The Incredible Hulk [2023] #28 - Marvel Comics

THE INCREDIBLE HULK No. 28, October 2025

Promising “the biggest status quo change in Hulk's history” in its pre-publication synopsis, this twenty-page periodical’s plot probably disappointed the vast majority of its readers, due to Phillip Kennedy Johnson seemingly throwing a series of story-threads up against the wall and seeing what successfully stuck. Indeed, this comic genuinely feels like the American author had a handful of different ideas floating about his head, and simply decided to crowbar them all together into this one book; “Hear me, Eldest. Your prey is here. Send your Ferryman, Djieien of the Many Eyes.”

For starters just how Bruce Banner’s gamma-irradiated alter-ego comes to be deputised by Inspector Francis Bergeron of the Pinkerton Detective Agency is rather bemusing to say the least. One moment the founding Avenger is shown climbing the top of a frozen mountain peak, and then in the next panel the Green Goliath is suddenly struck by a massive bolt of lightning. Just how this electrical blast takes him back to the streets of New Orleans isn’t in any way explained, and is frustratingly just left as an unconvincingly convenient occurrence.

Likewise the Hulk's highly intriguing partnership with the stuttering Ghost Detective appears to pointlessly end on a whim, after it initially looked set to throw the audience head-first into an underground laboratory packed full of macabre, Frankenstein-like undead cadavers. This unexpected decision is particularly frustrating as it smacks of the Eisner-nominated writer realising he had nothing for the long deceased policeman to specifically do, and so abruptly disposes of his spirit with a nonchalant hand gesture by “the greater of the Brothers Drumm.”

Quite possibly this comic’s biggest disappointment though, stems from the debatably rough-looking layouts of Adam Gorham. The Canadian artist certainly does an excellent job of capturing all the tranquil beauty an onlooker might imagine if they were sat far beneath the ocean waves aboard a sunken ship and merely looking at the shoals of fish passing them by. But by the time the action has moved on to the Hulk encountering Betty at “the place where the One Below All emerged”, the illustrator’s rather raw pencils have probably raised more questions in the audience’s minds, than they've answered – such as just what are the strange, yellow orbs he keeps sketching that then shatter upon the titular character’s chest..?

The regular cover art of "THE INCREDIBLE HULK" #28 by Nic Klein