The Immortal Hulk

Bruce Banner takes center stage for the majority of this story arc in “The Immortal Hulk.”

Banner is the scientist who unleashed the Hulk, or Hulks, on the world as he saved a teenager from a gamma-bomb test blast. Here, he issues a video manifesto against the human world. He is angry – but it’s a controlled anger – about the ridiculous sum of government money spent to unsuccessfully stop the Hulk. Money, he argues, that could have been better spent on education, medicine, renewable energy, but would have likely still been spent on weapons.

The story meanders into Roxxon territory. Roxxon is the global conglomerate ruled by a business-savvy minotaur – seen mostly in Thor comics the past several years. 

Roxxon also spends a lot of money to battle the Hulk but the minotaur’s ploy is to boost stock dividends by appearing to corral the Hulk. Stocks plunge when the Hulk refuses to play the game and destroys Roxxon’s Hulkbusters. The minotaur is not pleased and opts to no longer play his own game either.

“We Believe in Bruce Banner” does not have the chills of the past “Immortal Hulk” run. Al Ewing has created a true horror comic with “The Immortal Hulk” but this story arc veers toward the big monster fights of Godzilla rather than the more intimate terror of Frankenstein.

Still, the exploration of Banner and his many Hulk psyches as well as what fuels the power and personalities of other gamma-powered beings in his orbit is fascinating.