The Immortal Hulk #12 - Marvel Comics

IMMORTAL HULK No. 12, March 2019

Arguably focusing far more upon the backstory to Brian Banner’s loathing for his son, Bruce, than the titular character’s trek across the One Below All’s post-apocalyptic Hell, Al Ewing’s script for Issue Twelve of “The Immortal Hulk” certainly seemed to provide its audience with an interesting insight into the abusive father’s first experience of “a grotesque presence, glimpsed through a crack in a door” to “a nightmare cellar-world underneath the floorboards of everything”, and the detrimental impact this encounter had upon his theory “that gamma might sometimes act not as a wave or particle… but as some unknown third form.”

Indeed, the utter despondency shown upon the scientist’s face following the sudden denouncement of this ‘nonsensical notion’ to his Department Heads and Rebecca’s subsequent surprise revelation to her husband that she was pregnant is positively palpable, and whilst hardly generating any sympathy for his resultant abusive behaviour towards his family, at least provides some semblance of understanding as to the selfish man’s emotional inadequacies; “Nine months later, you were born. A difficult birth. You were all but torn from the womb… It didn’t matter. I’d been replaced. You took the love I had from me. You did that, Bruce. You.”

True, these poignantly pencilled ‘flashback’ panels are somewhat scratchily sketched and inked by Eric Nguyen, as opposed to the twenty-page periodical’s regular artistic team of Joe Bennett and Ruy Jose. Yet whilst the American illustrator’s output for “All On That Day” is debatably less prodigious-looking than his peers' much more detailed depiction of an emaciated Hulk being brought to his senses by Jackie McGee’s tenderness, the level of animosity portrayed by young Bruce’s alcohol-fuelled parent when he discovers his tiny son easily building “an educational toy. Too complex for a child twice your age. And the instructions are still in the box” is utterly mesmerizing and doubtless provided an excellent hook for any potential “Hulk-heads” perusing the publication on the local store’s spinner-rack. 

Perhaps somewhat slightly less successful, albeit only just, is this comic’s first proper look at the One Below All, a truly “malevolent entity that resides in the Below-Place - the deepest layer of Hell” and apparently is the Machiavellian antagonist behind the majority of the Green Goliath’s difficulties since the purple-trousered powerhouse was resurrected prior to this ongoing series commencing. Looking akin to something Jack “King” Kirby might have created upon his drawing table during the “pre-Marvel monster explosion” of the Sixties, this gigantic-sized leviathan literally engulfs the entire horizon with its billowing bulk and looks set to appropriately require the combined efforts of this book’s entire supporting cast if it is to be defeated…

First published on the "Dawn of Comics" website.'

The regular cover art of "IMMORTAL HULK" No. 12 by Alex Ross

The Immortal Hulk #11 - Marvel Comics

IMMORTAL HULK No. 11, March 2019

Revealed at the 2018 New York Comic Con’s “Marvel: True Believers” super-secret “photography prohibited” panel, and published after the sad death of Stan “The Man” Lee, this first instalment to Al Ewing’s “Hulk in Hell” story-arc must have raised far more questions with its loyal “Hulk-heads” fan-base than its debatably dialogue-heavy plot answered. Indeed, the twenty-page periodical’s narrative genuinely seems to enjoy conjuring up all manner of puzzling enigmas during Jackie McGee’s emotional walkabout through the empty wasteland alongside this book’s emaciated Green Goliath, as the pair bizarrely encounter the sightless shell of Rick Jones, the “late Mister McGee” and “Banner’s father-in-law” Thunderbolt Ross; “You wreck a city, and Doctor Strange looks for a retirement home for you. Iron Man looks for a paradise planet to put you on. Your anger… it’s indulged, Even respected. Mine is dismissed -- If I’m lucky.”   

Admittedly, these oft-times heart-wrenching conundrums do arguably help provide the Arizona Herald’s news reporter with some fairly interesting character development, even when they’re just used to either reaffirm her ‘ultimate’ desire to “step into a Gamma machine” or depict her uselessly appealing to Jones’ corpse to transform into his Hulk so as to help Bruce’s incarnation in a battle against Thaddeus’ Red version. But ultimately, nothing particularly progressively notable appears to occur within the British writer’s script until its very end when to McGee’s horror her enraged companion literally tears his blood-coloured assailant to shreds before the distraught woman’s eyes, and in the distance Doctor Brian Banner all-knowingly turns to his apparently captive son so as to inform him that he’s better off without his super-strong, ever-angry alter-ego.

Perhaps far more successful than this comic’s story-line therefore, is Joe Bennett’s dynamic pencilling, which quite mesmerizingly manages to easily carry the reader on through some of this book’s more mundane, overly-wordy conversational pieces, like when Eugene Judd manfully takes charge of a seemingly mentally defeated Crusher Creel or Ewing waxes lyrical as to what he believes Hell to be. In fact, the Brazilian’s atmospherically ruinous landscape of the One Below All’s netherworld is questionably only outdone as the bona fide highlight of "This World Our Hell" by his later gratuitously grisly artwork portraying the Hulk’s anger-fuelled fisticuffs with his heavily-muscled red-hued nemesis.

The regular cover art of "IMMORTAL HULK" No. 11 by Alex Ross

Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor #3 - Titan Comics

DOCTOR WHO: THE THIRTEENTH DOCTOR No. 3, February 2019

It may well have been hard for many of this edition’s audience to comprehend just why anyone within its creative team thought it would be a good idea to simply chronicle a single conversation for almost the entire twenty-two page periodical’s length. Yet Jody Houser’s narrative for Issue Three of “Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor” debatably does just that as it follows the titular character’s discourse with an armed rival time-traveller who initially simply wants her ship, and then later, after a nice cup of hot tea with Yaz, Ryan and Graham, disconcertingly decides to join the TARDIS crew on “a proper Indiana Jones job” upon an alien planet..?

Admittedly, this publication’s final few panels does eventually depict something akin to the exciting “movie serials of the 1930’s and 1940’s”, due to the Time Lord’s party haplessly activating a rudimentary trap whilst exploring a tomb and subsequently finding themselves about to be crushed to death by an escape-proof pit’s constantly closing walls. But this moment of pulse-pounding tension is fleeting at best, and disappointingly seems to have been ‘bolted-on’ to the script’s ending in order to both provide this comic with some semblance of a cliff-hanger and allow Jodie Whittaker’s “most thrilling” incarnation to once again disagreeably wave her sonic screwdriver all over the place like some sort of demented fairy godmother; “It’s all very low-tech. Very nicely done if it wasn’t trying to kill us. Sonic’s not going to do us much good with the release points already triggered…”

Fortunately, much of this comic’s unsuccessful pacing and sedentary sequencing can arguably be forgivably forgotten, courtesy of Rachael Stott’s magnificent pencilling, which genuinely manages to capture all the mannerisms and facial gestures of the ongoing series’ television counterparts. The freelance artist does a corking job of portraying the leading cast members with Graham O’Brien’s wisecracking “whenever faced with the Doctor's eccentricities or dangerous situations” immediately making the reader think of how Bradley Walsh would’ve delivered just such a witticism during the programme’s actual broadcast. Indeed, despite the word-heavy dialogue questionably suffocating any life out of this particular book’s storyline, Stott’s clean-looking illustrations at least imbue her figures with something resembling entertaining energy and permit a modicum of enjoyment to be gleaned from an actor’s familiar grimace here or unconvinced scowl there.

The regular cover art of "DOCTOR WHO: THE THIRTEENTH DOCTOR" No. 3 by Rebekah Isaacs & Dan Jackson

Micronauts [2016] #10 - IDW Publishing

MICRONAUTS No. 10, February 2017

Written by both Cullen Bunn and Jimmy Johnston, the narrative for Issue Ten of “Micronauts” must surely have struck many within the twenty-page periodical’s audience as being a decidedly disjointed affair, what with the book’s opening half featuring a lack-lustre, contrivance-riddled storyline based upon the titular characters’ realisation “that the [giant] scientist is in danger due to helping them escape the lab”, and its later stages depicting a pulse-pounding battle between Oziron Rael’s crew and “new Acroyears… outfitted with an endless supply of weaponry.” Indeed, it’s arguably rare to experience such jarringly contrasting writing styles within the self-same Max Dunbar pencilled cover, and debatably must have had some readers genuinely puzzling as to whether Editor, David Hedgecock, rather lackadaisically simply split the two authors’ responsibilities straight down the comic’s middle..?

Whatever the story behind the publication’s plot, its premise that the Pharoid can suddenly understand “the words the giants were speaking” from this story-arc’s previous instalment, alongside the Time Traveller’s face mask then coincidentally giving him all the information he needs so as to comprehend Commander Klain’s revenge, is frighteningly fortuitous, and only debatably superseded by Biotron Unit 556-01-17 amazingly developing an instantaneous ability to ‘enerchange’ with the planet’s internet; “I’m not arguing that we owe this woman our lives. But I’m worried about how you’re getting this information.” Such a carousel of lucky happenstances really do beggar belief and smack of sheer unimaginative laziness on behalf of this magazine’s creators, especially when they all essentially occur simultaneously in order to permit Microtron to receive the “transmitted co-ordinates of our new destination...”

Fortunately, once the Heliopolis lands outside the human scientist’s house, and the Micronauts waste a plethora of panels exploring the entirely empty abode, this comic finally starts to quicken its previously plodding pace, courtesy of Mister Mayhem’s military breaking into the building and fast finding themselves under attack by another race of tiny warriors “obviously from Microspace.” The resultant conflict, absolutely packed full of numerous laser beams and vicious hand-to-hand combat, is undoubtedly the highlight of this book, and provides the ongoing series with one particular stand out moment when a disarmed Acroyear utilises a toy Weeble to destroy a formidable-looking multi-armed robot; “This is a fine weapon! I’ll not leave it behind!”

Written by: Cullen Bunn & Jimmy Johnston, Art by: Max Dunbar, and Colors by: Ander Zarate

Star Wars #19 - Marvel Comics

STAR WARS No. 18, July 2016

Despite being the sixth best-selling title in May 2016, at least according to “Diamond Comic Distributors”, Issue Nineteen of “Star Wars” must still have had many of its 95,156 readers initially scratching their heads in puzzlement with its opening sequence involving Leia, Sana and Doctor Aphra facing off against Sunspot Prison’s fearless intruder beneath the underbelly of the Millennium Falcon. For whilst Leinil Francis Yu’s prodigiously pencilled tense confrontation is certainly packed with plenty of pulse-pounding gravitas, courtesy of Starros agreeing to kill Darth Vader’s misguided ally in cold-blood so as to ensure the safety of a helplessly unconscious Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, the actual circumstances of the smuggling pair’s capture isn’t even mentioned, and resultantly must have had some within this book’s audience nervously pursuing their collection of back issues in order to make certain that they hadn’t inadvertently missed an edition or two.

Indeed, considering that this twenty-page periodical’s opening word crawl ends with “Han and Luke… arriving in time for the unknown attacker to reveal himself” the fact that the publication subsequently begins showing the duo already impotently tied to one of the leg struts of the modified YT-1300 Corellian light freighter wearing grenade garlands is offputtingly jarring. Certainly the scene distractingly raises several questions concerning just how Obi Wan Kenobi’s protégé and the scruffy-looking pilot were so seemingly easily incapacitated at a time when Jason Aaron probably wanted his narrative’s bibliophiles to be solely concentrating upon Princess Organa’s emotional argument as to why Eneb Ray should spare her friends; “Don’t Hurt them. Look, I’ll put my blaster down. And then we can talk about…”

Unhappily, just as disappointing is the Alabama-born author’s revelation that the main antagonist behind his “Rebel Jail” script is simply a lesser-known character from this ongoing series’ first annual rather than perhaps one of George Lucas’ better known scum or villains. Admittedly, the former spy who successfully “infiltrated the Imperial bureaucracy on Coruscant” has the aptitude necessary to both overcome Sunspot Prison’s security systems and lead a team of droids to take the incarceration facility’s control room by force. But it still arguably seems shockingly wasteful to turn one of the Rebellion’s few figures who could apparently attempt to assassinate the Emperor Palpatine into little more than a deranged anti-hero simply for the sake of an unremarkable story-line…

The regular cover art of "STAR WARS" No. 19 by Leinil Yu & Sunny Gho

Aliens: Dust To Dust #4 - Dark Horse Comics

ALIENS: DUST TO DUST No. 4, January 2019

Wholly successful in his mission “to tell the story from the point of view of a twelve-year-old boy… because that’s the age I was when first exposed to Aliens”, Gabriel Hardman’s conclusion to this four-issue “Dark Horse Comics” mini-series must have satisfied the vast majority of its eagerly awaiting audience when the book’s closing instalment was finally released in January 2019. Indeed, the Hugo Award-nominee’s decision not “to write about marines or anyone who seems like they could stand up to the Xenomorphs” genuinely seems to imbue his narrative with all the “extraordinarily scary and difficult circumstances” fans of the franchise would expect, yet make the publication even more pulse-pounding as a result of these blood-curdling challenges being faced by a “kid”.

Of course, that isn’t to say that the young orphan doesn’t need the help of others in order to successfully survive his ordeal on the planet LV-871, as one of the biggest shocks contained within Issue Four of “Aliens: Dust To Dust” is the revelation that Assistant Administrator Waugh is actually a Synthetic, whose limited functioning resultantly requires Maxon to “retrieve the sharpest piece of metal debris you can find in the shipwreck… [And] cut off my head.” But the boy still needs to climb “the whole way up” the nearby facility’s tower so as to reach the Evac Shuttle at the top and subsequently throw back the spacecraft’s throttle “twenty-seven percent” so as to “stay on the outlined orbital trajectory.”

Likewise, Hardman manages to produce another surprise in depicting Anne’s alien sacrificing itself in order to thwart the Queen Xenomorph from literally devouring this comic’s remaining protagonists towards the end of the twenty-page periodical. This demonstration of maternal instinct is all the more unanticipated due to the author’s one-armed creation previously seeming to attack the fair-haired lad when his party is lead into the colony’s storage chamber, and is only stopped by a hydraulically-powered mechanical arm slamming it aside just before it can impale the terrified boy; “You guys go! Get to the shuttle! It won’t hurt me!.. Ahhh!”

Also adding to this book’s claustrophobically-chilling atmosphere are Gabriel’s somewhat scratchily-drawn panels, with the penciller’s preference “to draw comic stories with… a lot of darkness” providing its action-sequences with plenty of terrifying appeal. Indeed, if the illustrator were telling “a bright, happy story” then he most certainly would “not be the guy for the job.” However, as “this is Aliens” the motion picture story-board artist is undeniably “a pretty good fit.”

Script and Art: Gabriel Hardman, Lettering: Michael Heisler, and Coloring: Rain Beredo

Micronauts [2016] #9 - IDW Publishing

MICRONAUTS No. 9, January 2017

“Stranded on a world full of giants” with “relics from Microspace… all around”, Cullen Bunn’s script for Issue Nine of “Micronauts” certainly must have shown its 5,022 readers the gusto with which the Bram Stoker Award-nominee had grasped his chance to “build my own version of the Micronauts strange microscopic cosmos.” For whilst Oziron Rael and his team-mates spend the entire twenty-page periodical’s narrative firmly rooted on modern-day Earth, the American author’s introduction of the Kronus and their time-travelling mechanical ruler, allows him to develop an intriguingly complicated backstory behind all of “these wild toys” which tells of a time where the Entropy Cloud “sweeps across Microspace consuming everything in its path” and disconcertingly strands its pitiful few survivors thousands of years in the future…  

Indeed, despite being significantly conversation-heavy and dialogue-driven, the opening third of this publication arguably conjures up all manner of exciting possibilities for its lead cast, following the Egyptian-influenced automaton’s revelation that the Pharoid momentarily has access to the entire recorded “history of doomed Microspace” and the possibility of creating a “different result” for it; “That string represents everything you know. But what if you could take a second string from the pot? You now have two different timelines. All of time and space is an infinite amount of strings in a pot larger than you can fathom. A different string can be chosen.”

Admittedly, the arrival of Commander Klain’s mercenary forces and willingness to “afford a little collateral damage” soon dispels any notion that Oz will actually be able to utilise any learning from the events inscribed upon the ancient civilisation’s buildings in hieroglyphics. But the seed of the titular characters having endless adventures exploring numerous prehistoric sites searching for “an inter-dimensional portal” back to their own universe is well and truly planted, even if it is then superseded by a high-octane battle between the likes of the time casket’s insectoid-like people and Mister Mayhem’s military team.

Packed full of grenade explosions, laser fire, tiny winged extra-terrestrials and the Heliopolis’ doomed evacuation of the surviving Kronus, this book’s final third is about as pulse-pounding as one could debatably hope for. In fact, its fast-paced, pulse-pounding panels show off artist Max Dunbar’s drawing ability at its dynamic best, especially when the genetically engineered super-warrior, Acroyear, is pencilled rescuing his hapless captain from the dastardly clutches of Klain by slicing the Earthman’s fingers right off with his power sword.

Written by: Cullen Bunn & Jimmy Johnston, Art by: Max Dunbar, and Colors by: Ander Zarate