Written by: Michael Hickerson (SoSF Staff Journalist)
If you happen to stop by your local comic book shop later this week and see a new issue of the Hulk with a red-version of Marvel Comic’s popular hero, you’re not seeing things. The newest issue of Hulk that debuts on newstands tomorrow (Wed. Feb. 20) features a new red-version of the character.
The storyline, written by Joep Leob and drawn by artist Ed McGuinness is a murder-mystery that centers on the question of who is the red Hulk? The new red Hulk is said to be more savage than the original green Hulk and it may or may not have Bruce Banner as an alter ego.
“I wanted to bring a danger back to the book,” Loeb told USA Today. “The Red Hulk is the kind of Hulk we haven’t seen before — a thinking, calculating, brutal weapon-toting kind of Hulk.
“Everything the Green Hulk isn’t, the Red Hulk is.”
The redesign of the Hulk is the latest in a series of dramatic developments at Marvel in an attempt to generate some buzz and, hopefully, drive up sales of some of its flagship comic books. In recent months, the publisher has killed Captain America and completed a storyline that negated the marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson.
With a new Hulk movie on the horizon this summer, some comic fans are wondering if this might be a stunt to generate sales and one that will quickly be negated by a desire to tie-into the potential summer blockbuster.
Loeb insists that the changes to the Hulk are here to stay and hinted that in the fourth issue, a Green Hulk will show up in the storyline.
“In many ways, the Red Hulk speaks to the worst in us,” Loeb said, “so when the Green Hulk comes back, it will remind us of the best in us.”
“I’m in this for the long haul. “There is no other Hulk book,” Loeb added.
A ‘weapon-toting kind of Hulk’ ????
Weapon-toting? What happened to “Hulk Smash!!”
:: SIGH ::
They just gotta ruin everything.
I told him, and told him; wear sun screen.
Tim
The best Hulk was during the Peter David. he was huge, green, and really freaking smart. The David years were responsible for one of the best moments in Hulk history;
Hulk climbs out of a smoking crater, holding up the tattered remains of the giant sized bunny slippers he’d been wearing in a war zone of all places, and says;
“They ruined the slippers my wife bought me. Now I’m really pissed.”