The Immortal Hulk #14 - Marvel Comics

IMMORTAL HULK No. 14, May 2019

Selling an impressive 45,708 copies in March 2019, Al Ewing’s darkly depressing storyline for Issue Fourteen of “Immortal Hulk” contains such a palpable sense of mounting tension that it must have made many of its audience start to increasingly fidget in their reading chairs as the disagreeable Bushwhacker continuously keeps threatening “to put one through Missus Banner’s back and finish this --” In fact, Agent Carl Burbank’s tensely-worded ongoing argument with his commanding officer, General Reginald Fortean, is so well-penned by the English author that it debatably manages to even overshadow the tedious inadequacies of this comic’s far more sedentary dialogue-heavy discussion sequence between Bruce Banner and the daughter of the late Taddeus E. “Thunderbolt” Ross; “But… Something happened before I called you. And it just… It broke me open, Betty. Tore me in half. I didn’t have my protection anymore, and everything I’d been numbing it just…”

Of course, this lengthy demonstrative discourse between the “physically weak” scientist and his long-time love provides much of the emotional turmoil which is so crucial to the success of “We Only Meet At Funerals”, and simultaneously proves vital to Betty discovering her deep-rooted hatred for her ex-husband mere moments before she is shockingly shot straight through the head. But even so, the sheer dreariness of its pedestrian pacing debatably makes the scene pale in comparison to the anger-fuelled vitality of this twenty-page periodical’s opening burial, or the grieving daughter’s subsequent bitter exchange with a surprisingly socially awkward Tony Stark, when the representative of all “the costumed heroes her father had worked with” unwisely blames Bruce for the mess caused in Iowa following his refusal to surrender to the Avengers and the inventive playboy's deadly use of “a flying death ray that blew up a town”.

Significantly adding to this comic’s all-encompassing aura of inescapable death and mortality is guest artist Kyle Hotz’s incredibly detailed layouts, with the “Zombie” penciller’s depiction of Ross proving particularly mesmerising. The American illustrator’s ability to imbue the woman’s doe-like eyes with a lifetime of pain and suffering says so much more than anything which Ewing could physically pen, especially when Burbank’s so-called ‘enemy collaborator’ flashes Fortean a glowering glare when the “Project Greenskin” soldier unexpectedly decides to say a few unwelcome words at her father’s funeral.

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

The regular cover art of "IMMORTAL HULK" No. 14 by Alex Ross