Avengers Classic #2: Review

Jul 2007

Dwayne McDuffie, Mike Oeming

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Story Name:

No good deed goes unpunished

Review & Comments

Rating:

Avengers Classic #2 Review by Rob Johnson (July 15, 2023)

This issue settles down to the regular pattern of a reprint of the equivalent issue of the original Avengers series plus a related new short tale.

The credits are for the new story.

Bob Banner is an in-joke. Stan Lee accidentally once called him that in a script. It was picked up in a letter page and he gave the joking explanation that Hulk's real name is Robert Bruce Banner but he prefers the Bruce.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Avengers Classic #2 Synopsis by Rob Johnson

The 1st story reprints Avengers #2 which ends with angry Hulk quitting and leaping off.

2nd story:- No good deed goes unpunished

This story continues from there. Hulk complains to himself that he helped the team defeat Loki and then the Space Phantom but still they didn't trust him. He decides that if everybody treats him like a monster then that's what he'll *be*. He takes his frustration out by smashing up a road but doesn't notice the car that runs into him from behind. The woman inside screams in fear as he rips her door off. He's sick of everyone being afraid of him and figures he should just smash everyone like that. He prepares to kill her.

Bruce Banner wakes in a jail cell and he's covered in blood. They give him some clean clothes and send the blood-soaked remains of his Hulk 'shorts' off for analysis. Then 2 detectives interview him in the usual good cop/bad cop way. They give him the glasses they found wrapped in bubble-wrap in his pocket, which they interpret as him often going on drunken binges. Bruce says his name's Bob, and doesn't volunteer a surname. They tell him they're murder squad but the only evidence they have of a crime is *his* blood-covered near-naked body. They offer him a coffee but he declines because he says caffeine is dangerous. The cops tell him to confess. 'Bob' says he doesn't remember what happened, but when they talk about the man they think he killed he corrects them that it was a woman. And then breaks down to say he didn't mean to do it.

But then he says his memory's returned and we then see what happened as he describes it. He *was* about to kill her but he didn't because he saw that she was pregnant. She apologised for running into him but she was desperately speeding to get to the hospital before she gave birth. But now it was too late and 'Bob' (Hulk) helped her birth the child. And then he got her to hospital.

The detectives get the lab report which confirms that the blood is amniotic fluid. They also hear from the hospital that a woman with a new baby tells the same story. (But strangely no large green person is mentioned, nor details of how he got her to hospital.) So the cops set him free. But Banner knows he'll never be free of the Hulk, and eventually he *will* kill someone.

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