Immortal Hulk is name of the title, Devil Hulk is name of the persona, every persona now is literally the Immortal Hulk, the reason we know it's Savage is because he literally spoke like Savage Hulk.
"Carnage talk too much"
"Brain, no!"
"Leave Hulk alone"
This is literally how Savage Hulk speaks.
And it was already established in the Absolute Carnage Immortal Hulk tie in that Devil Hulk is the only one not willing to work with Venom, while others are.
Last edited by Subzero89; 10-17-2019 at 04:14 AM.
I'm so not fine with Hulk being pwned by the likes of Carnage, of all people. Epic fail all the way.
Yeah, it's not like Carnage went toe to toe with Hulk and kicked his ass in a physical battle. He reverted him to Banner. That's not jobbing him. Having just read the issue I wouldn't have imagined there'd be anyone complaining about this aspect but clearly some fans are way over sensitive.
Thought the overall Absolute Carnage issue was bad. Just very boring, really can’t wait for it to be over.
Couple of thoughts on this topic:
First, while I generally like Cates, I personally don't think he does well with street level writing. He only knows how to write cosmic stories and that's where everything ends up, as that's his passion. What's more is he has a very Bendis-like willingness to make up the rules as he goes along. When things are reality warpers and massive power scales ... that all works great. Thanos book? We get Thanos wins, basically a romping what-if book. Cosmic Ghost Rider: fun in his own mini where he raises baby Thanos ... no one knows what to do with him in GotG which suddenly starts to ground and has a lot of established ideas. Fast forward to Venom/Carnage ... and of course we have to drag in an ancient evil god Knull and basically make things cosmic again. This is a pretty big Venom retcon. People seem to like it ... but I think its a good example of Cates' style: crazy out there ideas that have good/fun structure, but clearly structure he made up for the story.
So ... back to Cates getting his hands on IH: all those attributes I mentioned above make him a terrible choice/perfect storm to be writing Immortal Hulk. He has a street level villain creating a god-level event (cause he's Cates). So how do you inject Hulk into this? You end up with a fight that is nearly impossible to gauge the power of, really. There's no way the feats WONT be all over the map and nearly impossible to gauge.
The unfortunate salt on the wounds here ... however ... is Cates really doesn't understand how Hulk works in the context Ewing has written, and that's what rubs the worst. De-powering Hulk to Banner doesn't even make sense anymore. Its not a jekyl/hyde flip anymore. Repeatedly in IH we see different personas of Hulk emerge in response to different stimulae .... sometimes within the span of a couple panels. Ewing has refereed to Hulk as a "system" about as bluntly as you can. Combine this miss-characterization with the weird pseudo-comic encounter ... I can easily see this being just a hot mess. (So I passed on the purchase).
The real irony: If Cates could have waited until January when he got to write Thor ... it would have been a PERFECT time to try mixing in a Hulk brawl. Thor is right at home in a cosmic tale of galaxy busting ... and putting Immortal Hulk in that ... especially in light of this new arc where he's at the end of the universe ... we could have had a cosmic Thor/Hulk clash that would have been a freakin blast, even if Cates didn't grasp the new personality.
But as is ... meh. Its just another guest appearance where things feel off. That's nothing new.
Immortal Hulk is the book out right now. It's also the 'adjective' that Marvel is using to describe the Hulk right now, and Hulk/Banner is immortal all around.
But it's the Savage Hulk that is in Absolute Carnage #4 as opposed to the 'Devil' Hulk personality whose been running the show in the current Hulk run.
I'm just tired of this kind of writing.
And yeah, while I don't get the visceral reaction when say Thor, or Blue Marvel or some other high-powered character jobs (I'm a Hulk fan first and foremost as far as Marvel characters go) it's equally as bullshit and lazy. Same when Superman jobs out to show how Batman is the real hero because he's human but fights all the same foes oooh so cool.
It's a major problem in a lot of current comic writing, where the non-powered, or low powered characters are the only ones allowed to show determination, or courage when their on panel. Sure Hulk might fight through pain, and torment and the fires of Hell in his own book, but come the crossover, only Captain America is allowed to do that because it's his power.
Honestly, I'd rather just not see any appearances of Hulk outside of his own book. Originally we were supposed to get that, but sadly, I think Ewing and Bennet's success means that others are trying to grift it for their own stories, regardless if it cheapens the other book. And I'm just sick of it.
Hulk get crack a planet in half, but being bumped into a building is supposed to cause him pain. And this is supposedly a buffed Hulk. Stack it with Kluh and all the rest. What a joke.
Maybe I'm just inured to crossover events being bullshitty with things like this – but, like, it's an event where Carnage is the main villain, of course he was gonna win. Ewing did a decent job with his one shot of framing this as a frankly irrelevant feature of the Immortal Hulk saga – slotting it right inbetween issues that have already come out – so I wouldn't sweat it too much. Frankly I was expecting there to be more funny business with Ross' corpse, but I have a feeling Ewing has been holding out on him coming back until Coates is done with his current story, as that relies on Ross being dead.