Hulk: World War Hulk II (2018)

Another Amadeus Cho/Totally Awesome Hulk story released under the more general Hulk title. A lot of what goes on here follows from the events of the last two volumes, so there will be some spoilers from My Best Friends are Monsters and Return to Planet Hulk.

Amadeus has always maintained that he exercises complete control over his Hulk, but that’s a lot less true than he’s been willing to admit, and over the last few volumes, that control has been weakening further. When he returns to Earth after his time in Sakaar, Amadeus isn’t the one in the driver’s seat. His sister Maddy and his hero friends are faced with the sobering – not to mention massively difficult task – of going up against the Hulk.

There’s a lot of neat stuff going on here. I really like the form that Amadeus’s Hulk takes, both how he operates when he’s in control of their body (very different from Bruce Banner and his Hulk) and how he interacts with Amadeus in their subconscious. I also like Amadeus’s attempts to reassert control and protect Maddy and his friends from the Hulk.

Speaking of which, let’s look at the rest of our cast of characters. It’s a good volume for Maddy, who demonstrates once again that, even if she doesn’t quite have Amadeus’s impressive world-intelligence ranking, she’s never one to be counted out. She’s very on the ball here and is basically working full-out to try and solve the problem at hand without hurting Amadeus.

The rest of the volume is filled with quite the cache of heroes. We get appearances from the majority of major characters who’ve shown up in previous volumes, from heroes who clashed with Amadeus in Civil War II (like Captain Marvel and Black Panther,) friends he worked with in Big Apple Showdown (like Silk, Ms. Marvel, and Jimmy Woo,) and Thor, who showed up last volume in Sakaar. We also get Miles Morales’s Spider-Man (that’s right, two spider-people in a single arc in a Hulk story – it’s a beautiful world.) Yeah, and a bonus inclusion of the first issue of the original World War Hulk – with Banner’s Hulk – features Iron Man, Doctor Strange, She-Hulk, Mr. Fantastic (my brain is too MCU-oriented, as I always forget that the Fantastic Four and the X-Men can hang out with these characters too,) and more. Phew!

So, the way I understand it, these last two volumes have transitioned Amadeus out of The Totally Awesome Hulk (which I think is no more?), but he’s being folded into a new title based on the pan-Asian/Asian-American superhero team-up we got in Big Apple Showdown. Written by Greg Pak, who penned The Totally Awesome Hulk, a new series (limited series? not sure) featuring an even bigger team-up is underway: The New Agents of Atlas. Since I loved Big Apple Showdown, I’m always down for more Kamala Khan, and I’m interested to see where Amadeus goes from here, I’m sure that’ll be worth a read.

Hulk: Return to Planet Hulk (2018)

Even though this arc wasn’t released under the Totally Awesome Hulk title, it’s still definitely an Amadeus Cho story.  It follows directly from the events at the end of the last volume, and it continues Amadeus’s internal struggle with his Hulk (spoilers for the ending of My Best Friends are Monsters.)

Concerned about his lessening control over the Hulk, Amadeus has sequestered himself in a manned space probe where he can research and experiment far away from anyone who might get hurt.  But while he does keep a wide berth from humans, the self-imposed isolation is short-lived.  Amadeus follows a distress call to the planet Sakaar, a harsh world ruled by the oppressive War Lord.  Bruce Banner’s Hulk was once a gladiator in Sakaar’s brutal arena, and now, the planet’s subjugated clans call on Amadeus to be their champion, battling for their survival and freedom.

The basic set-up for Sakaar and the situation of its peoples is easy enough to understand, but having seen Thor:  Ragnarok gave me a quicker “in” to the world and more immediate interest in the story to follow.  There’s even a fun Ragnarok reference in the middle that made me laugh out loud.

The story has some good points, but it does retread a bit.  The last volume took Amadeus to a pretty vulnerable place in regards to his Hulk and made it look like he was ready to confront some of the darker truths to be found there, but this arc puts him back in denial mode, insistent that he’s in complete control and can access the Hulk’s power without facing up to the scarier side of things.

Still, it does go to some interesting places.  Sakaar is a harsh place, and many of the people there want the monster.  Time and time again, they call on Amadeus to unleash the “world-breaker.”  In the fights set to him by the War Lord, they continually see him as holding back, jeopardizing his chances of victory by refusing to kill.  Considering the fact that all of their lives depend on him beating the War Lord’s champions, this worries them.  At one point, Amadeus is even told that it’s selfish of him to risk their lives for the sake of keeping his hands clean.  Yes, it’s kind of a classic genre-hero conundrum – how do the good guys win when they don’t kill, even though the bad guys do? – but it comes off well, especially when combined with the prospect of Amadeus, the one who always counts on himself to solve any problem, having to give up total control of his mind and body in the process (even if only for a short time.)

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.