Those are fair points, which, because I basically got a summary of the events leading here, I didn't know.
The point remains that the very act of shooting the Hulk into space with a ship that easily could burst like a nuke was reckless, regardless of whatever science junk Reed attached to it. Hulk smashes stuff for a living, and if anyone, Reed should know that things in space sometimes run counter to all the planning in the world. That's how he got his powers and cursed his best buddy to become granite incarnate, right? If the explosion of the ship was not a deliberate "time bomb" type act, then the Illuminati are at least responsible for being reckless with not only a dangerous craft, but the Hulk.
I can understand the desperation of the Illuminati, I really do. The Hulk has been battled for years, and doesn't stay down. He can't be contained and every attempt to cure him, from Banner himself to even Reed & Stark, as the Prologue mentions, has failed. Marvel can't determine whether or not Hulk killed people in his latest rampage in Vegas, but even if he didn't, it simply is yet another rampage where people were at least ENDANGERED, and there was millions in destroyed property. The Hulk's actions haven't been limited to New York, he's stomped across the country for years. Yeah, he's stopped his share of menaces. There were long periods where either as Joe Fixit or "The Professor/Smart Hulk" he had control and was more of a hero. But inevitably, Hulk always remains unstable, and dangerous. I don't like the notion of him killing civilians, because you can't root for someone who does. But that doesn't negate him being dangerous.
From Hulk's perspective, he has been hated and manipulated for years. He's screamed, "LEAVE ME ALONE!" to the military and the superheroes for years, and they don't listen. And there have been plenty of times where, as the Hulk has justly noted, he was used merely because his strength was useful. I noted Onslaught as a fairly recent (yet distant) example, but there are far more. "Puny Banner" has tried to be rid of Hulk endless times and yet when push came to shove Hulk had to keep him alive; PAD notes that whether the real person at this point is Hulk or Banner is up in the air. Is Banner a guy who becomes the Hulk or the Hulk who becomes Banner and lacked power or a vessal until the gamma accident? The Hulk always sees his battles as acts of being provoked, and he is right maybe half of the time. Gen. Ross and the army have basically played war games with a near mindless brute for decades. Villains also have provoked him. The Hulk may have endangered people, smashed lots of property and at times threatened to murder heroes trying to do their job (or even reason with him), but he also has saved plenty of people. Yet to Hulk his "friends" abandon him, from Avenger to Defender. Being exiled was the final betrayal and so whether the explosion of the ship that nuked his planet & his family was deliberate or not, Hulk will see it that way, as the Illuminati built it.
FYI,
BrianWilly, I don't think Hulk wants to kill Professor X or Namor. In the PROLOGUE one-shot, PAD irons out who Hulk wants to defeat, and those two aren't mentioned. He wants Mr. Fantastic, Iron Man, Dr. Strange and Black Bolt. Right now he's gotten half.
Sure, there are two sides here, but there is some less complication. There's no hand-wringling about Congressional laws, no social debate of rights vs. security, none of that. Just a green behemoth from space who feels he has been wronged, and has some justification, out for superhero blood. And the superheroes, registered or not, banding together to make sure Manhattan Island isn't mashed to dust and see that he doesn't kill people in cold blood. As reckless as exiling Hulk to space was, the Illuminati didn't try to kill him. At least in the sense of beating him down until he wasn't breathing anymore, as Hulk wants to do to Iron Man & Co. They may have planned to either have him drift in space or land on some barren world, but that's not death. It was a space version of what Dr. Strange once did, exiling him to a Dimensional "Crossroads". The difference, which all sides forget, is Strange truly wanted Hulk to find happiness on some world, so part of the enchantment was that if Hulk landed on a world and didn't like it, he could basically wish himself back to the crossroads and try another world. True, this also endangered the lives of other people in other dimensions, but it didn't seem as crude. But, it also inevitably failed.
Of course, all these attempts to cure, control, or kill the Hulk HAVE to fail because the Hulk is a franchise and needs those things intact. In some ways comics have sometimes had issues with taking genre expectations and trying to make them seem deliberate and nefarious. But this one is a bit simplier and more workable, as there are countless past events of Hulk battling nearly every hero on the block and there being two sides to it.
Pak writes INCREDIBLE HULK and naturally is telling a lot of things from his perspective, as the counter arguements have been made by other writers, i.e. Bendis or PAD thus far. Millar proved utterly incapable or unwilling to present two sides fairly, obviously making the Pro-SHRA villains and the anti's heroes to throw the audience. Pak has 4 double sized issues to prove better than that. I hope he does. And hopefully whatever the outcome it, it is satisfying. The fan community & shop orderers have remained loyal to Marvel over DC (via overall sales), if only by comparison, despite two events in a row over the past 2 years that have had universally lambasted endings. A third might be begging for disaster.
Having read the issue, I still agree. The notion of even a "stronger Hulk" defeating Black Bolt is debateable. The fact that this happened off panel is slightly irksome. Some could say it leaves the actual fight off screen so that the end results happen however the audience wants it to happen, thus avoiding blame to the writer for tactics. On the other hand, it also means a writer may not have any good plan for how the Hulk beats Black Bolt, and wants the fans to do it for him. Black Bolt does have more powers than his voice, but few have actually portrayed them in years; while I won't assume Pak is as ignorant as Bendis about comic research, we do know that Marvel's editors rarely work overtime to make sure a writer gets certain things right. If a writer goofs, accidentally or deliberately, the editors shrug. It was a shame, though, because Black Bolt is far more poweful than Iron Man, but because he isn't popular, he doesn't get a 10+ page fight sequence. But, c'mon, DC does this too. Who is going to get a longer fight scene if, say, Mongul was storming a city, Batman in ghetto armor, or Lightray? The latter is more powerful, but the former is more popular. Marvel did this sort of stuff with Wolverine for ages, is anyone really surprised when it happens with Iron Man? Hell, the fact that this event is underway and the fanboy community doesn't seem to believe Wolverine will be a major player, when he could have been a decade ago, is an accomplishment for mainstream Marvel.
Logical arguements aside, though, Black Bolt's defeat was easily the lowpoint of the issue, and a definate "con" so far. But it could be worse. I mean, c'mon, NO ONE can beat the Hulk or even come close until at least halfway. That is the risk of taking such a simple action scene and making an event of it. Will Pak make it count?
I mean, hell, couldn't Iron Man have tried sleeping gas? Spidey's beaten Hulk that way once.
:heart: :heart:
