Tag Archives: Bruce Banner

Nov 25 2013

Indestructible Hulk 15

hulk 15

Today, Shelby and Spencer are discussing Indestructible Hulk 15, originally released November 20th, 2013.

Shelby: Games have rules for a reason. Everyone has to know how to play (and how to win), and rules lay that out. A game without rules is chaos, which for a game like Calvinball is precisely the point. The only rule of Calvinball is you can’t play the game the same way twice: essentially, the only rule is whatever rules are made are to be broken. When there are no rules, you can do whatever you want. Worried about consequences? Why bother, there’s no rule that says there will be any! While it might be kind of freeing to play a game with no rules, when you’re dealing with time, history, and your very existence, rules are pretty damn important. So when Bruce Banner finds himself facing his own past, an irradiated Hulk, a potentially Hulk-less future, and a timestream so broken it can be shaped like clay, he knows he needs to act fast before it’s too late, if it isn’t already.
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Oct 21 2013

Indestructible Hulk Special 1

hulk special 1Today, Greg and Taylor are discussing Indestructible Hulk Special 1, originally released October 16th, 2013. This issue is part of the three-part Arms of the Octopus story.

Greg: A friend of mine asked me the other night, “If a guy teleported in front of you, told you he was a time traveler, and asked what year it was, how would you respond?” We’re both comedy folks, so I imagine he was looking to start riffing. Yet rather than fire off any number of instinctual punchlines (“What year is it? Why, it’s Christmas Year, sir!” is one of the many perfect ideas I had), I decided to pause, think, and mull over what I, Greg Smith, human being, would actually do if that actually happened.

“I would probably try to ask him who he was, stammer out panicked words, and then fall over.” And that truth, over any dumb joke I could’ve invented, made him laugh.
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Oct 2 2013

Avengers Assemble 19

avengers assemble 19 infinityToday, Patrick and Spencer are discussing Avengers Assemble 19, originally released September 25th, 2013. This issue is part of the Infinity crossover event. Click here for complete Infinity coverage.

infinity dividerPatrick: The Avengers is a fairly masculine construct. I recognize that most superhero teams are, but this one in particular makes you really look for the contributing female members. On a team that just recently exploded to include over 20 members, there are five women in group, two of which are bizarrely abstract concepts (Abyss, the Universe). They don’t perceive the world or act like human beings, let alone as human women. That leaves Captain Marvel, Black Widow and Spider-Woman – none of whom have gotten much attention in the main Infinity series or either of the flagship tie-ins. Kelly Sue DeConnick has been tasked with injecting a little feminine energy into the saga. Unfortunately, she’s made to retread the same events endlessly, and ground the same emotional beats into a fine paste for easy digestion. Well, Infinity fans, open up: we’ve got a piping hot serving of emotional paste for you… I just can’t promise that it’s fresh.

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Sep 16 2013

Indestructible Hulk 13

Alternating Currents: Indestructible Hulk 13, Drew and EthanToday, Drew and Ethan are discussing Indestructible Hulk 13, originally released September 11th, 2013.

Drew: Hulk is indestructible. It’s a fact so indisputable, Marvel went ahead and put it right in the title of the series. That is to say, there isn’t much tension to be garnered from the question of whether something might destroy him. Like Gloria Gaynor, Hulk will survive. He’ll also likely smash whatever tries to destroy him. There aren’t really going to be any surprises on his part, so much of the interest in the failed attempt to destroy/successful attempt to get smashed must come from the other side of the equation — the one attempting to harm the Hulk. Fortunately, writer Mark Waid is no slouch when it comes to coming up with interesting villains for Hulk to face. Continue reading →

Aug 28 2013

Thunderbolts 14

thunderbolts14

Today, you and Patrick are discussing Thunderbolts 14, originally released August 21st, 2013. This issue is part of the Infinity crossover event. Click here for complete Infinity coverage.

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Patrick: You might have guessed this from the name, but “Infinity” is a pretty big story. Not just in terms of page count (though, it should be pretty astonishing in that regard), but in terms of scope. It’s already taken two dozen Avengers into deep space for some interstellar warfare, and there’s still the yet-unexplored threat of Thanos invading Earth. Jonathan Hickman was said to have been setting up Infinity in his Avengers and New Avengers series – which he…. sorta did. Most of what those series accomplish — in terms of setting up this event — is that they introduce the relevant superhero teams. Each team battles its own cataclysmic threats, only to be cut short when the main aggressors of Infinity entered the fray. Issue 14 of Thunderbolts is this concept in miniature: complete with team introductions and a mission cut short by alien invaders.

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Aug 26 2013

Avengers Assemble 18

avengers assemble 18 infinity

Today, Ethan and Drew are discussing Avengers Assemble 18, originally released August 21st, 2013. This issue is part of the Infinity crossover event. Click here for complete Infinity coverage.

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Ethan: Ever since the birth of the film industry, it’s been a race for the technology and craft to keep suspending our disbelief as we become desensitized to each decade’s best special effects. Every once in a while, a filmmaker pulls off an innovation that jumps way ahead of our expectations, and the medium feels special again. And even while fancy visuals can surprise us, if the movie forgets that it’s supposed to have a plot and just chucks those visuals at our eyeballs for two hours without going anywhere, it feels like a waste. We talked about the long build-up to the Infinity arc, and then the first issue felt like a much more violent version of the grand finale at a fireworks show. With so many pyrotechnics and most of the characters strapped in to acceleration harnesses, it would have been easy to become distracted by the spaceships and forget the people inside of them. To balance out our view of that battle, Avengers Assemble 18 rewinds all the way back to the pre-launch scene and tells the story all over again from the perspective of one character: Jessica Drew, Spider-Woman.

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Aug 23 2013

Indestructible Hulk 12

hulk 12

Today, Shelby and Ethan are discussing Indestructible Hulk 12, originally released August 21st, 2013.

Shelby: “Whatever happened, happened.”

“Save the clocktower!”

“Dust. Wind. Dude.”

Time travel in stories can be heavy, paradox-laden stuff. When I first saw the episode of LOST with the [SPOILER ALERT] photo of Jack and Hurley on the island in the seventies, my brain imploded; the “it happened this way because it always happened this way” approach to time travel is somehow both the easiest and hardest explanation to understand. You can also go back in time to change the future, though as a real-world solution it is far too dangerous. Who knows the web of effects your actions will have? Just ask anyone in the Marvel universe, they’ll tell you. Or, time travel can be utterly meaningless: no paradox, no consequences, just “we traveled in time and it was neat!” Mark Waid’s Indestructible Hulk takes a slightly different approach; Hulk and Banner-bot have gone back in time to save the present, but not from things that did happen in history, from things that didn’t happen in history. And when the time stream is as broken as it is, a little more time travel can’t really make things any worse.
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Aug 22 2013

Avengers 18

avengers 18 infinityToday, Spencer and Drew are discussing Avengers 18, originally released August 21st, 2013. This issue is part of the Infinity crossover event. Click here for complete Infinity coverage.

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Spencer: I’m not a huge fan of the genre, so this might be a complete oversimplification, but in my mind most war stories seem to be divided into two categories: the stories that are about glory, honor, and the beauty of warfare (which I’m not fond of), and the stories about the people who sacrifice themselves to protect others (which I appreciate more). Avengers 18, an Infinity tie-in, takes the form of a war story as the team joins a massive Anti-Builder Armada, and while it largely falls into that second category, a few early scenes even manage to make aspects of the first compelling to me.

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Aug 8 2013

Avengers 17

Alternating Currents: Avengers 17, Drew and Spencer

Today, Drew and Spencer are discussing Avengers 17, originally released August 7th, 2013. 

“Bigger?” Look, it’s not for one of the new guys to say, but — feeling kinda crowded around here already.

Cannonball

Drew: In our discussion of Avengers 16, I complained that the bloated story and cast was collapsing under its own weight — far from making me excited, the sheer scope of the story was preventing me from fully engaging with any subset of elements. It’s a feat that writer Jonathan Hickman can keep all of these plates spinning (and these are only half of the plates he’s writing in this event), but that triumph of multi-tasking unfortunately precludes any real emotional connections. That is to say, the story here is already too big, but as this issue concludes into Infinity proper, we pile on even more Avengers, and widen the scope even further. And there are still only, like, two showers. Continue reading →

Aug 5 2013

Indestructible Hulk 11

hulk 11

Today, Shelby and Patrick are discussing Indestructible Hulk 11, originally released July 31st, 2013.

Shelby: I recently saw Pacific Rim, and I absolutely loved it. Plot-wise, it was nothing special; case in point, it was the same as every other world-ending, hail-Mary-play sci-fi action flick I’ve ever seen. But that didn’t matter in the least because it was just so much fun to watch. The sheer joy I felt at watching giant robots punch those deep sea monsters is what made the movie so great. It’s simple, well-executed, and a ton of fun. This month’s issue of Indestructible Hulk sets us up for the same sort of situation. It’s probably not going to be quite so simple (time travel never is), but it promises time travel shenanigans in a messed up version of history with a surprising team-up, so I expect a lot of wacky, fun adventure to ensue.
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