The Incredible Hulk #1

The Hulk

By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Paul Reinman

Villains: The Gargoyle

Guest Appearances: Rick Jones

So, What Happens?

Dr Banner is almost ready to test his Gamma Bomb but his procrastination and obsession with safety is driving the Army brass mad. Banner’s assistant Igor keeps badgering Banner for the science behind his bomb but Banner insists on keeping it to himself. In fact only General Ross’ daughter Betty has any time for Banner at all.

As he prepares the bomb Banner notices a car venturing into the test site and heads out to warn them away. He tells Igor to pause the test but he fails to act on this and as Banner reaches the young driver of the car the bomb goes off. Banner manages to knock Rick Jones into a protective trench and is hit by a blast of gamma radiation.

Banner can’t understand why he isn’t dead or injured by the radiation as he is showing dangerously high levels of it on a Geiger counter. As night falls he finally sees what the radiation has done to him as he finds himself turning into a huge grey brute. He crashes through a wall and through a passing army jeep, the soldiers manage to name him the Hulk as he goes, and he heads off to Banner’s quarters. Trailed by Rick Jones who feels he owes Banner his life.

In his apartment they find Igor, frantically searching for the Gamma Bomb plans. He shoots at the Hulk but it has little effect and the Hulk effortlessly knocks him out before growing even more violent when he sees a picture of Banner. Rick tries to explain that the Hulk is Banner and he turns on him and attempts to strangle him. Only the sun coming up saves Rick, as when it does the Hulk reverts to Dr Banner.

The soldiers crash in searching for the Hulk but settle for arresting and imprisoning Igor while Rick, and Banner, worry about what will happen when the sun goes down once more.

Igor manages to send a message to his communist masters. One of their leaders, the deformed but brilliant Gargoyle is intrigued by the Hulk and immediately makes his way to the base by special rocket.

As nightfall approaches Banner and Rick drive into the desert to change away from the military but soon after it happens they are found by the Gargoyle.

Betty has been worrying about Banner and follows him into the desert only to find the Hulk and faint in terror when he shouts at her. The Gargoyle then reveals himself and shoots both the Hulk and Rick with a mind control pellet.

He takes them to a waiting submarine and is soon rocketing them back to Russia. Unfortunately for his plans to harness the Hulk’s strength, daybreak leaves him with just a wimpy scientist and Rick Jones.

Banner immediately works out that the Gargoyles deformities had been caused by radiation and offers to cure him. His cure is successful and the grateful Gargoyle denounces communism, sends his former captives back to the states and blows up his communist base.

So is it any good?:

The first half is. It is an extremely frequently retold story, constantly referred back to, refined and riffed on in later issues but I still got into the drama of the bomb test, largely thanks to Kirby’s extremely expressive art.

The art is in fact far better than in the issues of Fantastic Four of a similar vintage. Reinman is not an inker who gets a lot of plaudits despite inking quite a few key Kirby issues but his work here is very good. Kirby is actually at his best here with the scenes of Banner’s desperation to stop the test and then horror when he realises what he has exposed himself to. I’m reading in the black and white Essentials volume and the change from the quite garish omnibus colouring of the FF helps with what is essentially a paranoid cold war horror story.

American weapons being disrupted by red spies. Deformed commie geniuses, hated by their own men, who can parachute into the American heartland and steal off the best and brightest at will. Submarines waiting just outside America’s waters equiped with nukes and secret technonology. The question of just how much you could rely on namby pamby intellectuals in a war to the death with communism. Just what those scientist’s weapons would do to those who worked around them and innocent American kids caught nearby.

It’s a story seething with period anxieties written in a way that strikes those notes far more cleanly than the similarly genre mixing stories in the first few Fantastic Fours. The title would soon lose its focus but for the first two thirds of this issue it is a surprisingly confident and consistent drama. The Hulk himself is suitably brutal to fit right into that story.

It loses it a bit when they get to Russia and Banner proves that American scientists are good at heart however many bombs they design.

By having the plucky, self-sacrificing American scientist simply cure his self-hating communist foe in the time between the Hulk’s nightly visits it undercuts the power of the earlier sections and like most of these early issues wraps things up too quickly.

But the atmosphere created earlier and the brutal honesty of the Hulk’s hatred of Banner, not to mention the way it is only daybreak that stops him turning on Rick as he seeks to destroy all links to Banner, lifts this above the Marvel issues to date.

The nocturnal trigger for the changes works well as a nod to Dr Jeckyll style horror stories but presumably really limited the possibilities for the series.

I even found myself being interested in Thunderbolt Ross, who I’d previously found extremely repetitive and clichéd. The scenes of him comforting Betty and vowing to bring in the Hulk after he has menaced and terrified his daughter actually demonstrate his love quite well. He would still become a buffoon but he works in this issue.

So a lot to like. I even enjoyed the comedic scenes of cowardly communists repeatedly delegating the job of taking a message to the feared gargoyle. For some reason it reminded me of 60s Billy Wilder comedies like One, Two, Three in its broad patriotism.

Are there any goofy moments?

Not that many, some of the nuclear stuff is a bit weird with hindsight but at least they do talk about danger and precautions whereas most comics from the period were happy to put nuclear reactors in household appliances if it sounded like it would safe some housework.

The final panel where Banner hopes that the Gargoyle’s death will lead to the end of communism hasn’t aged all that well. In fact the book is at its silliest when it is explicitly dealing with its fears about communism rather than piling them into the subtext.

Oh and an assistant called Igor?

Trivia:

Having died a heroic death opposing communism the Gargoyle never returned. His son the Gremlin debuted in Hulk 163 with the same deformities and high intellect.

Is it a landmark?:

Of course.