Hulk #36 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (writer), Patch Zircher (art), Jim Charalampidis (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters), Jake Thomas (assistant editor) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: Yikes!  MODOK is back!

What’s Good: For an ordinary comic, the deck would really be stacked against this issue.  Hulk is right in the middle of some longer-term stories and next issue/month, it dives into Fear Itself tie-in territory.  This issue even has a guest art team, so you could easily see and almost understand this issue being kinda disposable… Which happens with monthly superhero comics.  But when Jeff Parker is writing, I think he almost relishes a chance to write a done-in-one story.  It certainly isn’t much of a handicap for him as he again proves that he is better at packing lots of events into a single issue than anyone else currently writing in Big 2 superhero comics.

So, what’s cool?  Well, remember that new MODOK with the spidery legs from a few issues ago?  He’s back.  I honestly have always thought that MODOK was kinda a dorky villain, but the team of creators here makes him really sinister and creepy.  You just know that he’s going to be trouble in future issues…

Parker also manages to drag out an old Banner-Hulk villain who I really wasn’t familiar with, but Parker does such an awesome job of recapping just the right amount of history that I never felt lost.  Bravo!