I thought the last few were great. I mean, it was starting to seem obvious that Ewing wasn't leaving himself enough time to resolve everything, but otherwise I was fixated.

For me, the only real weakness of the series beyond the final issue and Ewing seriously overestimating his own abilities as a plotter was the Roxxon/Xemu story arc, which was less well done and entirely tangental to the rest of the series.

The weakness of the ending is typical in the corporates environment when all the toys have to be back in the exact same place at the end as they were in the end because the status quo and protecting properties for exploitation in other media and licensing takes priority over the needs of storytelling. I'm not one to say all modern comics are bad, but it you go into any modern DC or (especially) Marvel run expecting there to be substantive changes to characters that aren't essentially undone by the end of an arc or run, your expectations are unrealistic. A lot of current writers have difficulty sticking the landing on big 2 books because the landing has to happen exactly where you launched from no matter what story you are trying to tell. Until such a time as these corporate demands are changed and those kind of limitations are no longer imposed on creatives, these are exactly the kinds of endings you can expect to get from any run or arc. Things have to be back to the way things were when you started so the next creative team can do their story and not be required to build on anything previously done on the title for the last 25+ years when the status quo for these characters was encased in amber to be preserved for perpetuity.

I really liked Ewing's Hulk run, and Aaron's Thor run. Both were long runs with lots of interesting things being done to the characters, but at the end of the day, the endings on both fizzled because they had to put everything back in place for the next tea, The same thing seems to be happening with the new X-Men Krakoa initiative, which is winding down and being essentially undone so the next era of X-Books can start fresh and do whatever based on the corporate preserved X-Men status quo. The lack of ability for characters to undergo substantive growth and development essentially limits to effectiveness of any storytelling done with them. Ewing's take was fresh, brilliant in places, and provided an entertaining ride with the Hulk character (one which is not among my favorite characters but I really dug this run), but at the end of the day, it cannot move the character forward and any resolutions made to the story cannot change the character from the amber preserved status quo required by corporate because they are IP not characters.

So enjoy the good rides while they are happening, but understand that the sudden stop at the end is always going to bring disappointment. But it's not really any different than those Silver Age Superman or Batman stories where the characters undergo while transformations or wind up in weird alien landscapes all to have it resolved by the end of the issue and the next story never needs to address it or take into account for the story they want to tell. Same is true of a lot of Golden Age and other Silver Age books, where characters are introduced, have a brief period where the core idea of the character is developed and refined until the formula is perfected, and then its wash, rinse, repeat ad infinitum with some writers having really good stories to tell and others just providing fillers while no one is essentially changing or evolving the concept any longer because doing so might threaten the viability of the characters to continue to be exploited successfully, which becomes a trap and a threat to the ability t perpetuate the characters in and of itself in many ways.

But when you look at the lifespan of serialized super-hero comics as a whole, from 1938-2024, you begin to realize that the serialized part implying a continued evolving narrative that continues to build on what came before and characters growing and changing because of the events they experience in their stories only happened in a very small window in that span and is actually the exception, not the rule in big 2 super-heroes, and Ewing's end to his Hulk run is symptomatic of that reality.

-M

But was it necessary for the next creative team (and the hole Starship Banner is what came next and I found it utterly uninteresting) to address anything that happened in Ewing's arc (or the lingering potential future) to be able to tell their Hulk story? Ewing (and every writer) has to provide an ending where that is what happens and a lot of times it hamstrings them from telling the ending they want to tell (though you'll rarely hear them say that because they want to keep getting work and providing for their families) where they provide the kinds of resolutions you were looking for. Those types of resolutions involve having characters grow from what they have experienced, the very thing you cannot do with corporate ip characters. To wrap up adequately and resolve some plot threads, you have to address how that resolution would impact the character and grow and change them, which you can't do, so you have to find ways to come to an end without fully doing so and a lot of times that means leaving things vague, unstated or open to the readers to interpret as they want to do so )as a tangential aside, I'm seeing a lot of similar criticism for the season finale of True Detectives this morning, a lot of people who really dug the season after a few bad ones, but the ending looks to have been ambiguous with a couple of quotes form the showrunners saying to the effect we left it vague and open to viewer interpretation because it was the best thing we could do under the circumstances.

When I finished the Immortal Hulk run, I was also feeling a bit let down. It felt like Ewing had to wrap up his story by a certain point, couldn't quite do the ending hi wanted to do or was setting up all along, and certain things got put side to do the ending he could to satisfy corporate/editorial mandates imposed on him so reestablish the status quo. I also think the brouhaha with Bennett's behavior may have had the unintentional consequence of having Ewing's run be shorter than he initially wanted and having to alter what his planned ending because it was going to happen sooner than he was initially planning because somebody wanted to step away from the artist who was strongly identified with that run as soon as possible and even if they changed artists, the run would still be associated with the problematic creator. I thought this could be one for the ages as I was reading it, but there was a point shortly after everything when down where there seemed to be a shift in the run where certain things got sped up and others somewhat abandoned to get to the end in short order and it felt like certain reveals were happening before their time and other threads that had been building were altered or shifted away from the main thrust of the story so it could come to an end a bit sooner. If you had asked me how long the run felt like it was going to take for everything building to get resolved in the first 2 years of the run, I would have said somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-75 issues, and the 3rd year did nothing to change that, but somewhere in that last years worth of issues, there just seemed to be some decisions made so the run could come to an end sooner. But that may just be my impression of the ending.

-M

Yeah, the ending (and a few of the more fillerish feeling issues concerning the future) was the only sour spot for me. I think more than anything he just didn't know how to tie in the weird high concept future issues he was toying with at the end. He had these ideas of Hulk raging through all time but he didn't know what that really meant or how to do an ending that addressed those plot points. A lot of those middle;e issues felt like he was just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck with out much thought to further developments which makes for a messy ending.

Wow.

I'd love if you could sell me on that one.

What I got from it was...

One below: Ha, I'm the devil!
Joe: No. You're not.
One below: Ha, I'm actually God!
Joe: No. You're not.
One below: Whatever. Hulk has the power to be whatever he wants. See ya.