Bruce Banner: The Hulk Appreciation 2018

[GreenScar1990]

Gotta say this book as gonna be creepy/trippy as hell (just like Ewing has said)! Can't wait to see those mysteries and the One Below All!

Btw, those Alex Ross' covers are incredible.

Immortal Hulk July solicitations

IMMORTAL HULK #2
AL EWING (W) • JOE BENNETT (A)
Cover by ALEX ROSS
Variant Cover BY GERARDO ZAFFINO
A random small-town tragedy. A mystery illness that spreads with grief. A green glow on a lonely mountain. Three puzzle pieces that fit together to make a nightmare. And the only mind on Earth than can connect them up…belongs to the Immortal Hulk.
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99






IMMORTAL HULK #3
AL EWING (W) • JOE BENNETT (A)
Cover by ALEX ROSS
Carol Danvers 50th Variant Cover by MAHMUD ASRAR
What happened in the church on Mercer Avenue? What made the Lembert boy do what he did? Who is the One Below All? Reporter Jackie McGee has four eyewitnesses, with four different viewpoints, telling four different stories. But they all saw Bruce Banner…and the Immortal Hulk.
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

I really like those covers for Immortal Hulk #2 & 3. And our multiversal antagonist/threat is... The One Below All. Hmm... knowing Al Ewing, I would not be surprised if it's some kind of dark counterpart to or darker aspect of the One Above All/All-God.

Maybe the One Below All is the All-Devil/All-Demon. I like that Al Ewing hasn't revealed the One Below All yet, just the name. Would be cool if he's some powerful, terrifying entity like Oblivion or Death. Maybe something along the lines of the Logos or Aspirants or the Proemial Gods or the entities of JL: No Justice.

[Dr. Banner]

I really like those covers for Immortal Hulk #2 & 3. And our multiversal antagonist/threat is... The One Below All. Hmm... knowing Al Ewing, I would not be surprised if it's some kind of dark counterpart to or darker aspect of the One Above All/All-God.

Maybe the One Below All is the All-Devil/All-Demon. I like that Al Ewing hasn't revealed the One Below All yet, just the name. Would be cool if he's some powerful, terrifying entity like Oblivion or Death. Maybe something along the lines of the Logos or Aspirants or the Proemial Gods or the entities of JL: No Justice.

Knowing Ewing (I'm not imating you, btw!) I guess we'll get something much more exotic/creepy when compared to those types.

Probably something more supernatural!

[Dr. Banner]

I'll be posting more Joe Bennet's art here soon! For now, there's this beautiful preview art (from MU Magazine) from Immortal Hulk #1!

[Captain Craig]

Wait, so Ewing is introducing Jack(ie) McGee, reporter, as a comic book character in the pages of Immortal Hulk?!
The 70s TV show had that character and now he's coming around as an actual comic character, ok then, let's see how you play this.
In the MCU every intelligence outlet knows Banner=Hulk so there is no mystery. What is the reporter trying to uncover?

[Dr. Banner]

Wait, so Ewing is introducing Jack(ie) McGee, reporter, as a comic book character in the pages of Immortal Hulk?!
The 70s TV show had that character and now he's coming around as an actual comic character, ok then, let's see how you play this.
In the MCU every intelligence outlet knows Banner=Hulk so there is no mystery. What is the reporter trying to uncover?

She's gonna be investigating his appearances, which are not common, it seems. As Ewing said, much of the world thinks Banner is dead, and Banner wants be very low profile, he doesnt' want to even be noticed.
Not to mention that there'll be many diverging "sights" from different people...Did they really see the Hulk?

Well, Ewing's first interview (I posted it here some time ago), which is amazing, will give you a much better idea than I could give!

https://www.cbr.com/immortal-hulk-br...ett-interview/

[PaxHouse]

I'll be posting more Joe Bennet's art here soon! For now, there's this beautiful preview art (from MU Magazine) from Immortal Hulk #1!

That reminds me of a scene from the Incredible Hulk's 1st Movie on the Big Screen...!!!

[Dr. Banner]

That reminds me of a scene from the Incredible Hulk's 1st Movie on the Big Screen...!!!

No doubt about it!

[Dr. Banner]

More Joe Bennett awsomeness:

[Dr. Banner]

[Dr. Banner]

[Dr. Banner]

Bruce and Walter together!

[Dr. Banner]

Leamington Comic Con: Al Ewing Interview

http://wehaveahulk.co.uk/leamington-...ing-interview/

Obviously Avengers No Surrender has been used to bring back Bruce Banner once again
into the Marvel Universe, why did you decide to resurrect the character in Avengers and not in a Hulk book?

AE: We wanted to give the Avengers book something and we wanted to get people excited about it and people were! Without the Hulk resurrection, 1) we’d have to put something in that third month of story and 2) it really gave people this big boost of interest halfway through. Otherwise people would be interested in the start and at the end, there would be a dip in the middle and instead we had the Hulk coming back. We built up to that and that big rampage kept people interested, focused and really excited by it all the way through which is good, if we were to do that again we’d have to have a similar Hulk returns type moment.

Also doing it in Avengers I can start Immortal Hulk issue one; I don’t have to give lengthy explanations of how he died and came back – I can just start issue one. New readers can just come in and if they want to, can catch up on what the Hulk’s been up to. They can read the recent Avengers book, and if they don’t it’s not like issue one where immediately your crushed by continuity from comics you haven’t read. I feel like it’s important, certainly for this series, to start afresh as possible. I wanted to get the resurrection and continuity stuff squared away so I could tell the story I wanted to do in the Hulk book.

How would you describe your approach to Immortal Hulk?
AE: We’re doing it as a horror book and we’re very consistent with the tone, we’re also trying to make it different to what’s come before and what’s already out there. It’s going to be the only Marvel comic that’s going to be striking that particular horror tone. We need to be unique as possible, so that’s what I’m thinking about.

Instead of the usual “don’t make me angry” Is the tagline going to be “don’t kill me you
wouldn’t like me when I’m dead?”

AE: Ha ha! Maybe! One thing I’ve tried to bring back is the idea that Bruce Banner can hide; obviously he’s got a well known face. There’s a lot of people who are celebrities and if I saw them on the street, I wouldn’t necessarily know them or be able to place them, I’d say he looks familiar, I wouldn’t immediately say oh that’s the Hulk. We’re bringing back Bruce’s anonymity and his ability to kind of blend in and part of that is that he’s got a lot of experience as a fugitive. So we’re playing up the old TV show, he’s wandering from town to town and we’ve also brought back when night falls, that’s the Hulk’s time, and daytime is Bruce Banner’s time and night is the Hulk time.

The changes don’t necessarily automatically happen at sundown, we make it very obvious that when the sun goes down the Hulk is in charge. We’re getting away from the anger mechanic and we’re going back to the early days when he changed at night. It’s not for the first time that someone’s used this, I know Peter David used this for the grey Hulk and I’ve always liked that.

Would you reckon that this incarnation is more powerful than the rest?

AE: In a sense yeah. I don’t like the whole “who’s stronger” thing, I think that’s a boring story to tell, so I kind of get around it by assuming that the “Hulk is the strongest one there” – it’s like it says on the tin. In terms of one on one battles he’s powerful enough to win. If he’s fighting all of the Avengers then that’s going to be more of a fight, but the fights are less important than the stories, the emphasis on this book is really on the story.

It’s on story; it’s on tone, mysteries and strange happenings and stuff. Yes he’s powerful; he’s one of the more powerful incarnations of the Hulk – I think he’d certainly be in the top five. He might be the smartest version of the Hulk there’s been, but at the same time that’s not the point and that’s not the focus. We’ll see if people like that and go for it. I’m hoping people will be on board for a darker take on the Hulk. We’re focusing less on what he can bench press and more on the monster in the darkness.

Joe Bennett’s drawn the Hulk in the past, what do you think he’s bringing to the character
this time round?

AE: From what he’s told me, he’s very inspired by the original Kirby Hulk. He’s bringing a real solidity to it and monstrousness. His Hulk takes up a lot of the page and the atmosphere of the room. When the Hulk’s on the page you know all about it! He’s this huge looming presence. His Hulk’s very scary, he’s a got a subtle grasp of expressions as well. It’s no secret that we’ve got Walter Langowski, Sasquatch from Alpha Flight, coming in as a supporting character.

I’m starting to get pages in from Walter now and his expressions are very subtle. Walter always smiles a lot, there are degrees and gradations you see immediately sense the personality. He has a rule of characterisation for the Hulk, he’s quite sinister in places which is good for our purposes.

You pitched the idea at a creative summit, what’s the atmosphere like at those meetings?

AE: It kind of depends of how many people there are in the room, I enjoy it more when there’s a few people in the room. For Avengers No Surrender it was just the writers and the editorial, the writers rooms are quite febrile and there’s a lot of ideas bursting back and forth and you’ve got to be quick on your feet, it’s very easy to sit back and do a lot of listening and nodding and not actually contribute much! They want people to contribute and bring ideas to the room, not just sitting and listen to ideas.

Whenever I’ve been in the writers room I’ve had four or five decent ideas that people like, you put your idea out there and the whole room kicks it about and it’ll change shape in front of your eyes – so you’ve got to be okay about it. But this one the room thought about and the conversation moved on so I kind of thought about it and took it away from me.

[Dr. Banner]

You’ve also created a unique Tumblr account which has pages of Green skin’s earlier days,
what’s the idea behind that?

AE: It’s not totally unique, it’s very strongly inspired by a similar account that Matt Fraction did, I forget what that was called. When he was getting ready to do Fantastic Four, he went through the early issues and he’d take panels and just comment on them. I was fascinated by that at the time and I thought when I got the Hulk, you know what I’m going to do one of those. I call it a work blog or a hobby thing, it’s a way of getting into that mental space where I sort of think about the Hulk. So I’ll put up a panel of the Hulk every couple of days but I’ll generally put a hash tag commentary with it.

I look for panels where the Hulk’s very scary or frightening and also when it’s obviously a horror comic. I also focus on the psychology of Bruce Banner and his relationship with the Hulk, the psychology of the Hulk and also the particular trends in the Hulk when he starts to bubble up, like when he started getting into the self-hating phase for a couple of issues. Also when he starts talking about wiping out all of mankind and that’s something that bubbled up and went away again as Stan Lee and the people who was working on the Hulk at the time got more of a handle on the character. One thing I noticed is when the “dumb” Hulk starts to come in, Stan Lee becomes fixated on the Hulk’s clouded brain and I found that I was avoiding those panels because that’s not so interesting to me. My Hulk is very sharp, he’s not stupid and he’s not going to in the third person or doing a baby talk thing, he’s very articulate, like menacingly articulate. Eventually I’m going to run out of interesting panels or I’ll run out of reprints and it’ll slowly die out but not before everything sinks in!

Going back to the very first six issues of the Incredible Hulk, they were all about change weren’t they?

AE: Yes. I’ve carried on my Tumblr past those, I’m kind of fascinated on how the Hulk’s developed, it’s kind of noticeable on the panels where I’m throwing up on the page that they’ve pretty much entered a pattern, he solidified and stabilised even if he’s not quite the Hulk that we’re used to. He’s in a good place when Stan Lee has a good idea what do with him.

The first six issues, every issue was different and it was a new and unexpected thing. The first issue was a straight up horror comic, then it’s starts getting into superhero territory, but even so Hulk is ending stories by threatening to destroy all of mankind and saying the human race will never be safe as long as he’s around, and he’s the only person doing that at the time. If you look at the Sub Mariner he’s in the villain role at that stage but the Hulk’s the hero, the protagonist and he’s also this terrifying monster the scientist hero doesn’t really have control over. There’s this ongoing question, is it Bruce Banner or is it somebody else? Is the Hulk Bruce or not Bruce, or the anti Bruce? It’s this fertile ground and you can go back to the first six issues and it’s all there. There’s just so much there that you can work with.

Writer Peter David explained that Bruce Banner had multiple personality disorder, are you
going to pursue that?

AE: I’m definitely going to get into that. I’m thinking that the mental health of Bruce Banner is something I want to explore but it’s a topic that I want to do right, I’ll see what I end up doing but I’m very conscious it would be easy to get that wrong, so I’m being quite careful with that one. It’s definitely something I’m interested in and it’s something quite close to home. The MPD thing is only a part of it. I don’t want to get into a place where the Hulk is explicable; it shouldn’t be more complicated. Since Dissociative Identity Disorder is such a complex topic and even now people are still working on how to understand it as a thing. It should be as complicated as it is in the real world and we’ll see if I actually manage to get it right and hopefully I will.

In what scenario does the Hulk work best?

AE: The first issue is going to plug him into a horror story; more of an EC sophisticated suspense story and the second issue is going to be a mystery as he’s going to be solving a mystery. The third issue is a more standard horror issue, it’s like an exorcism story and four and five we slightly get into more regular Hulk territory there. He has to deal with a big monster. Over the course of the first arc we’re asking that question what scenarios can we put the Hulk into? Is there a limit beyond which it’s no longer a Hulk story? Can you fit him into all kinds of different things? I think you can put into any number of different scenarios and make it work.

What would you say to fans that’ve dropped reading Hulk books and are tempted to come
back?

AE: We really are a good jumping on point for fans, if you pick up issue one you don’t really need to pick up anything else. If you’re reading Immortal Hulk then you don’t need to read any other Hulk books. Anytime we bring somebody from the larger Marvel universe we’ll tell you who they are, I really want avoid a thing where readers feel like where they’re missing something.

We really need to avoid that when they have an issue of Immortal Hulk and that’s something that satisfies them and they don’t get to the end of that and think “oh I should have read such and such to enjoy this.” We’re trying to do it completely without crossovers, but we are bringing people from the shared universe. The Hulk is part of the shared universe but we’re going to do it in such a way, like Avengers and Sasquatch, we’re seeing them through the lens of the Hulk. We’re applying our own tone; we’re doing it our way. There has never been a simpler time to get on board with the Hulk and start from issue one and that’s got everything you need.


Immortal Hulk launches on June 6 as part of Marvel Comics Fresh Start initiative.

[Ptrvc]

Cautiously optimistic.

The only things that make me cautious is the potential deemphasis on anger, and great feats of physical strength. Which are thematic tentpoles of the Hulk.

No every story, arc, or even run needs to be focused on those tentpoles, but they should be there somewhere to keep the whole thing tumbling down.

I am very thrilled by Ewing's insistence that there will be little influence from the rest of the Marvel Universe. Hulk is a unique character, even among superheroes, he works best with minimal interference from tights-clad crowd.

[GreenScar1990]

I'm really looking forward to this series. Glad to see that Al Ewing is gonna tackle some interesting issues involving Hulk/Banner, including their unique MPD.

I'm also glad that this Hulk will be one of the more powerful incarnations. 1-on-1 he's too powerful for even the mightiest hero and it takes a team or teams of powerful heroes to even challenge him. I just hope the strength/anger dynamic isn't gone completely as it's a part of the character.

And I love this image! Very powerful, frightening, raging Hulk.