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By Jason Bourgeois
And a merry May to all you mutants and mutates and Marvels! This month, I'm going to do something a little odd. Yes, odder than my April Fool's joke of saying Rob Liefeld shold be put on a major event comic. I'm going to bitch about a single comic, when the second and final issue isn't even out yet. Now, this is a tad hypocritical of me, as I normally hate when fanboys prejudge a story when they don't have the whole thing. However, I think my complaints are on a solid enough footing that I'm not being completely off-base. So, let's dive right into Hulked-Out Heroes #1.
This book was supposed to be the next step in the long-running Fall of the Hulks storyline, and the ongoing Red Hulk stuff. It was supposed to be the next big thing after whatever Fall of the Hulks was supposed to do. First up, there wasn't a whole lot of falling. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the title. Yeah, it ends with Bruce failing in his mission to stop the Intelligencia, but it just kinda fell flat for me. That's probably my isssues though, and nothing in particular wrong with Fall. But I digress.
Anyways, Fall ended with the Intelligencia enacting their Big Plan, which was apparently to gamma irradiate (With a pinch of cosmicness) a large portion of the population. We're not really sure what happened, because the storyline is put on hold for Hulked-Out Heroes to wander around the fringes.
So, there are a lot of Hulks out there, including a lot of heroes who have been mutated into Hulks. Now, one might think that to see what sheer chaos such a thing might cause, one would have no further to look than a comicbook with the title, HULKED OUT HEROES. In fact, even the cover promises this, with a number of hulkified versions of heroes.
You know what would happen if you thought that? You would be, absolutely, completely, entirely 100% WRONG. The only Hulks in this book are on the very first page, and that is the Red Hulk. And a bunch of hands of the aforementioned Hulked Out Heroes ready to lay a beatdown upon the scarlet bastard.
The only person in this entire comic, beyond that first page, to have anything to do with being hulked out by the irradiation event is Marvel's current golden child, they're favourite egg laying goose of the year, he who has far too many ongoing series, miniseries, and one-shots already; Deadpool.
So really, at best the book should only be called Hulked-Out Hero. And even THAT is stretching it, as Deadpool can hardly be called a hero on the best of days, let alone when his IQ is dropped by 100 points by being turned into a Hulk. Which is another issue; the gamma irradition process is supposed to bring out a person's id, not turn everyone into a dumb as bricks, super strong person. Where's the variation? Where's the inner demons? I'm handwaving that by saying the cosmic radiation they added into the mix a little less unpredictable, but that's an unsatisfying answer.
And even THEN the book should really be called something like Hulkpool Wanders Off on a Completely Unrelated Story Involving Time Travel Which Has Nothing to do With the Rest of This Story, and is Just Another Chance to Sell Deadpool Comics.
The plot of the story involves the brainless Hulkpool deciding to travel back in time and have wacky time travel adventures while trying to kill himself in the past, because Hulkpool hates Deadpool more than anything, and doesn't realise they're the same person. Let alone that Deadpool is all but impossible to kill based on past adventures.
Now, in fairness, this comic is written by a minor fave of mine, Jeff Parker of Agents of Atlas fame, and it does have some good jokes, and is an ok first half to a story, but ultimately it is a diversion from the story we should be getting. It is a bit of false advertising with the title. It is a shameless money grab by shoving out yet another Deadpool comic in an already dangerously oversaturated Deadpool infested market. So no matter how good it is, it just can't get past those hurdles, and unless it can do so, this comic is just fillery fluff that should have never seen the light of day.
What is really surprising about this book though, is the art. It's done by Humberto Ramos, an artist I pretty much despise in almost all appearances by his pencily ways. His characters are absurdly distorted, even for comics, and his facial expressions often make the characters look like brain-dead, drooling people who are seriously deficient in their mental faculties. And that's being kind.
Yet I find with this title, that he is almost the perfect artist for it. The book is filled from cover to cover with mishapen, deformed beasts, overly muscled body structures, and screaming rage monsters. What better book for him to draw? This was the most enjoyable book I've seen him draw in a long time. His style should be doing this stuff all the time. There's still some weirdness when a regular person shows up, like Captain America, but for the most part I can actually see what people see in his style, with this book.
Still, it's a pointless diversion from the storyline, and even some surprisingly appropriate art doesn't save it. Now, in the second and final issue, we could immediately wrap up the current time travel plot and jump right into the Heroes ganging up on people and being all Hulk-like, but I somehow doubt it. Once the big secret of what was happening got out, they revealed this title would be heavy on the Deadpool. I thought that meant it would focus on him, around the peripheries of the Fall of the Hulks aftermath, but instead they made it even more removed from things by sending him into the distant past where the storyline most certainly is not.
A very disappointing book that had some huge potential for fun, epic battles, and instead gets bogged down in unnecessary exposure for an already overblown character. Pass at all costs.
Jason M. Bourgeois
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