Green Pieces (Part One)

"It's not that I'm afraid to show emotions, Betty. Just what can happen... if they get out of control.”

on The Incredible Hulk 331-346

It's all there, right from the beginning, if you know where to look. Peter David's run on the book with which he will inevitably come to be identified begins abruptly, unceremoniously, with little indication that these are the first of eleven years' worth of stories. In fact, David's run doesn't actually begin traditionally at all; his first issue on The Incredible Hulk was 328, a fill-in called "Piece of Mind". When he began writing the book regularly three issues later, there was little to suggest that it was, in fact the beginning of anything. In fact, David's beginning seems more like an ending, writing as he was to draw closed Al Milgrom's truncated run on the book, using his first eight issues to clean up loose ends: the dissolution of the Hulkbusters, the defeat of the Rick Jones Hulk (don't ask), the reintroduction of the Leader, even the reinstatement of the (not-so) Jade Giant himself.

But in retrospect, David's style, his predilections, his preoccupations, his intentions all seem self-evident.

In retrospect, this seems like some great superheroics.

But only in retrospect.

To be honest, if David's run had come to an end with 346, the epilogue to the epic (at that time) "Gamma Bomb" storyline that had culminated in the previous double-sized issue, it would be regarded as a footnote, more notable for the contribution of up-and-coming artist Todd McFarlane than for the book's writer. There's little here to overtly indicate what's to come, the rapport that David would establish with the Hulk (arguably more so than with Bruce Banner), the honestly engrossing sense of magic and loss that David would be able to weave, patiently, once it became clear that he wasn't going anywhere. For now, the book's okay. Not great, not bad, just okay.

(Some of the disappointment apparent in this era of the book has to be attributed to Todd McFarlane, artist on every issue here except for the aforementioned "Piece of Mind", a chilling one-off in 335 illustrated beautifully by John Ridgway, and the denouement in 346 penciled--over McFarlane's layouts--by eventual Image-consultant Erik Larsen. Todd would go on to superstardom immediately after this on The Amazing Spider-Man, breathing life into the character with which he's probably still best identified. But while McFarlane's elastic lines and staccato jump cuts were particularly well-suited to our Friendly Neighborhood, they're ill-matched with the Hulk. Where he attempts to create a sense of gravity, the Hulk simply seems slothful and pruny, McFarlane's hyperactive sense of storytelling and dizzying panel placement actually undermining the Hulk's most characteristic attribute: his power. Todd is still, at this point, an unproven artist. The Incredible Hulk was the training ground for what would become his admittedly inimitable style. Unfortunately, it was rarely the beneficiary of any of that training.)

At this point, David's first year and a half on the book is best regarded as a sort of rough draft for what was to come. Eventually, David would claim that the Hulk is a manifestation of Bruce Banner's consciousness, an aspect of his gray matter (pun, in homage to PAD, very much intended) that was present at, if not created by, Banner's boyhood abuse at the hands of his father. The idea surfaces in an observation from Clay Quartermain--rogue S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and brief traveling companion of Rick Jones & Bruce--who opines off-handedly in 339's "Native Son" that "Bruce Banner was a victim of his [father's] violence--and maybe--just maybe--the Hulk is a direct result of that abuse." It's a seed that would eventually bear David healthy fruit, arguably his greatest contribution to the ongoing story of the Hulk, an origin suggesting not where the creature came from but rather why he needed to be.

Slowly, David begins to suggest that the relationship between Bruce Banner and the Hulk wasn't as disparate as had perhaps been previously suggested. These weren't two minds, both tenant in the same body. These were two aspects of the same mind, both given physicality through the freak science of the Marvel Universe.

Another David trademark making its first tentative appearance here is the Issue issue, wherein some social concern or another is considered, human problems thrown into relief through their introduction into a decidedly inhuman context; the most prominent example thereof is 420, wherein the problem of AIDS is contemplated, reflected through the reader's identification with the afflicted Jim Wilson, former sidekick of the Hulk. The issues here are neither as prominent nor as gracefully-handled as in that story, but it's nevertheless clear that David has greater aspirations for the book than a series of slugfests, a sense of the world in which the book's readers live, and recognition of where that world intersects with the Hulk's. As early as 333, David's third issue as regular writer, he tackles domestic abuse, admittedly not as nebulous a problem as the AIDS epidemic, but one that still needs address. In "Quality of Life" Bruce Banner is incarcerated by a small-town sheriff for a liquor store raid perpetrated by the Hulk. In the inevitable confrontation between the blowhard sheriff and the Hulk, the sheriff's abused wife jumps to her husband's defense, incurring his ire when she inadvertently emasculates him. Turning the gun meant for the Hulk on her husband, the woman fires, illustrating the inability to successfully solve the problem of domestic abuse. "You thought you were alone," the Hulk conclusively tells Banner. "But you see, there's monsters everywhere." Subtlety proves elusive here, as throughout David's run, but his dramatization of the issue at hand still proves effective.

But at the center of Peter David's story here is the element that would prove to be at the center of his entire run. For most of 331-346, husband and wife Bruce and Betty are separate; even when they're ostensibly given the opportunity to be together, Bruce's position is usurped by the Hulk. They're never let to rest. But nor do they really ask for the chance. In 346, "Whys and Wherefores," Betty contemplates a life without her husband, apparently killed when caught at ground zero of a detonated gamma bomb (spoiler alert: he survives). Betty finds herself carrying Bruce Banner's child, and briefly considers having an abortion, or as the Comics Code allows it to be nebulously put, "not having the baby." Ultimately, she wonders "how can I kill, now, the one remaining bit of the last loved one I've ever had" and vows "No more death... No matter what the risks, it stops here." Betty's pathos is compelling, her grief more real than a comic starring a monsterous manifestation of a scientist's subconscious deserves to be. Bottom line, this is a story about Bruce Banner and Betty Ross, a man and a woman who never stopped fighting--who never got the chance to stop fighting--to be with one another. That element of David's overall story is here fully-formed, as clear and tall as other aspects are still developing.

Next, in Green Pieces (Part Two): The most idosyncratic era of David's run is considered in The Incredible Hulk 347-367. The Hulk, briefly free of Banner's influence, goes wild in Las Vegas as Mr. Fixit. Meanwhile, David starts to establish the Hulk's place in the Marvel Universe, with encounters between the Hulk and Spider-Man, the Thing and Iron Man, and looks back at the history of the Hulk, with an appearance from the Abomination and a visit to Jarella's world.