Immortal Hulk: The Best Defense #1: Review

Dec 2018
Al Ewing, Simone DiMeo

Story Name:

The Face Underneath

Review & Comments

Rating:
4.5 stars

Immortal Hulk: The Best Defense #1 Review by (July 31, 2019)

Review: This latest miniseries for the notorious non-team gets off to a great start in an offbeat fashion: the death of Dr. Strange. But before that can sink in, we've moved on to the main event: showing us the Immortal Banner. Bruce is the focus of the first three-quarters of the epic which mostly has him being brutally beaten and beating in return. An interesting touch has panels from the original Lee/Kirby/Ditko Hulk run in 1962 placed at appropriate points of the action to show Banner emulating the Hulk's understanding of the human world. But it's the Hulk we're waiting for and even though he doesn't look as grotesquely terrifying as Joe Bennett makes him look, it's still sufficient to get his job done. We have no idea where this is going and in a bad move, elderly astral Strange looks a lot like the vagrant who had been wielding the stolen Eye. Took me a while to realize they weren't the same person...were they?

Comments: At one point Hulk says “Never stop making them pay,” Miek's tag line from the WORLD WAR HULK event. An interesting touch has panels from the original Hulk run in 1963 placed at appropriate points of the action.






 

Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Immortal Hulk: The Best Defense #1 Synopsis by Peter Silvestro

Bruce Banner walks through a remote area of New Mexico, drawn by the Hulk's voice in his head. He enters a dilapidated barn to find a skeleton lying on the floor—one that he recognizes as Doctor Strange. The body has been burned and his talisman, the Eye of Agamotto, is missing. Bruce is angry but the night is the Hulk's time and so Bruce is able to keep him inside. Bruce goes to the nearest town to report Strange's murder and finds the place deserted. He spies someone peeking at him from behind a curtain and heads to that house to demand answers. Bruce walks in and finds himself facing a handgun....

Interlude: An alien scientist working on some high tech machinery is stabbed to death by a killer wearing a ghost costume made from a sheet....

Emulating the Hulk, the angry Bruce Banner fights the man and takes a brutal beating before he rallies, beats the other man and, picking up the revolver demands the old lady in the room explain why the town seems deserted. He is directed to the local saloon; breaking in, he finds the town's three marshals standing still at the behest of a white-bearded old man bearing the Eye of Agamotto. The old man explains that he was a vagrant who was beaten by the marshals and dumped at the edge of town. Badly injured, he made his way to the barn and found Strange's body burning; he took the Eye and intuited how to use it. Returning to the town he used the Eye to terrorize the marshals by showing them their inner selves. Bruce demands the Eye; the vagrant threatens to show him his inner truth. With a wicked smile, Bruce tells him to go ahead, scaring the old man so that Bruce has to fight for the Eye. The old man orders a marshal to save him; the man knocks Bruce down but he rises, clouts the cop over the head with a bottle and slashes the old man's hand with the broken glass to take the Eye. And the Eye transforms him into the Immortal Hulk. The marshals flee in terror and Hulk confronts the old man, threatening to punish him for hurting Banner, terrifying him by his mere presence. The old man curls up within himself and Hulk confronts the true killer of Stephen Strange: the elderly Doctor Strange's astral form....

Story continued in NAMOR: THE BEST DEFENSE.



Simone DiMeo
Simone DiMeo
Dono Sanchez Almara
Ron Garney (Cover Penciler)
Ron Garney (Cover Inker)
Richard Isanove (Cover Colorist)


> Immortal Hulk: The Best Defense: Book info and issue index

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