate you simultaneously, you are clearly terrible at your job), he falls ever upward from administration to administration, immune to the transfer of presidents or political parties. It’s an effect that the bizarre existence of Marvel Time actually enhances, since he’s now managed to serve under every president from Jimmy Carter onward, his roles growing only bigger and more disastrously ambitious with every crushing defeat. It all feels a little too real, if you ask me. But that’s what makes him work.
And for the record, I’m counting the Struckers as a single, creepily Freudian entity, and rounding out my top five with the Shadow King, the Jackal, and Shinobi Shaw, in that order.
Wendigos, Orange Rocks, and Other Good Friends
ZR: One of the weirdly touching things about this issue was the glimpse we get of the other people in Hulk’s life: Jackie McGee, the crew of Gamma Flight, and Doc Samson (about whom I’m sure we’ll have more to say here). These folks haven’t always been on terrific terms with our hero, what with several of them having tried to blow him up more than once, and we can hardly blame him for keeping them at arm’s length under the circumstances. But what we see here is actually something very different. These people really do care about Banner, all things considered, and they’re worried for him just as much as they’re fearful of him. But I don’t think that Bruce can see that any more, and not least because the Leader just spent the last few issues convincing him that all of his friends will betray him in the end, and that the only person in the world he can rely on is himself. It’s as wrenching to see Joe Fixit holding his friends at the literal barrel of a gun as it is reassuring to find them still caring about him anyway. Hulk isn’t as alone in this world as he thinks he is.
CM: That Doc Sasquatch reveal sure was something. Poor Walter got into a vat of green food coloring, the kind my mom used to use to dye my hair for St. Patrick’s Day in elementary school. But yeah, the relationships have been the heart of this comic, and that holds true as we approach the very end. It feels like these relationships are just going to become more and more important to pull the Big Guy out of all this. That said, not everyone is looking for a way to help Banner right now, and one person in particular is looking for a good ol’ fashioned slobberknocker. What’d you think of the title reveal and last page cliffhanger this time around?
ZR: Okay, listen. I’m a reasonably cultured human being. I love Tolstoy, and I appreciate Bach. But delicately constructing an entire comic book entirely around a last-page reveal that is also a goofy pun? That, Cori, is art.
And that’s to say nothing of the fact that Ewing’s Ben Grimm, even in those two short pages, is so perfectly voiced that we didn’t even need to see those rocky visuals to know who we were dealing with in this surprise ending. (I confess I’m not quite as sold on Bennett’s visuals here, which look a little too scaly rather than stony for my Kirby-influenced eyes. Actually, if I’m being perfectly honest, I’m not sure this issue was a great showcase of his abilities in general – the twisting, morphing bodies were as great as usual, but there was an oddly static appearance to the action scenes that should have been filled with motion. It made me think of Greg Land at times when that name really shouldn’t have been popping into my head, which is never a great sign.)
But to recover from my digression: it strikes me that both the Thing’s appearance here, and the reveal of Doc Sasquatch early on are the sorts of moves that Ewing can only get away with during the home stretch of this run. If they had happened anywhere in the first 25 or so issues, I would have rolled my eyes at the blatant surrender to fan service and well-trod cliché. But by starting out this series with a set of horror-oriented, self-contained story arcs, and only gradually becoming more comic book-y and referential of broader Marvel history, the book managed to win acceptance of these moves bit by bit. At this point, Ewing has earned every payoff moment the comic is giving us, and I’m legitimately grateful for it.
CM: I have to agree about Bennett’s art this issue. It really was not the best we’ve seen from him. Specifically, while you call out some of the action, I have to call out some of the faces. I got a lot of inconsistency in how certain characters looked even from panel to panel. The body horror was still great though. Anyway, hopefully he was saving it up for next month’s slugfest. Also, can we just give the Fantastic Four to Al?
ZR: Honestly, Marvel. Do you see the kind of year we’ve all had? Give us this. We deserve this. It’s the least you can do.
For now, though, I’ll just continue to appreciate a series that, while still frequently horrifying, has also become one thing I don’t think I would have expected when it first started out: absolutely, rollickingly fun.
Marvelous Musings
- Of the many encounters between the Hulk and the Thing, I think my all-time favorite is still the time that they were granted anything their hearts desired, and the Hulk blew it by wishing for a big pile of hamburgers.
- Really though, who could be mad at a pile of hamburgers?
- I’m captivated by Doc Sasquatch’s uh… treasure trail? It’s frightening is what it is.
- It’s…it’s clothing, right? Oh, please, God, please, God, please let it be clothing.
Zach Rabiroff edits articles at Comicsxf.com.
