"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

The Totally Awesome Hulk, Vol. 4: My Best Friends are Monsters (2018)


This is an unusual volume of The Totally Awesome Hulk in that, while all the stories inside do center around Amadeus Cho, only two of them are actually from The Totally Awesome Hulk (and even then, they don’t neatly follow one another.)  The rest are issues from other comics featuring Amadeus.  There is a certain level of continuity between them, at least thematically, but the overall result does feel a little jumbled, which detracts from the impact of the volume as a whole.

Basically, we see a lot of Amadeus/the Hulk bouncing from place to place, interacting with other heroes and fighting various threats.  He’s attacked by Weapon X, infused with the DNA of Wolverine and several other mutants.  He meets the super-smart, pint-sized Lunella and the Devil Dinosaur she accidentally brought into our time.  He fights a monster in South Korea that plays with his mind and challenges his perceptions.  An unexplained encounter with an old friend forces him to face up to himself, and with the help of some of his friends, he confronts his Hulk once and for all.

An interesting collection of titles here, most of which I hadn’t really known about before.  I’d never heard of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, but, while it seems pitched too young for me on the whole, I enjoyed it quite a bit and loved young Lunella’s complete impatience with Amadeus.  Monsters Unleashed provides the South Korea story, which is neat, and I’m intrigued by the idea of Generations, which seems to be a means of bringing characters together regardless of time or storyline, allowing for some meaty storytelling opportunities.

Overall, it’s kind of disjointed, but there are running themes that connect these various stories.  Chiefly, we’re looking at Amadeus’s hubris:  the cockiness that allows him to bluster in to save the day even when it’d be wiser to hang back, as well as the denial of insisting that he’s a different kind of Hulk than Banner, not bound by same lack of control.  While this thread isn’t immediately obvious at the start, the further you read into the volume, the clearer it becomes.

Things come to a head in the final two issues, which are my favorites.  The Generations story makes Amadeus realize he can’t keep ignoring the implications of the Hulk anymore, packing a strong emotional punch, and the last Totally Awesome Hulk issue features the return of some of the guest stars from Big Apple Showdown (including my fave Ms. Marvel), along with T’Challa.  In addition to the terrific scenes of superheroes hanging out together, eating catfish tacos and kimchi, we also get a cool exploration of Amadeus as a character, the fear and anger that drive him, and what his Hulk really means.  This wasn’t my favorite volume overall to read, but it looks like it’s setting up some great stuff to come.

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