The Immortal Hulk #3 - Marvel Comics

IMMORTAL HULK No. 3, September 2018

Apparently “inspired in part by an episode of the Italian strip Il Commissario Spada which involved the titular policeman chasing a purse-snatcher and asking various witnesses about him,” Al Ewing’s script to Issue Three of “The Immortal Hulk” probably seemed like a clever(ish) idea on paper, especially as its execution would mean editors Tom Brevoort and Wil Moss inviting a handful of artists in alongside regular Joe Bennett to provide the required carousel of creativity. Unfortunately however, those illustrators chosen for this pencilling gestalt are so markedly different from one another in technique, and arguably poor in their performance, that “Point Of View” debatably fast becomes such an unpalatable assault upon the senses that it is all too easy to put the publication down and perhaps just simply stare in wonder at Mahmud Asrar and Edgar Delgado’s awesome-looking variant cover celebrating ‘Fifty Years of Carol Danvers’.

For starters Leonardo Romero's “The Cop’s Story” segment, whilst admirably based upon “the classic super hero style”, debatably suffers as a result of its mimicry of Sixties printing processes. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the Brazilian’s line-work, as the more modern-day colouration of his panels proves, and quite possibly an entire twenty-page periodical populated with such ‘vintage’ story-boarding would be perfectly passable. Yet seeing as the Sao Paulo-born artist’s pictures are persistently interposed with the utterly amateurish-looking “art-comix” drawings of Paul Hornschemeier, and then later Garry Brown’s heavy, scratchy-styled sketches, the entire look of the British writer’s narrative makes this magazine difficult to stick with even for a few minutes.

Indeed, with the exception of Jeff Lemire’s 2017 run on “Moon Knight”, it’s hard to recall a more diverse-looking “Marvel Worldwide” publication, especially when it intermixes its questionably more roughly hewn-looking passages with Marguerite Sauvage’s beautifully romanticised illustrations for “The Old Lady’s Story”. Sadly however, it may well have struck many in this book’s audience that there probably isn’t that much of a plot hidden beneath the multiple artists’ failing façade anyway, as this entire book’s script seems to tell a relatively straightforward tale of the Hulk thwarting Hotshot’s hostage-taking antics inside a church despite taking an energy bolt straight through the stomach. Admittedly, this plot does conclude with the surprising deaths of Lou Lembert and Jailbait, as well as the introduction of Walter Langkowski, but any sensationalism created by such twists are lost amidst this comic’s ill-conceived implementation.

The regular cover art of "IMMORTAL HULK" No. 3 by Alex Ross