Hulk #37 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (writer), Elena Casagrande (artist), Bettie Breitweiser (colorist), Ed Dukeshire (letterer), Jake Thomas (assistant editor) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: It’s Red Hulk versus Bedazzled Thing.  Guest-starring MODOK and some other bad guys.

What’s good: Kudos to Jeff Parker for not letting the necessity of an event tie-in knock him off his ongoing story.  I’m of the opinion that event tie-ins are important, simply because it makes no sense to have Earth-shattering comic events if the ongoing series aren’t going to acknowledge the events, but the complaint about events is that they screw up the ongoing stories that the creators were telling.  Well, not necessarily….

Jeff Parker is the master of cramming content into a single issue comic book so it isn’t a surprise that he can have Rulk take part in Fear Itself and maintain his ongoing stories.  The Fear Itself part hooks into the events of Avengers a few issues ago (#14?) where Bendis showed us Rulk earning his Avengers stripes by going toe-to-toe with super-Thing.  But, this story is from a different perspective and that makes it a lot of fun, especially if you enjoy that type of alternative perspective fiction.  Not surprising that Parker told a good event tie-in, but he also managed to keep up his creepy, spider-MODOK and Zero/One storylines.  Seriously, there’s no Big 2 superhero writer who is giving more content per issue than Parker (and in $2.99 books, to boot).

We get a new artist this issue and I think Elena Casagrande is going to be one to keep an eye on.  I wasn’t previously familiar with her work, but a check online shows that she’s done a lot of work on the Angel comics series for IDW.  Much like Patrick Zircher last month, her work looks a lot like regular series artist Gabriel Hardman.  And, if you know what a fan of Hardman I am, I mean that as a strong compliment.  Her linework is a little less brushy than Hardman, but probably a little more detailed and she has similar storytelling sensibilities.  If you need a reason to be optimistic about Marvel comics, they keep finding these awesome new(er) artists rather than just recycling the same old folks.  I hope she gets a ton more work at Marvel!

Weekly Comic Book Review’s Top Picks

Alex’s Top Picks

Best From The Past Week: New Avengers #14 – A really close call between this and Journey into Mystery, but given how exemplary this week’s issue of New Avengers was, as compared to Journey into Mystery’s consistent excellence, it’s hard not to recognize New Avenger’s outstanding effort that went above the series norm.  Fantastic character work that made me into a much bigger fan of Mockingbird.

Most Anticipated:Daredevil #1 – Daredevil is one of those characters who will always mean a lot to me.  While being a kid in the late 80s-early 90s pretty much guaranteed that I was an X-fan, Daredevil was my favourite hero, ever since finding a box of Frank Miller Daredevil back issues in a discount store in NYC.  His were the stories that really hit me hard as a kid as they always felt “adult,” epic, and emotional in ways I’d never experienced in comics before.

But it’s been hard times for Matt Murdock.  Shadowland was a catastrophe, Andy Diggle’s run before that never quite managed to hit its full potential, and Daredevil: Reborn was salt in the wound.  It all lend me to believe that after career defining work by Brian Bendis and a run of Ed Brubaker doing what he does best, perhaps the downcast noir well has run dry.

So I look forward to Mark Waid’s dashing and more upbeat direction.  And hey, at the very least, the art is going to be ridiculously, eye-meltingly good.

Other Picks: Avengers #15, Batman: Gates of Gotham #3, Invincible Iron Man #506

Dean’s Top Picks

Best From The Past Week: American Vampire: Survival of the Fittest #2 – The excellence of the American Vampire franchise is almost getting to be routine, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be celebrated.  This was a #2 issue and it still managed to toss enough cool Indiana Jones and James Bond themes to make this story more than routine.  It really would have been possible for Snyder to sit back and just advance the story of vampire-hunter secret agents infiltrating Nazi-held Europe before America’s involved in WWII.  But….he didn’t take the easy way out and that made the story better than adequate.  And, I LOVE Sean Murphy’s art.  He has this incredible combination of cartooning and realism that opens up all sorts of possibilities that most artists can’t touch.  Runner-up: Loose Ends #1

Most Anticipated: Elephantmen #33 – There are a lot of interesting looking Big 2 superhero books coming out this week….and….while I’m looking forward to some, none is making my mouth water, so let’s shine a light on a title that has been consistently strong for a very long time: Elephantmen.  This long-running story of a dystopian future where animal-human hybrids who were created as weapons of war and are now trying to assimilate into a society that hates and fears them is always compelling and has always featured excellent art.  You can’t go wrong picking up Elephantmen.

Other Picks: The Walking Dead #87, Hulk #37, Sergio Aragones Funnies #1, Hack/Slash #6, Avengelyn #1, Marineman #6, Daredevil #1