The Immortal Hulk #39 - Marvel Comics

IMMORTAL HULK No. 39, December 2020

There’s quite clearly some sort of protracted plot lurking beneath the surface of Al Ewing’s penmanship for Issue Thirty Nine of “Immortal Hulk”, and for a significant portion of this twenty-page periodical it would seem not to be going in the Leader’s favour. In fact, for a few fleeting moments it very much appears that Samuel Sterns is about to be utterly devoured by the frenzied Devil Hulk inside Bruce Banner’s mindscape, despite the super-villain somehow managing to inhabit the psyche of Green Scar; “Ha! Beg some more, Sterns! I love it! Ain’t it great? C’mon, Snake Eyes! Take him! Kill him!”

Disconcertingly however, the green-skinned criminal mastermind eventually manages to gather his wicked wits in order to shockingly tear off his monstrous opponent’s head and accompanying spinal cord with a blood-wrenching effort. This truly gratuitous fatal fighting manoeuvre is then further emphasised by a suddenly strangely, insectoid-looking Leader, almost nonchalantly ripping the already dying creature’s gurgling heart into gory pieces with one of his multi-tentacled pincers.

Such violent savagery really could be viewed as being a tad unsettling, but seems to be the sole motivation behind this comic’s storyline as the British writer leaps from weird set-piece to set-piece simply to show members of the cast being horribly mutilated or satanically tortured. Indeed, even Brian Banner’s demise at the beginning of this book isn’t for the faint-hearted, as Sterns apparently needs to ‘physically’ suck the man’s innards out through his head so as to better digest the doctor’s “genius, violent paranoia, [and] just a hint of narcissism…”

Positively emboldened by this disturbing journey down into the very bowels of bodily mutilation is Joe Bennett’s pencilling, which seems to go to incredible lengths to show how utterly despicable the Leader has become in his vile quest to control the Hulk once and for all. Faces splitting open to reveal snaking mouths lined with a vast array of sharp teeth, anguished heads haplessly peeking out from inside the throat of their foes, and sightless eye sockets being speared by writhing brain-branches are simply the tip of the iceberg for the Brazilian artist’s spine-chilling contribution to this comic. Yet little of these layouts will arguably help the reader actually understand precisely what is going on within the narrative.

The regular cover art of "IMMORTAL HULK" No. 39 by Alex Ross