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Review Date: Tuesday, December 30, 2008
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The
Incredible Hercules
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Greg Pak & Fred Van Lente: Writers
Clayton Henry & Salva Espin: Artists
Raul Trevino: Colorist
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Honorable
Bongo Congo citizen Ken Carson tells me that Marvel
changed-over The Incredible Hulk at issue #113 last
year to The Incredible Hercules. I was a fan
of the 1970's DC run of Hercules Unbound, so I thought
I'd check-out the latest Marvel take on our old-school
hero and see how he's holding-up these days.
Issue #113 is titled "Axis Mundi" and is part
three of an ongoing multi-issue story arc entitled
"Love & War." Its scripted by Greg Pak
and Fred Van Lente, with art by Clayton Henry &
Salva Espin. This is a story chock-full of a
lot of characters, from traditional Marvel Superheros
such as The Submariner and his cousin Namora,
to a wide range of Greek mythological characters.
The densely-packed plot centers on a group of Amazons
attempting to retrieve from the ocean an ancient artifact
known as the Omphalos, which legend says if brought
to the center of the world's power base (formerly
Atlantis, now Washington, D.C.) can be utilized to
control the world.
I enjoyed this take on Hercules and his adventures
for a few reasons. The modern-day sub-plot of
the story was enjoyable enough, but the creative team
elevated the story quality with very timely and entertaining
flashbacks to the original battle for control of the
world between The Titans and the three original Greek
brother-gods of Zeus, Pluto and Poseidon. The
flashback mythology was also extremely relevant to
the present-day sub-plot struggle among competing
factions of the Greek gods and the Amazons for power
and control of the world.
As I've mentioned in previous columns, I'm also a
huge fan of artists who are adept at portraying
a wide range of facial emotion in their work, and
the art team of Henry and Espin must now be added
to that list. They must be particularly commended
for a full-page spread detailing resident's reaction
to the fabled flood of Atlantis, as well their portrayal
of a teenaged Amazon-Gorgon hybrid warrior named Delphyne,
who is torn between assisting Hercules's young ally
Amadeus Cho with their side of the struggle versus
her fellow militant Amazons and their quest for ultimate
power.
Finally, the issue concludes in a nice cliffhanger
of power-struggle manipulation among the gods in a
modern-day corporate setting, reminiscent of the law
firm-boardroom world of the popular run of She-Hulk
just a few years ago. So all-in-all, a recommended
thumbs-up for a fresh and entertaining take on Hercules,
for its well-crafted combining of old-school mythology
with modern-day superhero story-telling.
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Iron
Man/Incredible Hulk/Nick Fury #1
Writer: Frank Tieri, Paul Tobin, Joe Caramagna
Artist:Hugo Petras, Salva Espin
Penciller: Ronan Cliquet
Colorist: Chris Sotomayor, Guru eFX
Letterer: Rus Wooton, Nate Piekos
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Marvel has a one-shot comic
out this week entitled Iron Man/The Incredible Hulk/Nick
Fury #1. Its clearly a marketing promo for
the Marvel Universe version being created in the
recent Iron Man movie and continuing in the upcoming
Avengers movie. Tony Stark is drawn in this
comic to look exactly like Robert Downey, Jr., while
Nick Fury is a drawn copy of the upcoming Avengers
movie star Samuel L. Jackson.
The key review consideration here is whether the
three mini-stories presented in this issue stand-alone
as enjoyable comic book tales or alternately serve
as weak promos for their movie tie-ins. From
my read of the comic, Marvel succeeds on two-and-a-half
out of three counts.
The Iron Man story is entitled "Fast Friends,"
and is the story that is only partly successful.
The first 7 pages are a dragged-out, fairly boring
extended series of scenes over-emphasizing that
Tony Stark is the shallow, self-centered jet-setter
that anyone who's ever read an Iron Man comic is
aware of, and doesn't need to see more than one
or two pages of in any story, ever again.
Fortunately, the remaining five pages of the story
balance-out the poor start, offering us a nice interaction
between Stark and agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as they
play an intellectual cat-and-mouse game over whether
Iron Man will work for the agency and whether or
not Stark will keep his Iron Man identity anonymous.
The remaining two stories are much more fresh and
enjoyable to read. "Incredible Hulk: The
Fury Files" gives us a 12-page plot of Nick Fury
conducting a surveillance operation on Bruce Banner,
knowing that he's of interest to General Ross but
trying to figure-out exactly why. How Fury
learns of Banner's Hulk alter ego and the resulting
meeting of the two makes for a high quality, enjoyable
story.
The final story, a 10-page tale entitled ""Nick
Fury: Spies Like Us," gives us a Cold War-era
spy thriller with Nick Fury on an undercover mission
in Eastern Europe. It's a non-superhero, traditional
spy-versus-spy tale with excellent intrigue and
action elements which bring-out Fury's personal
spy-guy abilities on a stand-alone basis, without
him needing to rely on his team or any heroes.
While the Iron Man story
didn't offer anything new here, the two Hulk/Nick
Fury stories were top notch, and made me want to see
the upcoming Samuel L. Jackson movie treatment as
well as read more Fury/Jackson comics. I understand
that Jackson actually gave Marvel permission this
past year to update recent Nick Fury storylines by
redrawing Fury in his image. If this issue is
any indication, the update comes-off very well, both
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Jonah
Hex #38
Publisher: DC Comics
Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti: Writers
Jordi Bernet: Art & Cover
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DC is currently up to issue #38 of its current run
of Western character Jonah Hex. For the uninitiated,
Jonah Hex first appeared in 1972 in All-Star Western
as a Clint Eastwood-type anti-hero. Hex was
an ex-Confederate soldier who after the Civil War
headed West for many a comic book adventure.
The right side of his face was severely scarred
from pre-Civil War days. Throughout the 1970's
and well into the 1980's, Hex was a staple of the
DC Universe, eventually in the 1990's even being
creatively written into more futuristic science
fiction and fantasy storylines.
The current Hex comic series is up to issue #38,
and is written by the Jimmy Palmiotti-Justin Gray
team that's currently scripting the Maelstrom mini-series
reviewed above, with art by Jordi Bernet.
The one-issue storyline, entitled "Hell Or High
Water," mainly consists of a detailed flashback
about a Western sheriff whose life went bad for
many reasons as detailed in this comic. The
sheriff blames Hex for his life's failures and is
telling the flashback story after having just beaten
Jonah Hex in a fistfight. He plans on killing
Hex, for reasons detailed in the flashback.
How Hex gets out of this predicament would ruin
any suspense, so I won't include it in this review.
This is a decent Western comic, of a genre that
was much more popular in the Golden and Silver ages
of comics and is rarely seen today. The writing
here is very strong, following the traditional Western
fiction story structure of lots of characters interacting
with each other both in action sequences and in
scenes of basic Western-style dialogue. Unfortunately,
Bernet's art here is not very good, or at least
not to my taste for a comic book; it's too cartoony
and sketchy in style, feeling unfinished and rough.
If the reader has no background understanding of
the Jonah Hex story, one wouldn't even notice his
facial scarring with Bernet's particular style.
While the below-average art keeps this comic from
being of high quality, the writing is so well representative
of the western fiction genre that this comic is
still a thumbs-up, and thus recommended to modern-day
fans of the underrepresented Western comic genre.
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