Red Hulk Gets Revenge in Immortal Hulk #46 written by Al Ewing, pencilled by Joe Bennett, inked by Ruy José and Belardino Brabo. with colors by Paul Mounts, and letters by Cory Petit
Robert Secundus: As time goes on, I have fewer and fewer ideas for these opening bits. It feels like Times Immortal intros are hurtling away from me; even moving away at relativistic speeds; it seems like when I log on, I can even picture them undergoing a RED SHIFT. Red shift. Get it? Is this anything
Zach Rabiroff: Red shift. Red light. Green light. Points of light. I’m seeing stars. Maybe I need to get something to eat. Anyway, let’s do this article. It’s the new issue of Immortal Hulk, folks!
Revenge is From the Individual, Punishment is From God
ZR: Let’s begin, as usual, with the literary quotation that leads off this issue. It’s another bon mot from noted 19th century windbag and inspiration for Broadway musicals Victor Hugo, who, as my capsule description may have let on, I might kind of hate. In any event, the quote in question comes from his novella The Last Day of a Condemned Man, which, if my hazy memories of 12th grade A.P. French class are holding up, consists of the internal monologue of a prisoner in his final hours before he faces the guillotine. It’s probably worth including the full passage that Ewing is excerpting in this issue, which I’ll quote from my own copy of the C.E. Wilbour translation (slightly different from the one Ewing is using, but we’re here talking about a gamma monster comic, so let’s not be picky):
Those who judge and condemn say that the death penalty is necessary; firstly, because it is of importance to amputate from the social community a member that has already injured it, and may injure it still more. If that were all, perpetual imprisonment would suffice. What is the advantage of the death?…
Let us have no executioner where the jailor suffices.
But, you recommence, society must avenge itself, — must punish. Neither the one nor the other. Vengeance is in the individual — punishment belongs to God.
Victor Hugo
This strikes me as a curious quote, both in itself and in the context of this issue. It’s actually one of the more ambiguous epigrams we’ve seen so far, and just off the top of my head, I can think of at least three distinct ways to read it. Is it a condemnation of Gyrich, whose unquestioning devotion to the vengeance of the state is leading him deeper and deeper into the moral mudpits? Is it a condemnation of the Avengers, whose instinctive response to take revenge against the Hulk is stopping them from seeing an ally in their midst? Or is everybody here living with the punishment that a testing God has decided to inflict on them? So let me put the question to you, Rob: who in this issue is taking vengeance? And who is on the receiving end of punishment?
RS: We have a narrowed cast in this issue: only one Hulk personality, no Sasquatch, no Leader. The Devil Hulk is dead, Banner isn’t to be seen, and the One Below All is locked in hell— and those three especially are the ones we would expect to be an answer to that question. We have glimpses of people who have suffered supernaturally— Rick Jones and the Radioactive Boy sharing his body, Jacqueline McGee, who has been cursed with gamma-irradiated spectral sight, Samson, whose body has apparently been hijacked, and even, in a way, Gyrich, whose little fascist plans never seem to go right when gamma is involved. But is any of this suffering punishment? (cf problem of suffering, Book of Job, etc etc. I watched A Serious Man recently, I think on your recommendation, Zach. That was pretty good). Anyway, I guess you could say that Joe Fixit, celestially reborn as a green and red Hulk, empowered by the gamma rays below and cosmic rays above, has taken on the role of the departed Devil Hulk now, as he doles out punishment to the u-foes and prepares to do so to the Avengers. But I think, above all others, it’s Betty who’s framed as the one in control here, who has the power to inflict punishment.
ZR: That’s a fascinating thought, especially since (metaphorically, at least) it puts Betty Ross in the assigned role of God, which raises all sorts of weird implications that it’s probably best not to think too much about. There’s another sense, though, in which I think the real punishment we see in this issue is really inflicted by the Hulk against himself – look at him sulking in the bar, just before his confrontation with the Avengers, miserable in his self-induced loneliness. Going back at least to Bill Mantlo’s run in the 1980’s, there’s always been a strong aspect of the Hulk that’s an allegory for depression, with the Hulk personae forever triggering cycles of self-loathing. Banner hates what he does as the Hulk, which causes him to isolate himself from his friends and loved ones, which leads to misery and anger and violence, and then back to self-loathing. So it really shouldn’t come as any surprise that the way out of that cycle – for Banner as for so many of us – is for the someone he cares about deeply to take a deep breath and come to his aid.
What is perhaps a surprise (though not if we’ve been paying attention to the last few issues) is that Betty would make the choice to do it. Her life since meeting Bruce has, after all, been an almost comically awful cascade of misery, which the moments of actual, peaceful bliss countable in perhaps less than a dozen total issues of the Hulk’s titles. Indeed, her arc throughout this series has been wrestling with the question of whether she isn’t better off permanently removing herself from the pain of association with this tortured, unhappy system of personalities. But she doesn’t: she can’t, because when all is said and done, she really does love him, as star-crossed as that love may be. But showing up as the Harpy tells us that she’s not just going to revert to the mode of helpless, victimized love interest once again. She’s going to reunite with the Hulk on her terms, as a true and equal partner in his fight. You love to see it.
One little interesting note, by the way, is that (as far as I can recall) Joe Fixit is one personality that never actually did have a relationship with Betty. Joe’s main squeeze during his Vegas years was Marlo Chandler, who later broke up with him and married Rick Jones before dating Moondragon for a spell. Also, she was dead for a little while there. You know what, I’m getting sidetracked, let’s move on.
Red Dawn
ZR: After an expository check-in with the Gamma Flight crew and poor, long-suffering Rick Jones, we get the final act of the showdown between Hulk and the U-Foes. This, mind you, is the newly-emergent Red Hulk, a thuggish and violent personality (even by Hulk standards) not previously associated with Banner’s own system. On the contrary, Red Hulk was the gammafied persona of Banner’s traditional nemesis Thunderbolt Ross, who himself kind of symbolically represented the abusive, authoritarian father figures who had hounded Bruce throughout his life. So there’s a symbolic level in which Banner, by manifesting this persona, is taking on the same attributes of the people who have tortured and humiliated him all these years.
That’s an ambivalent act, to say the least, and I think it helps explain why there’s something so discomfiting about the Hulk’s victory in this fight. What should be a triumphant redemption instead plays out as something weird and gruesome. By the time the U-Foes are left on their knees, literally begging the Hulk to just leave them alone, the reader is put in the awkward position of actually sympathizing with them. I’d argue that the Hulk ends up coming off like the last thing the Hulk should ever be, or would ever want to become: a big old bully.
RS: It’s something new, but it’s not something entirely new. We saw the Red Hulk below last issue, but he emerges as mostly green here. The personality is tied to the pre-existing Joe Fixit— someone who’s been a semi-loveable grifter type throughout this series, but began, we have to remember, as a mob fixer. He’s always had some of those traits to some degree, and they’re magnified here especially because he’s been denied power for so long. It makes me reevaluate what I thought of Joe throughout this run; was he the result of Bruce’s fantasy of being just as street smart as he was book smart, of being able to navigate through situations which would have confounded Bruce— or was he the result of Bruce indulging the fantasy of being like the people who hurt him? Throughout the series, Joe was the personality, I think, set most at odds with the Devil Hulk: the Devil had the most power, the greatest ability to cause change and harm, but Joe was stuck being just an ordinary guy, without even the vast body of knowledge of Bruce. But now I wonder if they’re opposed in a different way: the fantasy of punishing your persecutors vs becoming them.
ZR: The original notion back in the ‘90’s, which I think holds true here, is that the Big Guy and Joe were, essentially, arrested stages of development in the life of Bruce Banner. The classic Green Hulk was the perpetual child, victimized by the world around him and capable of responding only through violent tantrums or pitiful tears. Joe, by contrast, was the brash, rebellious adolescent, self-consciously cool, and embarrassed to be seen doing anything as infantile as expressing love or depending on other people. If we still take that division of gospel, it’s possible to see the Red Hulk as being the adult stage of the Hulk’s growth – with all the blessings and curses that entails. And in that sense, I think what you’re suggesting here could very well be true: having “grown up” into the Red Hulk, Banner has become exactly the kind of horrible father he always sought to escape. Whether that father specifically is Brian Banner, or Thunderbolt Ross, or Henry Gyrich or anyone else is beside the point, since all men of authority are essentially the same to him. They seek to play the role of a punishing God (remember that copy of Paradise Lost young banner was reading at his moment of origin?), and woe unto anyone who tries to escape their wrath.
And speaking of Gyrich, he doesn’t seem too pleased with having fallen into yet another in a long string of total cock-ups, especially since it means going hat in hand to his old frenemies—the Avengers. I like the way his sequence plays out, and both the writing and art do a very able and efficient job of conveying Gyrich’s frustration through his massive scowl and the big Avengers logo displayed on his smartphone. But I confess I felt a little shortchanged not actually getting to see his conversation with Black Panther and company first-hand. I suspect that’s largely an issue of economy, with Ewing simply lacking the space to devote another page to this character beat. That’s really the flipside of the decompressed storytelling Ewing has been employing throughout Immortal Hulk. At its best (and I stress, this series is very often at its best), it allows the freedom to set a mood and tone over the course of slow-building action. But at times like this, it means that we get a few more scenes of the U-Foes getting stomped at the expense of some more interesting and worthwhile subplots. Or at least that’s my take. What did you think of all this?
RS: I’m also hungry for more Gyrich Content, especially because he’s the figure right now tying together the best Marvel Comic not about the X-Men and, well, the X-Men. Gyrich is both a major antagonist of Immortal Hulk and of SWORD, and I wish we saw more of him especially because I think this is probably the best series (and maybe the only series) actually equipped thematically to interact with the Krakoan books in meaningful or interesting ways.
Second Time’s a Charm
RS: Your read of the bar scene (that Joe is sulking, alone) is interesting to me because I had a very different read— it seemed to me that the mood from the U-Foes fight, the ease, the smarmy joy, continued there, and only began to falter second before Thor made his entrance. When Joe talks about champagne, it does read to me like he’s earnestly celebrating.
ZR: I’d agree that it certainly seems earnest, at least at first, but take another look at the way the scene plays out. As Hulk watches the bartender’s cowering reaction to his display, his grin gradually fades into a wan frown, and he reflects on the emptiness of his celebration.
It’s worth remembering that the Hulk’s M.O. ever since the Stan Lee era has been to repeatedly declare that he just wants the world to leave him alone…only to find, when he finally gets what he’s wished for, that loneliness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. That’s because isolation just leaves Banner alone with his own thoughts, which have always been a worse enemy than anything human society can throw at him. What the Hulk really wants is to be loved, but believing himself unworthy of that love, he instead uses his strength and his swagger to keep the puny humans at arm’s length – until, of course, they attack him again. Which is exactly what happens here, as the Hulk’s night on the town gives way to a renewed confrontation with the Avengers. And speaking of those guys, Rob, what did you think of AvH, round two?
RS: I don’t know. It’s weird; I really should be excited to see this writer tackle these specific characters again, and I should be excited to how the whole “the biggest and most important team in this universe is going to be examined in the whole Superheroes-As-Metaphor-For-Power-And-Capitalism” schtick that this series has. I guess the main Avengers has at this point just soured me on this iteration of the team overall. And I also kind of don’t know how to reconcile the two takes on them? The Avengers right now are a sovereign entity, removed from the US government and answering, theoretically, to no one (Wakanda complicates this, but the idea in the ongoing seems to be, at least, that this is a team concept built to exist separate from things like nations, and is an expression of a tradition that predates nations). The Big Important Crossover of the Summer is built around the concept of the United States being so afraid of this thing that they can’t control, that an agent of the state warps time so that they’re erased from history. But here, a different agent of that state has them on speed dial, and with just one call can get them to carry out his orders. Note that I’m not complaining here that “Ewing doesn’t care about continuity” or anything like that; he’s clearly someone that’s devoted to continuity, and as he’s proven through the endless event-tie ins that plague all of his ongoings, he’s also someone that can deftly navigate the needs of his story and the particulars of line-wide continuity at time of that story. I just don’t get how the two takes work together; it feels like this take is a commentary on the other, but I also don’t know what it’s saying. I imagine things will clear up a bit for me next issue.
ZR: Partly, I think, Ewing is actually relying on some very deep continuity, remembering that Gyrich made his Marvel Comics debut as a mere government liaison to the Avengers – before being dismissed from his assignment after being humiliated at a Congressional hearing by Captain America. He’s held a grudge ever since (and, of course, soon thereafter failed upward by becoming the president’s secret advisor on the Sentinel program), but it’s possible his phone call to the Avengers isn’t so much a government prerogative as a personal contact going back to his first assignment. That’s speculation on my part (and, again, something that might have been clarified if Ewing had allowed himself more space to let us see the encounter play out), but would feel dramatically satisfying to me.
On a larger level, I do confess to having my own initial ambivalence about this second-round fight, though for somewhat different reasons. The back half of this series, really ever since issue #25, has been a steady march through all the heavy hitters of the Hulk’s classic battles: Xemnu, the Thing, the U-Foes, and of course, his arch-nemesis the Leader. It’s developed into an almost Stations of the Cross level of formal inevitability, and now we’ve come full circle to yet another slugfest with the superhero crew that first opposed him in this series.
But the thing is, I’m convinced that the weariness and repetition of this pattern is Ewing’s deliberate point. The Hulk, as I’ve been stressing ad nauseum in this article, is a depressive. And one of the things that we depressives do is develop patterns of behavior that begin as coping mechanisms, and only gradually curdle into something toxic and harmful. We keep doing them because we think we’re getting something useful out of these bad habits, and it’s only when they stop serving their intended function – when we find that they’re no longer tricking us into thinking that we’re happier or better-functioning – that we learn to change. That, I think, is what we see starting to happen to the Hulk at the bar, as he begins to admit to himself that his constant fights and self-imposed friendlessness aren’t giving him the life he wants to have. This is a series about breaking a cycle: a cycle of violence, a cycle of loneliness, and a cycle of endless, pointless resurrection into pain. And as we approach the final issue, I think we’re finally, at long last, seeing the first glimmers of something new.
Marvelous Musings
- Narratively Relevant Information= Literal Magic is an interesting idea in the opening scenes that could be further explored’
- I can’t be the only one who’s a little disappointed that Wein’s Bar isn’t the hangout of the Hulk’s least-well-liked Canadian mutant, right?
Zach Rabiroff edits articles at Comicsxf.com.
Robert Secundus is an amateur-angelologist-for-hire.
