I was sorely disappointed with this volume. I loved volume 1. It was a recap of the Hulk’s earliest adventures mixed in with the exotic alien artist Bareet. Her and her cosmic magic bag of tricks were a delight as she sought the Hulk and Rick Jones’ help to defeat a hideous race of invading aliens. Sadly, Bareet was written out of this magazine after it was decided to make Rampaging Hulk more like the hit live action television show starring Bill Bixby.
Since the series was written and published as a magazine, it wasn’t subject to the Comics Code. So, some more adult themes were up for grabs in this book. For example, in one story, Bruce Banner takes refuge at a Manhattan Y, he’s nearly gang raped by a pair of homosexuals. In another story, Banner juggles an abused drug addict and a suicidal single mother. There’s some very frank story lines in this volume that you wouldn’t have seen in a normal 48 page monthly. It’s just really weird to see such mature themes in a 70's comic dealt with such grittiness. Did Martin Scorsese craft these?
The biggest thing this volume has going for it is the art. The magazine was originally published in stark black and white. It made for some fantastic experiments with shadow. Graphite has never come in so many shades.
But while the art clearly benefits from the black and white of both the original format and the newsprint reprinting, one areas that was overlooked was the lettering. I’m not sure how it looked back in 1981, but using dark letters on a charcoal gray shaded letter box is very hard to read in a black and white reprint. Why the editors at Marvel did not retouch these is beyond me. But it also meant that several stories were difficult to follow as the lettering was unreadable.
Speaking of editing, in the next to last story, I found a big typo. A woman who picks Bruce up in her truck refers to both her betrothed and her new suitor with the same name. However, the new paramour’s name was referred to just a couple of panels earlier as a different name. I bet if I had found this when the magazine was originally, I would have won a coveted Stan Lee ‘No Prize” which was a honorary accolade given to astute Marvel Comics readers back in the day.
I did enjoy reading this volume. The art is some of my favorite in all of my years of reading comics. Yet with it’s new format of no holds barred material and poor lettering, this wasn’t as good as volume 1. Things did pick up towards the later issues, but the series was cancelled before these improvements were implemented to win back readership. Oh, well.
Worth Consuming.
Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.
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