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Marvel Knights: Hulk #1

Feb 2014
on-sale: Dec 1, 2013
Joe Keatinge, Piotr Kowalski

Marvel Knights: Hulk #1 cover

Story Name:

Transforme (One of Four)


Synopsis

Marvel Knights: Hulk #1 synopsis by Peter Silvestro
Rating: 2.5 stars

In Paris, a young woman named Dyane sees a man floating in the Seine; she recognizes him from having seen him on the Metro, looking distressed. Now she pulls him out, seeing that he has a gunshot wound. The next day, the man wakes up in the attic of Dyane’s uncle George who resents this man being in his home. The man confesses he doesn’t know what city he is in or even his own name. She takes him to the Seine to jar his memory but it doesn’t; he’s clearly an America and she calls him “Gavroche” and he has a nagging feeling that there is something worrisome about him—a big green monster we all recognize….

Two sinister men visit George’s gallery and once they have confirmed that his niece Dyane is with the mystery man, they kill him and head out looking for the couple. They locate Bruce Banner in a bar and try to seize him but, unable to transform into Hulk, he swipes one of their guns and shoots an agent before fleeing. The agents contact their superior, Nikoleta Harrow, and she approves use of the serum. The agents inject themselves with a chemical that transforms them into giant versions of the Hulk and they pursue Bruce through the Paris streets. Bruce fires at them but the bullets have no effect. He runs down to the metro and boards a train, belatedly realizing he has doomed everyone there. The hulk-agents tear up the train, hurling the car with Bruce hundreds of yards to crash down in a city square. Harrow has been watching via televisor and gloats that, as a splinter group of A.I.M., they have surpassed their parent organization. She gives the order and the two hulk-agents, clutching Bruce Banner, explode like a pair of Gamma bombs….



 

Review / Commentaries


Marvel Knights: Hulk #1 Review by (October 4, 2023)

Review: Dark and intense and not all that interesting, this epic is off to a promising start with an amnesiac Bruce Banner in Paris and a nice girl who wants to help him. But then an insane level of violence, provided by a pair of giant hulksters, takes over, Then we find the tale is mainly about a crazy woman, touted as a generic super-assassin who is less menacing than hundreds of other comic book assassins, and her scheme to create and control her own hulk as a way of getting back at her parents/parent organization AIM. And these Hulks explode, which would seem to be a design flaw but that isn’t very interesting either. Bruce goes through a what if scenario which, like every good Marvel What If?, ends up for the worse, sort of. Bruce can’t change into Hulk for some reason, and he seems invulnerable even as Bruce Banner, which doesn’t make sense. And Doctors Doom and Midas (who?) have something to do with it but it’s hard to care. And then, for a belated ending, we return to the scene of the promising beginning, signaled by a bookended image of Bruce by (or in) the Seine as he apologizes to the nice girl we haven’t seen since the first half of issue #1. So, mad woman wants to create her own Hulk and turns into one and then loses. I could read it again but I doubt it would help.

Comments:Marvel Knights” was a run of limited series with high production values and big-name creators, produced by Event Comics, which was headed by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti; the success of the project led to Quesada’s being named Marvel editor-in-chief and a continuation of the imprint for several years. Hulk appears only in a memory of Bruce’s. Nikoleta Harrow’s only previous appearance was in MORBIUS: THE LIVING VAMPIRE (2013) #6-8, also by Joe Keatinge. Dyane calls Bruce “Gavroche” after the street urchin in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.




> Marvel Knights: Hulk comic book info and issue index

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Main/1st Story Full Credits

Piotr Kowalski
Piotr Kowalski
Nick Filardi
Piotr Kowalski (Cover Penciler)
Piotr Kowalski (Cover Inker)
Nick Filardi (Cover Colorist)
Additional Credits
Letterer: Clayton Cowles.

Characters

All stories. Listed in alphabetical order.

Bruce Banner
Bruce Banner

(Robert Bruce Banner)
Plus: Nikoleta Harrow.

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