Red Hulk #6 - Marvel Comics

RED HULK No. 6, September 2025

Having previously penned a five-issue piece depicting the titular character escaping a heavily-fortified prison in the mountains of Latveria, many a reader probably thought Benjamin Percy may well be in danger of re-treading old ground by sticking General Ross straight into a military-run, top secret gamma-research facility for his next storyline. Indeed, one of this comic’s opening scenes featuring the Red Hulk impotently bashing away at his cell’s impregnable walls must surely have given the odd bibliophile a disconcerting sense of déjà vu; “Rage doesn’t feel like an adequate description. Because it’s mixed up with a sense of betrayal and disgust, and even defeat.”

Happily however, whilst much of Thunderbolt’s experiences “twenty klicks from Langley” arguably do feel unnervingly familiar, the exploits of Deathlok most certainly don’t as the cyborg attempts to audaciously rescue Machine Man from the Department of Defence’s Waste Disposal centre. This somewhat brutal, quickly botched covert infiltration mission is easily the highlight of this book’s twenty-page plot, as it cleverly provides Luther Manning (as well as his computer-chipped brain) a chance to inject an already palpably tense sequence of the Demolisher desperately searching through numerous rubbish piles, with some much appreciated subtle humour.

In fact, much of this publication’s success debatably rests upon the relationship between the time-travelling assassin and Jack Kirby’s living robot X-51, rather than anything penned for Ross, with the pair’s evident growing friendship proving as enthralling as their sentiments for one another are touching. Furthermore, with an emaciated and powerless General being largely confined to sedentarily walking along the corridors of his prison with First Sergeant Tamika Bowden, the mechanical duo are this comic’s sole source of any adrenalin-fuelled action.

Possibly just as perturbed by this book’s largely uninspiring central narrative is Geoff Shaw, whose layouts featuring the alleged American “war criminal” appear a little uneventful once his Red Hulk persona has worn itself out senselessly battering unmoving bricks. Admittedly, it must be hard to repeatedly pencil the same figures striding down a featureless corridor for too long. But the dynamism seen in the artist’s drawings of Deathlok and Machine Man’s aforementioned antics probably makes those illustrating Thunderbolt’s uneventful journey down to Captain Ryker’s laboratory even more monotonous to the eye.

The regular cover art of "RED HULK" #6 by Geoff Shaw & Marte Gracia