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Post by Action Ace on Mar 28, 2016 17:06:10 GMT -5
I think it would have been 1979 0r 1980 actually. It was in full color, smaller than a regular sized comic and I never recalled the comics from before #85 until I read the Essentials volume. I also got one for Spider-Man at the same time that had early Ditko Era Spidey. Was it the second Hulk paperback collection published in 1979 by Pocket Books, which reprinted the Hulk stories from TTA #85-99 behind a Kirby cover (itself an edited reprint from Marvel Super-Heroes #54)? I have their first paperback, which reprints Incredible Hulk v1 #1-6, but only heard about the second one recently. That's most likely it. Unlike most of my comic collection from when I was kid, I lost this one somewhere along the way.
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Post by chaykinstevens on Mar 28, 2016 17:17:07 GMT -5
I remember reading that Hulk vs the Inhumans special in a reprint with a different cover (by Gil Kane? can't find an image right now) as a kid. Was this it? Marvel UK reprinted that story before Gil Kane and Klaus Janson drew their cover, so they gave us covers by (I think) Ron Wilson.
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Post by chaykinstevens on Mar 29, 2016 16:27:34 GMT -5
The next two stories in The Essential Hulk, Volume 3, are from Captain Marvel #20 and #21, guest-starring the Hulk! Roy Thomas is the writer and the art is some beautiful work by Gil Kane, inked by Dan Adkins (who inked a few of my favorite issues of The Hulk a little over a year earlier). Rick Jones searches out Bruce Banner at one of his secret labs in the desert. Then the Hulk terrorizes the campus at Desert University and Captain Marvel must stop him! When Marvel UK reprinted this story in 1973 in Mighty World of Marvel #44 (I think) they had a problem because none of Captain Marvel's previous appearances at been reprinted i the UK at that point. The slightly insane solution they came up with was for Tony Isabella and Al Milgrom to doctor the dialogue and artwork to edit Mar-Vell out of the story.
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Post by chaykinstevens on Mar 29, 2016 16:41:08 GMT -5
The Incredible Hulk #139 - May 1971
Roy Thomas, Herb Trimpe, Sam Grainger
The Leader, after a long period of brooding over his many defeats at the hand of the Hulk, comes up with a plan to defeat ol' Jade-Jaws by enhancing his own mental powers and tricking the Hulk into thinking that all his old foes are attacking one after the other. The Leader surmises this will cause the Hulk to have a heart attack.
But he needs to use a military installation where they have been working on a device called the Brain-Wave Booster, so he persuades Ross and Talbot to trust him and let him use the facility. (Because that work out so well previously when the Leader betrayed them and almost destroyed the world (Hulk #115, #116 and #117).
But Ross is careful about covering his ass so he gets permission directly from President Nixon himself! Says Nixon:
It sounds INSANE -- but I've got FAITH in you, Ross. You haven't let me down YET.
I'm trying to figure out what Ross has done that makes Nixon think so highly of him. It can't have anything to do with capturing the Hulk! (It makes me wonder if Ross ever had anything to do with CREEP or E. Howard Hunt or Operation Artichoke.) The Marvel Universe equivalent of CREEP was the Committee to Regain America's Principles (CRAP), as featured in Steve Englehart's Watergate-era Captain America. Link
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Post by chaykinstevens on Mar 29, 2016 16:57:20 GMT -5
Hey, Ish! You can't count me among the people who think Harlan Ellison is pretty awesome! I'll have to tell you all about the time I met him at a comic book store and talked to him for a while and didn't realize who he was for about ten minutes. (But not right now.) I forgot to put this in the JLA thread: JLA #89 has a writer character named "Harlequin Ellis" and it's all about his "dangerous dreams." He doesn't seem to be very much like Ellison but I guess the "dangerous dreams" refer to "Dangerous Visions." I was going to read the JLA story again tonight, a little more slowly, to see how he's like Ellison. (And that reminds me! I put "Again, Dangerous Visions" aside six months ago to take a little break and I never got back to it! Time to pick it up again. Jeez Louise, I think I was in the middle of a story!) Looking forward to your Ellison story.I'm aware he's a love-him-or-hate-him character.Curmudgeon,braggart,litigious,opinionated,irascible But I find some of those characteristics make himhighly entertaining.And here was a guy in the 1960's,well known and respected,who spoke up for the comic book format with love and actually would contribute from time to time.Plus he was the writer of my favorite Star Trek episode "City On The Edge Of Forever" plus some other great episodes of The Outer Limits and Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea.And finally ,of course some great short stories in the 60s and 70s along with the landmark Dangerous Visions. His collection,back then,of his TV review column,The Glass Teat was a riot.Its a shame his work is hard to find these days. Thankfully I bought most of it back when The Hulk should be very proud Ellison contributed to his story with a major issue In 1983, Incredible Hulk #286 featured another plot by Ellison. Bill Mantlo's story plagiarised Ellison's Outer Limits script, Soldier, also the basis for James Cameron's Terminator.
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Post by chaykinstevens on Mar 29, 2016 17:11:27 GMT -5
I don't remember the first time I saw the Hulk. But I do remember the first time I saw the Abomination.
It was in an ad for Hostess Fruit Pies! You remember those awesome ads for Hostess snack products! Batman and Robin or Spider-Man would be fighting a real villain or some super-lame one-shot character, and the solution to ending the conflict would revolve around cupcakes or Twinkies.
In the ad I'm remembering, the Abomination and Wendigo attack the Hulk and beat him up and run off laughing. Then some hiking kids show up and nurse the Hulk back to health with Hostess Fruit Pies. The Hulk thanks the kids and takes off into the forest to get his revenge. IIRC, there's no resolution. It ends right there.
The thing is, the caption says the characters' names but there is no way to tell which is which. So I assumed the big, white furry guy was the Abomination because it sounded like the Abominable Snowman and why wouldn't the Abominable Snowman be big and white and furry?
Here's a link to the ad. Some surprisingly nice artwork on that ad, by John Romita I think. I found a website that has every Hostess ad, and there are a dozen featuring the Hulk, half of which were new to me. Most of them seem to be pencilled by Sal Buscema, but I think there were ones by Alan Kupperberg (or maybe Ron Wilson, I was never a fan of either artist), Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, and Herb Trimpe (Hulk vs the Green Frog). Link
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Post by Hoosier X on Apr 1, 2016 16:31:49 GMT -5
I got this in the mail a few days ago! Hulk #163! It's the only Trimpe issue of Hulk I've never read! I first started reading Hulk in 1975 with #194, and through the years, I collected the series from that point to around #335, and I had a lot of back issues of Hulk. Through those issues and Marvel Super-Heroes and the Essential series and other reprints, I had read every issue of Hulk from the original six-issue series in the early 1960s, through the Tales to Astonish series and to the point where he got his own comic and way into the 1980s. In Hulk #163, General Ross pursues the Hulk into the Arctic, where they encounter the Gremlin. He's the son of the Gargoyle, the villain in Hulk's first appearance in 1962. In the course of their Arctic adventure, Ross is captured and imprisoned in the Gremlin's remote complex in the frozen wastes of the Arctic. This will have serious repercussions that won't be resolved until #200. And I was reading Hulk by then! Talbot will cut short his honeymoon (he married Betty Ross in Hulk #158 (or thereabouts)) to go to the Arctic and rescue Ross. The general will be rescued, but Talbot will be thought dead for a while. Betty will become unhinged and start running around nude in the woods where M.O.D.O.K will transform her into the Harpy. Talbot will turn up alive ... but it's not him! It's an exploding imposter! Talbot will be rescued by another mission to the Gremlin's Arctic lair (Hulk #187 and #188) but he will be comatose. It finally comes to a conclusion in #200 where Doc Sampson gives Hulk a magic helmet that gives him the mind of Bruce Banner and then Hulk is shrunk and beamed into Talbot's brain somehow. Talbot is cured and the whole cast ventures merrily into the late Bronze Age. So I knew what happened in Hulk #163 before I read it. It gets footnoted a lot in the Steve Englehart issues and later. But it was still a fun issue. Ross is such a jerk! Leave the Hulk alone, you wanker! And the Gremlin is actually pretty creepy. He's just a child still, but the radiation had turned him into a big-brained freak and the Russians have given him complete control of a scientific/military complex in the Arctic. (It's not even in Russia! Dialogue indicates it's outside Russia's boundaries but they're a bit coy about where it is. Canada? Alaska? Sweden? Some random, ice-covered region over the Arctic Ocean? I don't know.) It was cool to finally read it. But I must admit that I'm sad that there's no more Trimpe Hulk for me to read for the first time. *sniffles*
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Post by chaykinstevens on Apr 3, 2016 6:40:39 GMT -5
I got this in the mail a few days ago! Hulk #163! It's the only Trimpe issue of Hulk I've never read! Your last Trimpe Hulk was my first, and is one of the first American Marvel comics I can remember reading. I loved it and snapped up the following issues up to #166, after which they ceased distributing the series to British newsagents until around #258. I like the quote from Steve Englehart on the Gremlin's Wikipedia page: "I’ve always treated the entire run of a book, up to the point that I took it over, as worthy of respect. So I was always interested in where series started out, and how they developed in their early days. The Gargoyle had indeed been in Hulk #1, so I thought it would be fun to connect to him—but I had to make something interesting for my time, not just wave at the past. I thought, ‘Gargoyle + Kremlin = Gremlin’."
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 19, 2023 13:30:01 GMT -5
I got some Bronze Age issues of the Hulk from Icctrombone a few months ago (thanks, George) but I didn't get around to reading them until last week. It was #243 to #245 and #251 to #253. I had these when I was younger (I collected Hulk from #193 to about #335 way back when they were new comics) but I haven't read any 1980s Hulk for a very long time. I enjoyed them so much! I really loved Hulk back then. It was great fun to read these stories again. I had forgotten these issues almost entirely (although I did remember #244 with the Infantino art and the return of It the Living Colossus) but it all came flooding back! There's Tyrannus! And the Goldbug! I haven't thought about the Goldbug for years! And I had also completely forgotten about Ross's nervous breakdown and Talbot being assigned to the command of the Hulk-Busters! And the 3-D Man and the return of Wood-God and then the Changelings! Though I still love the Trimpe era, I'm not now as keen on the Sal Buscema era even though I loved it when it was coming out. Re-reading these gems from the late 1970s makes me think it wasn't the writing. It was the art. I don't want to put down Sal Buscema at all. He did a lot of great comics. But on the Hulk, he started inking himself, which isn't a bad thing on its own. He just inked himself for such a long period that his Hulk series suffers from a lack of variety. Look at the Trimpe issues! So many inkers! John Severin, Grainger, Abel, Trapani, Adkins, so many others. And it strikes me that maybe the writing was somewhat responsible. The Hulk kind of wanders from one weird situation to another, fighting super-villains and a variety of monsters all over the world. And every three or four issues, here's the Hulkbusters again! I sure liked it at the time though! And my current enjoyment of these issues shows that its yet very entertaining in small doses.
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