Ultimate Hulk Annual #1 – Review

Jeph Loeb (writer), Ed McGuinness, Dexter Vines (pencils p1-9), Marko Djurdjevic, Danny Miki (pencils p10-32), Guru eFX (colors)

The Story: Zarda accepts the personal challenge of Captain America to travel cross-country to become better acquainted with humanity. While making a stop for lunch, she runs into the Hulk, who’s being refused service. Chaos, and hilarity ensues.

What’s Good: I hope all of Hulk’s solo adventures have moments like this. This issue is a good example of how good Ultimate Hulk is. This isn’t something that could fly after World War Hulk. But here in the Ultimate U, the idea of the Hulk being the opposite of Banner is taken to such an appropriate extreme. Shy, vegetarian Banner, and horny, meat-eating Hulk; it just works.

What’s Not So Good: The Hulk gets beat. I mean, I’m not expecting him to KO a God or anything, but, it’s the Hulk. This sort of thing violates Marvel’s unofficial rule of “the toughest guy is whose book it is.” If you have doubts on that, read the Marvel Knights Punisher where he beats up Wolverine with ease, and a shotgun. Rules aside, I just wish Hulk would’ve done better. Furthermore, I don’t like changing an artist between issues of an arc, and I think it’s worse when it’s done during an issue. It’s executed very well, but it’s still distracting. I shouldn’t need to wonder why people are looking different between pages.

Conclusion: Think what you will about Jeph Loeb, I like his work on Hulk. I think this issue would’ve worked better as a one-shot than the intro to an ongoing series since there’s no hint as to what Hulk will be up to. Still, this series has the potential to be pretty interesting, I just hope it isn’t a funny series of mishaps. If we see Hulk at the laundromat I’m out.

Grade: B

-Ben Berger