The Immortal Hulk vol. 9: The Weakest One There Is

We’ve reached the penultimate volume of Al Ewing and Joe Bennet’s run on the title.  Usually when this happens, you can expect things to slow down for a bit before things ramp up again for the finale.  That’s true here too.  For all of two issues.  In the one that opens the volume we get the Thing/Hulk fight that we were promised at the end of the previous volume.  Only, things wind up being a lot more one-sided than you’d expect from this match-up and it eventually comes down to Good Ol’ Joe Fixit to make peace.  Then, in the next issue, Bennett is joined by three additional artists as we get to find out what’s going on with Banner, The Leader, Gamma Flight, Jackie McGee, and Henry Gyrich’s new goon squad.  That last group will be very familiar to longtime “Hulk” readers, for sure.

In fact, it’s their throwdown with the title character that kicks off the final arc of the series.  That’s right, Ewing isn’t waiting to get the party started in vol. 10, it kicks off here.  We’ve got old villains showing up for the first time, characters we haven’t seen in a while making their dramatic return, the main villain powering up in advance of the final battle, and our protagonist(s) realizing just how screwed they really are.  It’s all here as Ewing and Bennett bring their A-games to the proceedings.  The fights hit hard and the supernatural horror is as creepy as you’ve come to expect.  Meanwhile, we find out that Joe has a special role to play here and it ties into the one era of the “Hulk” that the writer hasn’t really touched upon yet.  I didn’t need anything else to get me to pick up the final volume, but I’m not going to say no to another clever twist from Ewing.  Even after eight previous volumes of them.