#jarella

[merrymarvelite]

Cover of the Day: What If? #23 (October, 1980) Art by John Buscema, Al Milgrom

[omercifulheaves]

The Incredible Hulk Art by Herb Trimpe Love it when Marvel characters go all John Carter.

[funnypages]

Hulk has all the luck

[heckcareoxytwit]

The world is in deep trouble with the Chaos War when every living creatures are asleep, the dead have risen and the monsters are running around. The few people who are still around to deal with the chaos are Hulk (Bruce Banner), She-Hulk (Jennifer Walters), Skaar, Red She-Hulk (Betty Ross), A-Bomb (Rick Jones) and Korg. However, it's not only that they have to fight those monsters, they have to fight the undead Abomination and demonically-possessed Doctor Strange as well as they have to find Marlo Chandler the avatar of Death. Upon seeing the monsters leaving them, the wounded A-Bomb realizes that they are heading for Marlo and he urges Bruce to find her before the monsters could catch her. Bruce Banner reassures A-Bomb that they are making a teleporter and they could reach her before the monsters could. Then, Bruce Banner tosses his handphone to A-Bomb to call his ex-wife for her whereabouts.

In Arizona, Marlo is wandering around when she receives A-Bomb's call and noticing the living beings sleeping while the long-dead walk the Earth. Then, the demons emerge from the ground to catch her. The cowboys try to defend her but it doesn't work. Luckily, Hulk's team arrive just in time to save her from the demons. Marlo notices A-Bomb's injuries but when she embraces him, the latter suddenly bursts out with blood, which hits the teleporter and destroys it. Banner advises Marlo that since she has a piece of Death power in which she mustn't touch the nearly-dead.

An hour later, Skaar puts together a bunker to protect Marlo. Realizing that they may go against impossible odds, Marlo decides to use her Death powers to summon up some reinforcements such as Doc Samson, Jarella, Glenn Talbot and Hiroim. Everybody have a tearful reunion with their friends and except for Red She-hulk who is angry with Glenn Talbot for betraying her. Samson informs Red She-Hulk that the Talbot who deceived her was, in fact, a robot. As Talbot apologizes for being a bad husband, Red She-Hulk turns back into Betty. Just then, Zom (the demon possessing Doctor Strange) and Abomination attack the heroes. Marlo and A-bomb take shelter in the bunker while the Hulks and their allies hold off their foes. However, just when it seems that they are actually winning, Abomination summons the Hulk's mother and father, the latter having turned into a monstrous version of Devil Hulk.

Incredible Hulks #619, 2010

[tomoleary]

Ed McGuinness and Dexter Vines Hulk #12 Splash Page 22 Jarella Original Art (Marvel, 2009) Source

[wanderingmind867]

Is it weird that I kind of want She-Hulk to still express a dichotomy between her normal self and her hulk form? I kind of want She-Hulk and Jennifer Walters to have a different type of dichotomy from Bruce Banner and the Hulk, but we still need a duality thing. I think subtlety could be key. She-Hulk seems like a very confident character, so I would spin it so Jennifer Walters is deeply insecure and She-Hulk serves as the embodiment of her buried confidence and assertiveness. Hulk represents anger, but I think confidence is an untapped root for a character like this. I'm not the most knowledgeable on the character, so this might've already been something marvel experimented with. But I don't get that impression from anything. I never see Jennifer Walters, I only ever see She-Hulk. And that makes the character feel weird to me, as my biggest draw for liking Hulk was liking the dichotomy of his mental turmoil. She-Hulk shouldn't be a rip off of her cousin, but I think some exploration of this stuff would be a perfectly natural thing to hope for.

I keep worrying I'm gonna seem critical, do this second paragraph is gonna involve me hedging my bets by complaining about a nearly identical problem I have with Hulk himself. I hate the general concept of the Professor Hulk era of hulk comics. I think it destroys the duality that made hulk relatable to me, and it just makes hulk feel very generic. I think my ideal world involves Hulk and Bruce Banner simply earning a happy ending and winning acceptance without constant death and attempted "cures" for Hulk. Hulk stories feel like they never end positively in the 60s, 70s and 80s. I think the death of Jarella is something that makes me hesitant to even read beyond it. Because that felt like the closest point we had to a happy ending, and then it's cruelly ripped from the character. It actually annoys me more than you'd expect. To the point where (back when I was making comic book reading lists) I had to stop at that point for hulk comics because I was so mad. I'm getting side tracked, aren't I? Okay, let's fix this.

In essence, I think She-Hulk and Hulk both need to keep the two forms dichotomy going. I don't read hoping to just see them in one form. No, I read for both their characterisations. I also think the death of jarella was a horrible thing for hulk comics, and I'm still annoyed just by reading about it online.

[kryptonbabe]

by Herb Trimpe for The Hulk Marvel Calendar 1979, inspired by The Incredible Hulk #140: The Brute that Shouted Love at the Heart of the Atom!

[bringbackwendellvaughn]