"Hulk: Code Red"

 

                The following is a review of the graphic novel “Hulk: Code Red” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format.

                Doctor Robert Bruce Banner had finally been cured of being the Hulk. Karla Sofen/Ms. Marvel learned this fact and brought it to her boss Norman Osborn, Director of H.A.M.M.E.R. Osborn decided to test this information and sent out Ares, Greek god of war, to confirm if the Hulk truly was gone for good. Bruce and his ally Rick Jones/A-Bomb were discovered by Ares, who tried to force Bruce to turn into the Hulk by threatening A-Bomb’s life. Bruce managed to save A-Bomb and the two escaped from Ares. Ares confirmed to Osborn that the Hulk was no more.

                Neena Thurman/Domino was on an assignment when she accidentally saw the transformation of the Red Hulk from his human identity and was able to escape. General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross and Doctor Leonard Samson compiled a list of individuals to hire a team to help the Red Hulk find and eliminate Domino to prevent her from spreading the identity of the Red Hulk. This list included Wade Wilson/Deadpool, Frank Castle/Punisher, Boris Turgenov/Crimson Dynamo, Thundra, and Elektra Natchios. Team Code Red cornered Domino in a bar, but Domino brought backup in the form of X-Force (James Howlett/Logan/Wolverine, Laura Kinney/X-23, Warren Worthington III/Archangel, James Proudstar/Warpath, and Josh Foley/Elixir. Wolverine blinded the Red Hulk and the two teams clashed. A Red She-Hulk arrived on the scene and led Red Hulk away from the battle. Samson also turned up, and double-crossed Red Hulk, turning Team Code Red against Red Hulk. Thundra, however, was loyal to Red Hulk and fought Samson. Red Hulk’s sight returned, and he fought Red She-Hulk. Red She-Hulk threw Red Hulk off the top of the Empire State Building. Red Hulk survived and tracked down Domino and X-Force, who had tracked down Silver Sable, who revealed Sable was paid by Samson and that Sable was the one who tipped off Domino and that Advanced Idea Mechanics was involved, convincing Red Hulk Domino was in the wrong place in the wrong time. Red Hulk paid Team Code Red their promised payments and prepared to forge and alliance against Samson to protect his secret.

                Samson was struggling with his identities as Leonard, Doc Samson, and Samson as A.I.M. continued to try to control him.

                Bruce Banner returned to New York City to meet with Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic to receive information about the Hulk’s son Skaar, a half-Hulk/half-alien creature who blamed Hulk for the death of Skaar’s mother and wanted to kill the Hulk. Banner then teleported to the Mojave Desert and located Skaar and offered to train Skaar to prepare to kill the Hulk if ever Hulk were to return, as Skaar had no interest in killing Bruce Banner. Skaar agreed to this proposal. Banner angered Cain Marko/Juggernaut to give Skaar a challenge, and Skaar succeeded in defeating Juggernaut. Wolverine tracked down Banner and Skaar, and Skaar beat Wolverine. Skaar went looking for Wolverine’s son Daken. Daken was on Osborn’s Avengers team and suggested offering Skaar a place on the team. Banner and Wolverine watched their sons’ conversation but got involved when negotiations went sour. In the end, both dysfunctional families parted with the sons promising to one day end their father’s existence. Samuel Sterns/Leader had been spying on Bruce and Skaar’s bonding.

                H.A.M.M.E.R. scientists were attempting to siphon the Old Power of the Shadow People of Planet Sakaar that had been gifted to Doctor Kate Waynesboro, despite the fact that doing so could kill her in the process. Skaar and Banner infiltrated a H.A.M.M.E.R. laboratory in New Mexico and rescued Kate. Norman Osborn had a list of people he wanted taken care of, and Bruce Banner was on that list. Osborn sent someone “expendable” to take Banner off that list, so he sent his personal assistant Victoria Hand. Hand brought Karla Sofen/Ms. Marvel as muscle. Banner and Skaar went to take out another Old Power facility, and Hand and Ms. Marvel confronted them. Ms. Marvel and Skaar made a deal. Banner and Skaar destroyed the facility, which was also a gamma facility, once again exposing Bruce to gamma radiation, bringing him one step closer to becoming the Hulk again and allowing Skaar to complete Skaar’s desire to kill the Hulk, which was Osborn’s plan the entire time.

                Banner and Skaar played football against Korg, Kate, and A-Bomb. Bruce and Kate had begun to form a romantic attachment. Following the game, Bruce and Kate went to the Leader’s laboratory to try to find in the Leader had any data on Skaar in the Leader’s files. While there, Bruce and Kate were attacked by a flesh and blood Harpy, who had the appearance of Bruce’s wife Elizabeth “Betty” Ross-Banner. Bruce, Skaar, Korg and A-Bomb fought Harpy until they were able to defeat her and force her to revert to a human form, but it turned out not to be Betty. The Leader returned to his laboratory and discovered Kate there and destroyed it, preventing Kate from discovering if the Leader had any information on Skaar, but Kate was able to escape the lab before detonation. The Mole Man attempted to invade New York City with monsters who were refugees from the planet Sakaar. The Fantastic Four attempted to hold them back. Bruce and Skaar teleported to New York and Bruce set up a gamma dome to contain the monsters. The monsters worshipped Skaar, recognizing him as the monsters’ king since the Hulk had ruled Sakaar, and since the Hulk was no more and Skaar was the Hulk’s heir, Skaar was the next in lineage. Tyrannus attempted to kill Skaar in order to control the monsters, but Skaar was able to defeat him. The world saw Skaar in action and got to meet its new Hulk.

                Lyra was the genetically engineered daughter of Bruce Banner from an alternate future, and an agent of the Alternate Reality Monitoring and Operational Response agency, along with her AI companion Boudicca and the all-new savage She-Hulk, trying to honor the mantle of Jennifer Walters, who had gone missing. However, when she got angry, she lost her strength instead of gaining it like other gamma powered beings. She battled Phinn Mac Mram, who hailed from her world and attempted to corrupt the computer networks of her new home.

                Alex Erde, Agent of A.R.M.O.R., invited Lyra to look for Jen in Death Valley, against Director Little Sky’s orders. Norman Osborn wanted Boudicca for her information of the future. He had Ryker of the Origins® Corporation send out Aberration, Morass and Axon, three genetically enhanced convicted killers, pardoned in exchange for their services to the Corporation, to retrieve Boudicca. The Origins® killers shot Lyra and Erde’s plane out of the sky, fatally injuring Erde. Lyra swore vengeance on these three women and fought to protect Boudicca.

                Okay, we’ve got our synopsis out of the way, let’s move on to the Tim Cubbin part of this review. We’ll start, as usual, with my personal opinions on the book. I will say I found it to be mildly enjoyable. If you go back over a year and a half ago to my review of “Hulk: Who is the Red Hulk?” you will recall my disdain for the previous volume in the series. So, I will say that once again, we have a “Hulk” graphic novel starring the Red Hulk that does not reveal his true identity. Now, I’ve been reading Marvel for almost twenty-five years now, I’ve known who the Red Hulk is for fourteen years now, but still, I’m once again disappointed that I still don’t have an origin for the character. His whole background is shrouded in secrecy, and I just wish this book would have unclouded it. During the whole “Code Red” storyline, I kept hoping for the big unveiling and was highly disappointed that a year and a half later I still don’t have my answer. Plus, now they throw in the Red She-Hulk (who I also know who she is), who also gets no identity or origin reveal, just to rile me up even more. I also found that storyline to be highly confusing as there’s a scene where Red Hulk and his human form actually both appear on panel at the same time and Samson is in that same panel as a witness, so a lot of that story made no sense to me based entirely on that scene alone. I know the Red Hulk’s identity is a lot more well-known now also due to last year’s film “Captain America: Brave New World” which had not been released when I did my last “Hulk” review, so I know some of my readers may be familiar with him, and if you read this review extremely carefully, you might catch my confusion, but I don’t want to give spoilers to those who don’t know, although some of my other reviews have his identity already, so if you might have come across it if you’re a previous reader of mine, but I shall not give his identity in this particular review since it was not actually contained in this particular book. I also didn’t particularly like the Samson dissociative identity disorder issue as it did not further the story being placed in this volume and just succeeded in confounding the story even further. However, I did think team Code Red was an interesting gathering of characters, and I also enjoyed seeing them come up against X-Force. I also enjoyed seeing Bruce bonding with his son, I thought it was actually quite humorous how Bruce was training his son with the promise to one day kill the Hulk. I thought the “Dark Reign” issue was actually relatively good, I liked the twist ending of how Osborn accomplished his machinations. I found the All-New Savage She-Hulk storyline to be slightly interesting; I liked the paradox of her anger sapping her strength instead of increasing it. But this book failed to meet expectations. I think my biggest problem with this book was the dual focus. Most Modern Era Epic Collections I’ve read thus far really didn’t focus full-time on two separate ongoing series, and this split the attention from both the Red Hulk and Bruce Banner, and I feel like this didn’t work very well, it just slowed the progression of both stories by mixing both of them into one Collection. I feel like focusing on just the Red Hulk would have been a better option, but I honestly can’t officially say this until there’s another volume to say if compiling both Hulks’ stories is necessary to tell the narrative of the Red Hulk. And if telling Bruce’s story was unnecessary, then Lyra’s story was also unnecessary, and in all honesty, to me, it did feel like it was unimportant to the other stories. But again, I’m going to need another volume to confirm the necessity of all the included content. Moving on in my input, we’re going to discuss the artwork. I liked the artwork from Ed McGuiness, Ian Churchill, and Michael Ryan, but the rest of the artists failed to impress me. Churchill actually holds great sentiment for me as he was the artist for the first Marvel Comic book I purchased back in 2001 when I became a regular Marvel reader, and I enjoyed his work then, so seeing him lend his hand to this collection was a great privilege to me. But the other art just wasn’t as appealing. Next up, we’re going to discuss the title. I feel like “Code Red” was a relatively good choice for the title. It was the longest storyline in the volume, and I feel like it’s an adequate capturing of the essence of the book. We’re also going to discuss the cover. The cover depicts both the Red Hulk and the Incredible Hulk, which I feel is not completely appropriate for this volume as we never see Bruce Banner Hulk out over the course of this book, but when looking through the collection, the rest of the covers feature either the Red Hulk or Skaar with other characters that honestly wouldn’t appropriately represent the content in this volume, so it probably was the best if not only choice for a cover and I respect it as a choice. But overall, the internal content was relatively dissatisfying, and I was highly disappointed.

                Next up, we’re going to discuss accessibility. Now, I know there are some of you who are familiar with my reviews and know what I mean by this, and I have explained it over six dozen times at this point, but I always have new readers every time I do a review, so I have to explain myself to them every time, so to those of you who have been here before, please bear with me while I explain to the newbs. Accessibility means the ability for someone who knows absolutely nothing about the source material to see this book on a shelf or online and obtain it, read it, and understand everything as written with no outside knowledge of the characters or the story. I will say that it does draw on knowledge from other points in the Marvel Universe, such as “X-Force,” “World War Hulk” and “Dark Reign,” but it remains relatively standalone as far as content goes. This volume contains “sister series,” so they are connected to each other without straying into other characters aside from the Hulks. Also, the “Dark Reign” issue is self-contained. It does continue storylines from the previous volume, but it’s not a direct continuation and doesn’t rely on reading the previous “Hulk” storylines as being a necessity. I wouldn’t say it’s the best book to start with if you’ve never read a Marvel Comic book before, but if you really want to read it, it’s not a point that’s impossible to jump on at.

                Next up, we’re going to move on to one of the primary reasons we’re here: for me to give a numeric score. Now, I know it’s not the single most important part of my reviews, the synopsis is also key, and my own opinions are crucial, but a review would not be complete without giving an evaluation of exactly how good I feel like the book is, so I give a numeric score to asses the quality of the content. My scoring system is extremely simple: I score on a scale of exact integers ranging from one through ten. The worst score I can possibly give is a one, and that means that this book is so awful and unreadable that every remaining unpurchased copy of this book should be rounded up off the shelves or pulled out of storage and collectively obliterated, then Marvel should destroy the plates containing any possible ways of reprinting this book so it can never be reproduced again and be completely wiped out of history. Okay, I know that’s a little extreme, that’s just a joke, I don’t condone destroying books. On the other hand, if I score a book at a ten, that’s my best score, and that means this book is sheer perfection and I will not understand how it is not a bestseller and how any copies could possibly be on the shelves or in stock because it’s so good it should just be bought, then it should have to be reprinted because all the copies are just out of stock and the book is still in demand. Now, I’m not a guy who likes to give out tens unless I feel like the book truly is perfection. That means the story has to be engaging and compelling with no possible flaws that I can find and nothing for me to complain about, the art has to be consistently visually pleasing and appealing and I have to enjoy looking at every panel, the title has to be an exact representation of the book, and the cover has to sell the content contained within the book, all wrapped up in a perfect package. And that is very hard to find. On the other hand, I’m not in the business of giving out ones unless the book is absolute garbage with a story that is unreadable, uninteresting, and not understandable, the art has to be an eyesore and I don’t even want to look at the book because the art is so awful, the title has nothing to do with the content of the book, and the cover is completely misleading to the story contained within. Now, I did relatively dislike this book, but I did feel it was almost average. There were things I liked about the story, and there was some art I liked, and the title was an adequate description of the book, and the cover was relatively appropriate to the content contained within, so it wasn’t complete garbage. So, when I consider my score for this Collection, all cards shuffled and dealt on the table, the score I’m looking at is… a four. It wasn’t completely horrible, but it didn’t meet my expectations or fulfil my desires for what I was hoping to come from this book, but all-in-all, I didn’t completely hate it.

                Moving on in this review, we’re going to go to my recommendation segment. In this segment, I answer two questions: the first question is, would I, Tim Cubbin, personally recommend for anyone within the view of my words or the sound of my voice to read this book just based solely on what I just said? The second question is, regardless of if I would tell anyone to read this book or not, whom do I feel should be reading this book, beyond the obvious of Marvel or Hulk fans or fans of the creative team? To answer the first question, no, I do not personally recommend this book to you. If you are reading this and on the fence about reading this or not, I would tell you not to read this book. As for the second question, the best audience is action fans who like stories about dysfunctional families, and for readers who like paramilitary stories, and for people who like stories with characters who struggle with their identities.

                I think I’m at the point where I’ve said just about all I really need to say about the content, so let’s just get to the wrap-up. So, I can tell you that I’ve been working on this blog for over five years at this point. I’ve done over 180 posts. In addition to over six dozen reviews of Epic Collections, I’ve reviewed prose novels, manga, and comic book events. I’ve also written short stories, poetry, essays, articles, and editorials. If you liked this post and want more “Hulk” content, feel free to check out my review of “Hulk: Who is the Red Hulk?” and keep checking out timcubbin.blogspot.com for plenty more content, there’s plenty more on here you might find you’ll like. I collect every Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection and Ultimate Epic Collection as soon as I can after they are released and put up a review as soon as I can after I have finished reading them, so you can expect a lot of posts from me. I usually post at least once a month. My next review will be “Miles Morales: Spider-Man: Revivals and Revelations” and you can expect to see that within the next month after this post, probably in a lot less time than that, so keep checking back for that. I’m going to keep on doing this blog for as long as I possibly can, until my eyes or hands are unable to function, so you can expect to see this blog continuing for a long time. So, I say goodbye for now, and until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!