The Immortal Hulk #13 - Marvel Comics

IMMORTAL HULK No. 13, April 2019

It must have been hard for any within this comic’s open-mouthed audience to recall another book which so consistently assaulted their senses from cover to cover, as the creative team behind Issue Thirteen of “The Immortal Hulk” does courtesy of their “A Booth In The Midwest” storyline. For whilst Al Ewing’s somewhat nonsensical script for this twenty-page periodical may well have proved a trifle difficult to follow considering it contains Rick Jones’ sightless skin cadaver miraculously morphing into A-Bomb and Carl “Crusher” Creel somehow managing to defeat “Banner’s Dad” simply by touching Brian’s son as the scientist sits haplessly bound alongside “The Devil” in a chair, its visual storytelling is an absolute feast for the eyes, with regular penciler Joe Bennett even managing to incorporate the likes of Jeff Goldblum’s monstrous malformation from the 1986 horror flick “The Fly” and a toxic waste melted Emil Antonowsky from the 1987 science fiction film “Robo-Cop” into some of his early panels.

Similarly as successful is the Brazilian artist’s awesome-looking sketches of an emaciated Hulk pounding away at all manner of horned demons in a furiously desperate attempt to rid the Below Place of the flesh-chomping fiends. Absolutely packed full of thunderous punches, eye-winching bites and limb-wrenching amputations, this extensive fight sequence between the titular character and the One Below All’s seemingly endless minions never lets up, even when the gamma-enhanced giant’s blue-skinned side-kick is literally torn asunder before his horrified eyes; “Get up, Jones! Get up and fight! Jones!”

Of course, that isn’t to say that Ewing’s penmanship doesn’t provide a modicum of entertainment as well, as the Absorbing Man’s sub-plot to outwit Brian Banner by failing to succumb to the villain’s mantra of “Strength without pity. Strength without judgement” demonstrates. Predominantly an arch-nemesis of the Asgardian God of Thunder, Thor Odinson, the Bronx-raised criminal could so easily have “beaten the living crap outta” the supposedly mild-mannered suited figure before him once the former Master Of Evil had absorbed the properties of some surrounding rock. But much to Eugene Judd’s apparent delight, Creel choses to release “the Banner half” of the Hulk instead, and subsequently imbue the Green Goliath with all of his much-missed formidable potency.

First published on the "Dawn of Comics" website.'

The regular cover art of "IMMORTAL HULK" No. 13 by Alex Ross