Marvel Knights: Hulk: Transforme by Joe Keatinge
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Bruce Banner wakes up floating in the Seine in Paris; he’s been shot, and he doesn’t know why or who he is. People are chasing him; they want him to unleash the Hulk so they can use it for their own means. Only problem is…Banner doesn’t know who he (OR Hulk) is, so he can’t unleash the beast.
Eventually, we get a SUPER Hulk, when Banner is injected with Abomination/Synthetic Hulk serum. He’s HUGE! Destroys a chunk of Paris at the whim of a lady who’s the child of AIM researchers and Assassin DNA…yup.
So she manages to get Hulk to do her bidding for a time, until Banner makes a return from the void of wherever he’s been banished to.
Eventually, we see that Doom/MODOK/Midas have all been aware of this since the beginning, and we’re lead to believe that maybe they have been responsible for the Hulk? Or maybe just the girl who’s trying to use him for her own problems.
This is more of a cerebral volume on the duality of Hulk/Banner and struggle for identity and control. However…don’t worry Jeff, there’s a TON of HULK SMASH! and HULK SMASH A SHITLOAD!
As a bonus, we get a reprint of the #1 issue of Hulk by Stan the Man and Jack Kirby. It’s a bit hokey, but there’s some solid stuff there (which has been echoed in the story we just read). It’s cool to see, and shines some insight onto the creators’ ideas of what the book is about.
One thing I did love, was that the Hulk Green is all over the book. The art is almost sepia/bland tones, so that when the Green shows up, it’s all you can focus on. I particularly enjoyed neon Gamma Green bursts of colour.
An interesting idea, decent story, we’ll let the resident Hulk expert Jeff tell us if it’s worth Hulk-lovers time.
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