The Incredible Hulk [2023] #3 - Marvel Comics

THE INCREDIBLE HULK No. 3, October 2023

Clearly investing this particular twenty-page periodical with an utterly bewitching Stephen King vibe, Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s zombie-packed narrative for Issue Three of “Incredible Hulk” would seem much more suitable for Skybound’s spinechilling “Creepshow” comic book anthology series than one of Marvel Worldwide’s range of super-hero titles. For whilst Bruce Banner’s green-hued alter-ego dominates the publication, he faces a veritable army of undead ghouls and the gigantic, antediluvian creature which the long-abandoned mining town’s decomposing population have been worshipping for untold aeons.

In addition, this continuation to “The Age of Monsters” storyline gleefully taps into the darkest corner of the Eisner nominated writer’s mind, by conjuring up an underground world where talking corpses and long dead folk religiously dig in the dirt with their lifeless limbs for Brother Deep’s emancipation. So truly macabre a scene is genuinely disturbing, with the ferocious heat emanating from the old god’s temporary tomb bringing a palpable rise to any reader’s temperature who dwells for too long on the panels depicting the debris of the settlement’s fallen church steeple and the wooden structure’s fiery plight.

Pleasingly however, this comic isn’t simply about its titular character beating the hell out of a huge, multi-eyed “monster unlike any he has faced before”, courtesy of some enjoyable backchat between the Hulk and new companion Charlie. The feisty runaway is understandably perplexed by her encounter with a village packed full of the walking dead. But eventually demonstrates the strength of personality she so naively claimed she had when this adventure first started, by kicking the place’s partially rotting sheriff to pieces at the end, when the ‘immortal’ lawman desperately tries to drag her back to his subterranean retreat; “Shoulda stayed in yer stupid hole!!!”

Just as enjoyable as this book’s penmanship though is Nic Klein’s pencilling, which manages to imbue Brother Deep’s domain with all the claustrophobic dread a bibliophile might expect from a province painfully dug from the very earth itself by the most primitive of hand-tools. Furthermore, the design of the Fractured Son’s towering opponent is excellent, with the giant-sized, tentacled gestalt appearing to have quite literally stepped from out of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos into our universe.

The regular cover art of "THE INCREDIBLE HULK" #3 by Nic Klein