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Hulk #31: Review

May 2011
Jeff Parker, Gabriel Hardman

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Story Name:

The Next Life

Review & Comments

Rating:
4 stars

Hulk #31 Review by (May 10, 2022)

Review: First issue of a new story arc spends some time on the villains, reiterating Fortean’s misguided obsession with his enemy Hulk but also introducing a brand new bad guy. Zero/One is a promising antagonist, if the sciency stuff doesn’t get too technical (or bizarre) to follow. It already took me longer than it should have to research the character to find out what’s going on. Jacob Feinman is also an interesting character as it’s already clear he’s going to rebel against Z/O sooner or later. The second story is mainly a set-up for a story arc even further away, with Jeff Parker playing the long game. Well, I can wait as the comic is pretty good, though I still miss Ed McGuiness and his more solid Hulk. Meanwhile, Omegex is coming….


Comments: First story: First appearance of Dr. Kurinji as Zero/One; she was introduced, along with Jacob Feinman, in issue #25. General Fortean and Annie were introduced in issue 30.1 which, due to some site limitations, does not appear here. We also learn that LMDs are designed to absorb energy by eating to make them seem as human as possible. Second story: First appearance of Ixchel in her true form; she and her people return in issues #53-57.





 

Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Hulk #31 Synopsis by Peter Silvestro

In the aftermath of the explosion at the Omnisapient Corporation, Jacob Feinman is lying severely burned in an intensive care unit; his brother refuses to pay for his medical care and his future seems hopeless….


Red Hulk arrives at a barbecue cookout in Texas and scares everyone away so he helps himself to some ribs and relaxes. Annie, his LMD aide, arrives and examines the nanites in his head to see if they can be removed. Rulk also reveals he is not sleeping since sleep might entail his changing back to Thunderbolt Ross when the nanites would kill him. General Fortean arrives in the Thunderbolt and orders missiles to be fired at Rulk who leaps into the air to intercept them to protect Annie….


Jacob is visited by Dr Kurinji who was fused into a machine/human hybrid now calling herself Zero/One. She gives him an injection to deaden his pain and stimulate his system and takes him away to be her assistant in her plan to build the future….


A missile fired by Fortean burrows into the Earth and creates three giant rock monsters to fight Red Hulk….


Zero/One takes Jacob to an Omnisapient base on an oil drilling platform, soon to become a ship. She also explains she intends to refit all the corpses aboard into an undead workforce. She names Red Hulk as an enemy of the future and plans to go to India to rebuild an “engine of destruction” to destroy him….


Once Red Hulk has finally destroyed the three rock monsters (which took longer than he expected due to their ability to repair themselves), General Fortean visits via hologram. He apologizes to Annie, saying that Thunderbolt’s instruments will be recalibrated to detect her and advises Rulk to get some sleep (which would kill him, remember?). Annie stays up with him into the night to help him stay awake….


Out in space, Uatu and Uravo, the two Watchers, see the doomsday machine Omegex begin its long flight to Earth on a mission of destruction….


“Save the Date Part Two”

Writer: Jeff Parker. Art: Tim Seeley. Colors: Matt Milla. Letters: Ed Dukeshire.

Synopsis: Having discovered that the two monsters he was fighting in the cave in Yucatan were She-Hulk and Lyra (the other She-Hulk), Rick “A-Bomb” Jones learns he was deceived. Enemies had attached a device to his head that caused a fraudulent visual that he was responding to an environmental group asking him to investigate a possible toxic threat and also disguised the two She-Hulks as monsters. Lyra uses her wrist computer Boudicca to show him the result of his mission: he would have unleashed a torrent of stored energy that would kill him and cause catastrophes all over the world, leading to Lyra’s future. The enemy leader, Chibi, arrives and reveals herself to be Ixchel whose people have been trapped in that cavern for over a thousand years; they had developed great powers of mental projection and tricked Rick into trying to free them so they could conquer the world. The punchline is that the three-way Hulk battle broke the crystalline wall imprisoning them and they are now free. Rick and the She-Hulks flee the volcano as it erupts in a giant shaft of light. The She-Hulks plan to prepare for the coming invasion and A-Bomb asks Lyra for a date.  

 

“Hulk Sunburn”

Writer: Audrey Loeb. Art: Dario Brizuela. Colors: ?. Letters: ?

Synopsis: The Mini-Hulks, lying out by the pool, have a contest to see who can be the tannest but they all end up sunburned red.


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Barberoids 1 cover original artwork on ebay

Gabriel Hardman
Gabriel Hardman
Bettie Breitweiser
Gabriel Hardman (Cover Penciler)
Gabriel Hardman (Cover Inker)
Dean White (Cover Colorist)
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire.

Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

Lyra
Lyra

(Savage She-Hulk)
Red Hulk
Red Hulk

(Thunderbolt Ross)
She-Hulk
She-Hulk

(Jennifer Walters)

Plus: Annie, General Fortean (Reginald Fortean), Jacob Feinman, Omegex, Uravo the Watcher, Zero/One (Parul Kurinji).

> Hulk: Book info and issue index

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