Would You Recommend Indestructible Hulk?

[Hulk_Is]

I absolutely positively recommend this to readers who have never read the Hulk before. Basically for no other reason then it's very good book, with an interesting slant on Banner and Hulk.

As a huge Hulk fan as yourself, I definitely see your point of genie in a bottle type of thing. But honestly how long can Banner control the engine of destruction that is the Hulk anyway?

Unfortunately, I feel as long as Mark Waid will be writing for this series.

[punisher97]

Get it!!! I haven't read much Hulk, but Waid drew me to the series. It's one of the best NOW! books in my opinion, especially with the art.

[Monty_Cristo]

i like what i've read. but i'm pretty sure that i'll stop liking it once Leinil Yu leaves.

[ResIpsaLoquitur]

I'm a mixed bag on this. There's two kinds of Hulk comics out there: those that involve his supporting cast, and those that don't. Historically, Hulk's story always went back to Betty, Rick, General Ross, and Gamma Base in some form. Even in story arcs where the Hulk spent long periods on the road, we'd always have side-scenes going back to Gamma Base where we'd see what the Rosses and company were up to, and Hulk would eventually end up back there.

In my opinion, some of the weaker Hulk stories have been where the writer dropped the "traditional" cast and either hooked Hulk up with new characters, or just had him wandering around a lot. Bill Mantlo gave us Kate Waynesboro for about a dozen issues--she was a bit dry, and Banner eventually left her (mostly because he'd gone insane). The Crossroads story that followed kind of had Hulk bouncing around universes with no core, familiar characters to go back to (except for a floating pile of sand and three imaginary friends. You had to be there.).

Peter David typically stuck with Rick and Betty in some form, though there were two periods where he either dropped them or used them less (the Vegas period and the mid-90s), and the book kind of suffered for it. (The lousy artwork didn't help.) Joe Casey and John Byrne's late 90s runs pretty much avoided Hulk's familiar cast, and they're really not very memorable. Neither was Paul Jenkins', although he somewhat dabbled in General Ross and Doc Samson.

I'll make something of an exception for PLANET HULK, which featured almost nobody the Hulk was familiar with. It was a pretty unique story of the Hulk in an alien environment, going through some extreme lengths to establish himself and then losing it all in a typically-Hulkish tragedy. I think of that story as a rare example of Hulk being taken out of his usual environment and still having a good story--but even then, Pak worked back in Rick, Betty, and other supporting cast members as his story went on.

So, with Waid: he's once again doing an "unfamiliar" Hulk. There's no Rick, Betty, or General Ross. I realize that he's entirely restrained by what Marvel has made of that--Betty and the General are their own independent Hulks, and Rick is a big blue lizard which absolutely nobody demanded. Having said that, I think the book is suffering for the loss of a decent supporting cast. Maria Hill is NOT a regular Hulk character, so establishing her in the book feels...wrong...to me. Waid is obviously doing some world-building with Banner's helpers, and we'll see how they turn out, but I imagine in the long run that they'll be unmemorable characters who won't appear again.

I'm sticking with this book out of tradition--I've been reading Hulk almost nonstop since the 1980s--but so far, this feels like it fits in the category of less-relevant Hulk runs.

[THALASTDRAGON]

You can rarely, if ever, go wrong with either Waid or Yu. I'm enjoying this book and recommend it. This is coming from a guy who's never really been a Hulk fan. I like what Waid is doing with Banner and Yu's art is always nice.