HULK SMASH EVERYTHING

RRRRRRRAAAAAAAARGH!!!  HULK ANGRY!  HULK WANT TO SMASH BIG BRAIN WHO DRESS UP LIKE FAMILIAR WIZARD AND RUN TO HIS HOUSE!  BEFORE HULK GET CHANCE, HULK SURROUNDED BY DINOSAURS!  HULK BEAT DINOSAURS, BUT BIG FALLING SKY ROCK HURT HULK!  HULK EVEN ANGRIER NOW!  BIG BRAIN THEN SEND HULK SOMEPLACE HE WON’T BE ABLE TO SMASH HIS WAY OUT OF, BUT BIG BRAIN WRONG BECAUSE HULK!  SMASH!  EVERYTHING!!!

I’ve been looking forward to this ever since I saw the gonzo solicitations for each issue.  Hulk vs. the meteor that ended the Cretaceous era?  Hulk vs. the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy?  Hell yeah I’m here to see him try and smash those – and the big guy with a funny hat at the end of time.  Writer Ryan North uses his talent for making big science ideas easily accessible to really sell the threat of each incident while reveling in the chance to tell a continuity-light superhero story.  It’s also one that fully embraces the absurdity of the genre – witness the incident which kicks the plot into motion – while throwing some stuff at the title character that we haven’t seen him fight before.

If only it was backed up by an artist willing (or allowed) to go as gonzo as North does.  Vincenzo Carratu starts off well in his depictions of the Hulk wreaking havoc in NYC and prior to the dinosaur-killing meteor.  It’s just that he can’t quite scale up or go as weird or gnarly as the story demands from there.  I get that he probably couldn’t have shown the Hulk’s flesh cooking off of his body in a non-mature-readers comic, but his depiction of spaghettification just looks like the character is just being (badly, boringly) stretched.  It really makes you wonder what an artist with genuinely over-the-top sensibilities like James Harren, Ryan Ottley, Rob Guillory, or even Yusuke Murata would’ve done with the material.  As it is, “Hulk Smash Everything” is still a fun enough time that could’ve, and should’ve, been more than that.