Waiting for the Trade = Hulk vs. Avengers

Waiting for the Trade

Hulk Smash Avengers

written by Tom Defalco, Joe Casey, Roger Stern, Jim McCann and Fred Van Lente

art by Ron Frenz, Max Fiumara, Karl Molinem Agustin Padilla & Michael Avon Oeming

collects Hulk Smash Avengers #1-5

Why I Bought This: I erroneously thought the entire mini-series was by Tom Defalco and as I’ve often said Defalco is the best choreographer of fight scenes in Marvel history and as this book seemed like it would be chock full of fight scenes I’d intended to pick it up in trade back when I first heard about it in miniseries form.

The Plot: Released in conjunction with the first Avengers film, each chapter is set in a different decade (real time) featuring Hulk battling various line-ups of the Avengers.

(Spoilers below)

Chapter 1 – Set shortly after Hulk quit the Avengers, Cap and the original team are fighting Hulk in the southwest. They claim they just want to talk but Hulk refuses to hear them out. An avalanche separates Hulk from the heroes and Hulk leaves. Cap says they were going to offer Hulk a chance to rejoin the Avengers. Meanwhile, the Enchantress has seen everything with her magic and she teleports the Masters of Evil to Hulk where Zemo attempts to recruit him. He apparently succeeds as Hulk and the Masters (who also include Executioner and a robot built by Zemo) attack the Avengers. Hulk beats up Iron Man. Enchantress neutralizes the Pyms. Cap and the robot are fighting to a stalemate. Thor overcomes Executioner (with a lot of effort). Tony gets a laser shot in on Hulk’s eyes just as Hulk was about to finish him off. Cap decapitates the robot. Zemo takes Rick Jones hostage and taunts Cap by promising to kill Rick just as he did Bucky. This proves to be a big mistake because Hulk overhears it and Rick is Hulk’s only real friend in this era thus Hulk turns on Zemo. Pym sets an army of ants to crawl on Amora, which revolts her long enough for Wasp to get a shot in. Amora then teleports the villains away before they are overrun. Hulk also leaps off before hearing the Avengers’ offer.

Chapter 2 – We pick up shortly after the Korvac Saga when Henry Gyrich is the team’s liaison and limits them to seven members, and with the some of the new members’ government clearance yet to go through we have a team of just Cap, Wasp, Beast, Iron Man & Vision. Meanwhile Hulk is rampaging in California and Gyrich dispatches the team to deal with it. Vision tries to talk Hulk down using his intangibility to prevent being smashed. Of course a fight breaks out, with Iron Man and Vision doing the bulk of the work. During a break in the action Wasp has her original costume and is able to talk to Hulk about their founding of the Avengers which gets Hulk to walk away from the fight (and the town he was menacing).

Chapter 3 – We cut to the early days of Captain Marvel v2.0’s time on the team as she trains with Hawkeye. We get a ton of downtime personal drama, which is weirdly out of place for a series like this. Hulk arrives at the mansion and is attacked by the lawn security tentacles. CM tries to talk to him but Hawkeye attacks. Captain America makes peace and then Hulk is attacked by Leader’s rubber humanoid robots. The Avengers and Hulk fight side by side with a line-up that includes She-Hulk, while Hulk has Banner’s brain (putting this just before Secret Wars). Ultimately, Banner directs CM into shorting out all the robots, and Hulk leaves on peaceful terms with the team.

Chapter 4 – We jump to the grey Mr. Fixxit Hulk working in Vegas for the mob. The West Coast Avengers get called in to deal with this for some reason (seriously, when have the Avengers ever fought the mob?). Inexplicably, Fixxit can shoot down a quinjet with a tommy gun to start the fight. The WCA proves unable to hurt Hulk at all.; but then Tony and Fixxit negotiate an understanding and the WCA leave.

Chapter 5 –In the aftermath of World War Hulk SHIELD is holding Banner prisoner and Tony visits his cell to ask for help figuring out Red Hulk’s identity. Their conversation is intercut with Red Hulk fighting the (Mighty) Avengers. Red Hulk is mostly winning that fight and then takes it to the next level by using a live missile as a bludgeoning object (causing it to detonate) for the victory. Tony shows video footage of the fight to Banner, who deduces Red Hulk’s identity but refuses to share it with Tony.

Critical Thoughts – This is not good. The biggest problem is the title promises fights but in fact the book is a retcon of how Hulk has always been an Avenger at heart. Correspondingly, every story ends the same with Hulk and the Avengers talking things out and Hulk walking away.

Taking it chapter by chapter, the first story is Defalco’s and it is the only one that even partially delivers. It’s not a great fight scene but it delivers more action than any other chapter while capturing the simple tone of Silver Age Avengers’ comics.

The 70’s chapter is just sort of there. It does have elements of the era’s tone but it’s not much of fight and less of a resolution. I’m not sure I buy dumb Hulk having nostalgia for his Avengers’ membership and walking away just because Wasp is wearing an old costume. This ending is further weakened since every subsequent ending with Banner in this book is too similar to this one.

The Roger Stern story is way too talky, although it is nice to see him write Monica Rambeu (Captain Marvel/Spectrum) again. I mean love Roger Stern’s run on the Avengers as much as everyone, but do we really need to see 30 year old personal drama subplots that were already concluded back in the day revisited? This chapter’s Hulk-Avengers fight boils down to exactly one arrow from Hawkeye before Cap talks Hulk down. If Stern wanted to write a team-up story with his Avengers and the Banner-Hulk I’d be all for it if they were actually fighting the Leader or if Stern had something new to say but to just have them fight the Leader’s underlings without ever seeing the mastermind while serving up the same mundane ending as every other chapter in this thing is just a waste of time.

I hate the West Coast Avengers chapter, which is a real shame because I love the original WCA comics. However it is because I love that era that I can’t ignore the continuity errors in this chapter. First of all, Wonder Man alone should be able to take down Fixxit as the Fixxit Hulk is a much weaker Hulk than any of the other versions, whereas Wonder Man was at his strongest in this era with strength rivaling Thor. In the context of this book it is just odd that the entire WCA team is completely ineffectual against the weakest Hulk, while a short-handed makeshift team holds their own with the green savage Hulk in chapter two. (Plus there is the WTF moment of a gun shooting down a quinjet). The biggest failure is the resolution has Tony and Hulk talking things out but Tony’s identity wasn’t publicly known back then, and given this story would be occuring immediately after Obidiah Stane had learned Tony’s identity and firebombed his office thus killing, injuring and kidnapping several of Tony’s supporting cast; I don’t see Tony sharing his identity with any Hulk—let alone a new gruff personality that works for the mob in this era.

I haven’t read much of Red Hulk but I don’t see him successfully taking on Ms. Marvel, Wonder Man, Sentry and Ares simultaneously—who are all near Hulk level individually; (with Sentry ridiculously overpowered most of the time). More to the point, who cares? Red Hulk did nothing but fight other heroes in his own book (from Iron Man to Thor to She Hulk to X-Force to the Lady Liberators), which wasn’t that long ago; so why are we including him a nostalgia series?

Grade: F. It would seem impossible to fail to deliver on a premise as simple as Hulk Smash Avengers and yet here you have it.