Red Hulk #7 - Marvel Comics

RED HULK No. 7, October 2025

Disconcertingly penning a helpless Thunderbolt Ross being strapped to an experimentation table for most of this twenty-page periodical’s plot, Benjamin Percy arguably plays something of a dangerous game in hoping that the unlikely pairing of Deathlok and Machine Man will provide its audience with enough excitement to make this comic actually worth buying. And whilst the predominantly mechanical duo certainly do deliver an enjoyable mixture of banter and explosions as they’re chased by local law enforcement officers, the side-lining of this ongoing series’ titular character sadly still leaves something of a hole in the book’s storytelling.

Indeed, apart from providing artist Jethro Morales plenty of opportunities to pencil some truly disturbing physical horror – as the General’s body and brain are systematically swollen with isolated gamma pulses, the vast bulk of “Lab Rat” appears to be ‘treading water’ simply so enough time can pass for the aforementioned Luther Manning and X-51 to successfully reach Project Alpha undetected and attempt to rescue the Red Hulk. Admittedly, this publication does also contain an intriguing sub-thread in which First Sergeant Bowden discovers that Captain Simon Ryker is in direct contact with Doctor Victor Von Doom. But the supposedly loyal soldier, who just happens to have a cybernetic hand strong enough to tear open a safe room’s door, takes so little convincing to break into her superior officer’s secret room that her change in allegiance disappointingly smacks of just being an unconvincing contrivance.

Much more successful is Machine Man’s ability to out-think his pursuers, as opposed to just blasting them to pieces with all manner of automatic weapons – which is precisely what his ‘partner-in-crime’ Deathlok wants to do. The two super-powered refugees make a surprisingly good team, and the fact that it’s their sudden confrontation with a pack of killer Sharkmen deep inside a nuclear reactor’s water-filled pipeline which ends the comic as its cliff-hanger, rather than anything happening to Thunderbolt, says a lot for the odd couple’s ‘audience pull’.

Frustratingly, Morales’ layouts also don’t land as well as they could (or perhaps should). There is no doubt that the illustrator proficiently provides this book with plenty of eye-catching sketches. However, Jethro’s style does imbue the likes of Thaddeus’ mistreatment by Ryker with a perturbingly cartoony look which detrimentally impacts upon the grisliness of the sequences.

The regular cover art of "RED HULK" #7 by Geoff Shaw & Marte Gracia