The Incredible Hulk #4/2

Mongu!! Gladiator from Outer Space

By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers

Villains: communists

Guest Appearances: Rick Jones

So, What Happens?

An alien ship lands in a city park and unloads Mongu a huge, warlike alien demanding to face Earth’s strongest champion at the Grand Canyon. The ship and Mongu then takes off again.

Banner and Rick watch all of this on the news and decide there is only one person who can face Mongu. Banner undergoes the gamma ray treatment that changes him into the Hulk and the pair of them head to the Grand Canyon.

Hulk confronts Mongu but soon realises that his weapons are just props. Russian troops pour out of the alien ship and their commander gets out of his Mongu suit. They have been sent to capture the Hulk to see if they can use him to create super powerful soldiers.

The Hulk makes quick work of the soldiers, smashing up their fake space ship and experimental sound gun before tying them all together and putting them on the Red Army helicopter that had been watching events. They escape back to Russia and the US authorities find all the fake alien gear and assume the Hulk must have been staging the battle to improve his reputation.

Still public outcasts Rick and the Hulk retreat to their hideaway where Banner undergoes the gamma treatment to turn back to normal. Rick supports the weak scientist back to their lab.

So is it any good?:

It’s a lot better than the description would suggest.

It has quite an inventive battle scene with good art throughout and it is interesting to see that the idea of “the Hulk with Banner’s mind” actually means a very mean Hulk who snaps at Rick a lot and is very up for a fight.

This is in fact different from the situation in the issues lead story but I guess it could be justified by Banner using slightly different amounts of Gamma radiation each time or the process just being impossible to control. It’s another sign that the writers didn’t really have much idea on how to deal with the change while having a workable lead character.

It isn’t any kind of classic but there is good Kirby art and the ending where Banner and Rick are blamed by the government after dealing with the Russian threat are, while clichéd, closer to the idea that the Hulk is an unrewarded force for good that would sustain the book for so long. All in all I quite enjoyed this one.

Are there any goofy moments?

Rick and the Hulk (not Banner) charter a jet to take them to the battle site. It manages to land safely on top of a mesa.

The moment when the commie solider gets out of the alien suit is pretty cool in a really silly way. This is actually one of those stories where the goofiness works.

Trivia:

While this Mongu was a commie fake there was eventually an alien gladiator called Mongu who appeared in the pages of Man-Thing before turning up in Hulk 210. While there supposedly wasn’t any link between the two characters the designs are actually extremely similar right down to the hairstyles. I suppose the Russians could have modelled their suit on the alien but that doesn’t really make a lot of sense given the alien’s back story.

The design here has a lot in common with Ulik. I mean any Kirby designed brute with a weird club-axe is going to look quite similar but they are quite close.

Is it a landmark?:

No.