Essential Hulk Volume 2

Rating:
Summary: RAAAAAAAAR HULK CRUSHES COMPETITION WITH GREAT COMIC RAAAR!
Review: Dr. Robert Bruce Banner is a weak yet intelligent scientist with a dark secret: high emotions cause him to transform into the huge greeb monster known as the Hulk- a creature of immesurable strength who just wants to be alone. But when he's angry, he resorts to breaking things. Did I say secret? My bad, Banner's secret identity was revealed to the public in the first Essential volume. But Bruce went inti hiding shortlly thereafter. Military General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross is the man who had hounded the Hulk all these years and still does not trust him completely. Major Glenn Talbot also distrusts Bruce Banner for differant reasons- because both are in love with the beautiful Betty Ross. Betty obviosuly has her heart set on Bruce, but he's almost never around.

This anthology collects the last issues of Tales to Astonish (#92-101, Hulk stories only) before changing to the Incredible Hulk(Volume 2) with Issues 102-117 and the first Incredible Hulk Annual all from the late 60s. With Namor out of the picture, Hulk now has twenty-plus pages all to himself(Tales to Astonish was a comic shared between two superheroes who each got aobut ten pages worth of story). Now Marvel's second Silver Age hero is up for bigger battles written by Stan Lee with art by John Romita and various other artists.

The stories get bigger with each issue. One flaw is taht a trend starts to develop between some issues (Hulk somehow winds up in extraterrestrial place. Hulk proves his worth to the foreigners and is zapped back to Earth.) There also aren't many new villains except for lame part-timers like the Man-Beast, Galaxy Master, Space Parasite and Umu the Unliving or something. Most of Hulk's enemies are guest stars- Tales to Astonish #100 features a titanic showdown between Hulk and Namor the Sub-Mariner, current stars of the book. Other guest stars include Nick Fury, the Silver Surfer, Ka-Zar, the Inhumans and the good dudes from Asgard. The guest villains include the Mandarin, the High Evolutionary, the Sandman, Maximus, the Puppet Master and the Executioner. But one of Hulk's major villains in his small stable of villains unexpectedly returns in an awesome three-parter that ends the book and proves that Hulk deserves this rating. Now when's Volume Three coming out?

Rating:
Summary: Graphic novels really should be listed as regular novels
Review: I love graphic novels as much as the next collector and have just about everything listed by Amazon. Not exactly everything, but a great percentage. This graphic novels should actually be rated and listed the same as regular novels, because the dynamics of their stories, not just the fantastic artwork, takes you away to places that novels, such as STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, CHILDHOOD'S END, FOUNDATION, RINGWORLD, STAR TREK novels, DARKEYE: CYBER HUNTER and so forth, take you. All are extremely imaginative and have visually-gratifying narrative/dialogue not too far removed from graphic novels such as this or any other. Broaden your minds, but hang on to the graphic novels as well!

Rating:
Summary: An intriguing Essential collection from Marvel
Review: The Marvel Essential series is perfect for both novice comics fans and the hardcore faithful, providing 500+ pages of comics for less than .... Some of the collections vary in quality; the first Hulk collection is a bit spotty, with weak writing and inconsistent reproduction. But Hulk vol. 2 is a much better package. The reproduction is uniformly crisp, and the quality of the stories improve greatly. Granted, the stories aren't as deep or rewarding as Peter David's long run (or even Bill Mantlo's 80's run), but it's a fun romp nonetheless. If you're looking for more good fun, I highly recommend Marvel's Essential Fantastic Four vol. 3 and the Essential Spider-man collections (all are wonderful!). You can't go wrong here!

Rating:
Summary: Ol' Greenskin kicks out Namor and gets his own comic book
Review: When I think of "The Incredible Hulk" it starts from the period covered in "The Essential Hulk, Volume 2," when Herb Trimpe was doing the pencils and John Severin was doing the inks. This is not to be confused with the period right before that when Herb Trimpe was doing the inks over Marie Severin's pencils. This only sounds confusing because we are talking about the Trimpe-Severin period and not the Severin-Trimpe period, and while this is the same Trimpe it is different Severins, although they are brother and sister. Collected in this volume are "Tales to Astonish" #92-101, at which point the Hulk and the rest of the Marvel superheroes doing time shares in comics like the Sub-Mariner, Captain America and Doctor Strange, got their own titles. Namor's title started with issue #1 while "The Incredible Hulk" picked up at #102 and we continue through #117.

The Hulk benefited from getting a full twenty pages each month instead of the ten page more so that the other characters. That was because with Captain America, Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Dr. Strange the Marvel writers and artists came up with pretty good multi-part stories. However, a key part of the Hulk is the whole transformation bit back forth from the Hulk to Bruce Banner, and that is hard to do every issue when you only have ten pages. Stan Lee does the writing for most of the issues and if you compare these stories to those in Volume 1 of "The Essential Hulk" you will find that the main thing is upping the ante on the Hulk's opponents. This time around Ol' Greenskin gets the Silver Surfer, the Rhino, the Missing Link, the Mandarin, Ka-Zar, the Sand-Man, and the return of the Leader. There is a lot of borrowing from other comic books, but when you are coming up with lame original villains like the Space Parasite, this is not a bad thing. The best story lines of the bunch are the multi-part story with the High Evolutionary and the one in the land of the Inhumans in the first "Hulk" annual, although his best fight is with the Sub-Mariner, which is what took place in the second to last issue of "Tales to Astonish" that they shared together, #100 (nice touch).

The issues collected her are a definite improvement over Volume 1, but the glory days are still to come. Hopefully we can get to Volume 3 in this series so you can see for yourself, but only Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four have gotten that far so far. I do not mind that these collections are just in black & white because I appreciate the economics involved and if you want your favorite title in color the Marvel Masterworks series is getting around to those as well. You just have to be patient, because it might be a long haul. Final Note: Great choice of using the Hulk from #105 for the cover of this collection.

Rating:
Summary: Ol' Greenskin kicks out Namor and gets his own comic book
Review: When I think of "The Incredible Hulk" it starts from the period covered in "The Essential Hulk, Volume 2," when Herb Trimpe was doing the pencils and John Severin was doing the inks. This is not to be confused with the period right before that when Herb Trimpe was doing the inks over Marie Severin's pencils. This only sounds confusing because we are talking about the Trimpe-Severin period and not the Severin-Trimpe period, and while this is the same Trimpe it is different Severins, although they are brother and sister. Collected in this volume are "Tales to Astonish" #92-101, at which point the Hulk and the rest of the Marvel superheroes doing time shares in comics like the Sub-Mariner, Captain America and Doctor Strange, got their own titles. Namor's title started with issue #1 while "The Incredible Hulk" picked up at #102 and we continue through #117.

The Hulk benefited from getting a full twenty pages each month instead of the ten page more so that the other characters. That was because with Captain America, Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Dr. Strange the Marvel writers and artists came up with pretty good multi-part stories. However, a key part of the Hulk is the whole transformation bit back forth from the Hulk to Bruce Banner, and that is hard to do every issue when you only have ten pages. Stan Lee does the writing for most of the issues and if you compare these stories to those in Volume 1 of "The Essential Hulk" you will find that the main thing is upping the ante on the Hulk's opponents. This time around Ol' Greenskin gets the Silver Surfer, the Rhino, the Missing Link, the Mandarin, Ka-Zar, the Sand-Man, and the return of the Leader. There is a lot of borrowing from other comic books, but when you are coming up with lame original villains like the Space Parasite, this is not a bad thing. The best story lines of the bunch are the multi-part story with the High Evolutionary and the one in the land of the Inhumans in the first "Hulk" annual, although his best fight is with the Sub-Mariner, which is what took place in the second to last issue of "Tales to Astonish" that they shared together, #100 (nice touch).

The issues collected her are a definite improvement over Volume 1, but the glory days are still to come. Hopefully we can get to Volume 3 in this series so you can see for yourself, but only Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four have gotten that far so far. I do not mind that these collections are just in black & white because I appreciate the economics involved and if you want your favorite title in color the Marvel Masterworks series is getting around to those as well. You just have to be patient, because it might be a long haul. Final Note: Great choice of using the Hulk from #105 for the cover of this collection.