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dantastic's review against another edition
3.0
1 - Bruce Banner makes a deal with SHIELD to use the Hulk as a weapon in exchange for them funding his lab. His first task is to take down the Mad Thinker.
I've never been much of a Hulk fan. To me, he's so powerful that he's more of a plot device than a character, kind of like Superman. However, what Mark Waid is doing here piqued my interest. The first issue was a nice setup for what promises to be an interesting run.
2 - Banner and Tony Stark have a conversation that eventually turns ugly.
Much like he's done on Daredevil, Waid plums the depths of Bruce Banner's psyche. His motivation for taking Tony out into the Himalayas made sense, although a super genius should have taken into account what would have happened with the Gamma Fracker.
3 - The Hulk is unleashed against the Quintronic Man!
There wasn't a lot of meat to this one. The fight with the Quintronic Man wasn't as interesting as Banner's new lab crew being recruited.
4 - Banner meets his team and The Hulk is set against Attuma and the Lemurians!
While I like the Banner parts of this series, the Hulk is still the Hulk.
5 - Hulk and Attuma have it out.
Yeah, this one is also mostly fighting.
Closing Thoughts: I'm not nearly as enamored with this series as I thought. The Hulk is still the Hulk. However, Walt Simonson draws some of the next volume and Daredevil appears so I'm up for one more. 3 out of 5 stars.
I've never been much of a Hulk fan. To me, he's so powerful that he's more of a plot device than a character, kind of like Superman. However, what Mark Waid is doing here piqued my interest. The first issue was a nice setup for what promises to be an interesting run.
2 - Banner and Tony Stark have a conversation that eventually turns ugly.
Much like he's done on Daredevil, Waid plums the depths of Bruce Banner's psyche. His motivation for taking Tony out into the Himalayas made sense, although a super genius should have taken into account what would have happened with the Gamma Fracker.
3 - The Hulk is unleashed against the Quintronic Man!
There wasn't a lot of meat to this one. The fight with the Quintronic Man wasn't as interesting as Banner's new lab crew being recruited.
4 - Banner meets his team and The Hulk is set against Attuma and the Lemurians!
While I like the Banner parts of this series, the Hulk is still the Hulk.
5 - Hulk and Attuma have it out.
Yeah, this one is also mostly fighting.
Closing Thoughts: I'm not nearly as enamored with this series as I thought. The Hulk is still the Hulk. However, Walt Simonson draws some of the next volume and Daredevil appears so I'm up for one more. 3 out of 5 stars.
helpfulsnowman's review against another edition
4.0
There's a very cool trend in comics right now where these scientists, guys who are supposed to be smart, are ACTUALLY smart. DOCTOR Reed Richards is saying and doing smart things. Peter Parker, boy nerdo, is using his brain a little. And in this one, DOCTOR Bruce Banner is using his brain beyond trying to live in the slums of India and not turn into the Hulk. I love that, by the way. You know where I'm least likely to become agitated? Oh, probably the worst slums on the planet, a place where Mr. Rogers would probably end up tearing off the arms of a blind peasant and using them to beat another guy to death.
But they're starting to do some science-y stuff. Cool stuff.
I think this might be the positive effect of the Iron Man movies. I'm not certain, but that was kind of an early version of a tech guy becoming very cool. Granted, I recognize that this is a complete fiction. If you're reading this, think of the very smartest person you know. If you told me that the person you're thinking of is very smart, personally known to you, rich and attractive, even remotely as rich and attractive as Iron Man (or Robert Downey Jr.) I would first call you a liar, then once you'd proven to me sufficiently that such a person exists I would have nothing but questions about why you haven't abandoned all other life goals in pursuit of this person. Oh, that's the richest, smartest, most charismatic person I've ever met. I married this guy because we both enjoy badminton.
The whole nerd chic thing is kind of interesting. Because the key quality of being a nerd is being uncool. So when it becomes cool, how does it maintain any sort of...anything?
The truth, I'm afraid, is that there is nerd and then there is nerd.
Let's take an older trend. When I was a young man, full of ideas about philosophy while also beating off about 8 times a day, one of the more popular trends was thrift store clothing. Nothing would be cooler than to wear a t-shirt purchased at a thrift store featuring the logo of a softball team that you'd never heard of, originating in a place you'd never been to, and designed by someone who had just that right amount of artsy idiocy where the mascot with a baseball for a head was drawn decently but with one hand backwards.
Second hand stuff was cool.
However, it was not stuff that was REALLY second hand. This coolness did not extend to salmon/teal windbreakers, and it also did not extend to a nice sweater that nobody would be able to identify as thrift store goods. You had to both get it at the thrift store AND it had to be obvious that this is what happened. Thrift store, the anti-label, became its own sort of label.
I blame the fashion industry. I blame the fashion industry for a lot of things, but the fashion industry is the only cultural force asinine enough to cause the sorts of things we've seen in terms of trends. Only fashion could cause us to look at the same black-framed glasses two ways:
1995: You are the biggest fucking idiot ever and must also be terribly poor.
2013: There is an entire category of pornography related to people wearing those very frames.
I kind of hate fashion for this. The problem is that you cannot live outside fashion. Even if you try to dress like an idiot, it will come around to where you are. If you purposely dress ten years out of style, the pictures looked at a decade later will prove you to be the only one who was right.
What I'm saying here is that the nerd trend is in, then it'll be out. Then, who knows? It'll piss me off, I know that, but what it'll be I can't say.
So, if I'm not going to enjoy the trend as a whole, I'm happy that I can at least enjoy some goddamn comics and what nerd chic is bringing to them. Look at me, Mr. Brightside.
But they're starting to do some science-y stuff. Cool stuff.
I think this might be the positive effect of the Iron Man movies. I'm not certain, but that was kind of an early version of a tech guy becoming very cool. Granted, I recognize that this is a complete fiction. If you're reading this, think of the very smartest person you know. If you told me that the person you're thinking of is very smart, personally known to you, rich and attractive, even remotely as rich and attractive as Iron Man (or Robert Downey Jr.) I would first call you a liar, then once you'd proven to me sufficiently that such a person exists I would have nothing but questions about why you haven't abandoned all other life goals in pursuit of this person. Oh, that's the richest, smartest, most charismatic person I've ever met. I married this guy because we both enjoy badminton.
The whole nerd chic thing is kind of interesting. Because the key quality of being a nerd is being uncool. So when it becomes cool, how does it maintain any sort of...anything?
The truth, I'm afraid, is that there is nerd and then there is nerd.
Let's take an older trend. When I was a young man, full of ideas about philosophy while also beating off about 8 times a day, one of the more popular trends was thrift store clothing. Nothing would be cooler than to wear a t-shirt purchased at a thrift store featuring the logo of a softball team that you'd never heard of, originating in a place you'd never been to, and designed by someone who had just that right amount of artsy idiocy where the mascot with a baseball for a head was drawn decently but with one hand backwards.
Second hand stuff was cool.
However, it was not stuff that was REALLY second hand. This coolness did not extend to salmon/teal windbreakers, and it also did not extend to a nice sweater that nobody would be able to identify as thrift store goods. You had to both get it at the thrift store AND it had to be obvious that this is what happened. Thrift store, the anti-label, became its own sort of label.
I blame the fashion industry. I blame the fashion industry for a lot of things, but the fashion industry is the only cultural force asinine enough to cause the sorts of things we've seen in terms of trends. Only fashion could cause us to look at the same black-framed glasses two ways:
1995: You are the biggest fucking idiot ever and must also be terribly poor.
2013: There is an entire category of pornography related to people wearing those very frames.
I kind of hate fashion for this. The problem is that you cannot live outside fashion. Even if you try to dress like an idiot, it will come around to where you are. If you purposely dress ten years out of style, the pictures looked at a decade later will prove you to be the only one who was right.
What I'm saying here is that the nerd trend is in, then it'll be out. Then, who knows? It'll piss me off, I know that, but what it'll be I can't say.
So, if I'm not going to enjoy the trend as a whole, I'm happy that I can at least enjoy some goddamn comics and what nerd chic is bringing to them. Look at me, Mr. Brightside.
scottpm's review against another edition
4.0
A smashing good read. Lots of fun stuff going on here. Fantastic artwork as well. Hulk at his finest since Peter David and Mr Fixit.
manuelte's review against another edition
3.0
The Marvel NOW! Hulk book is titled Indestructible Hulk, and it is a great new status quo for the character.
The 3 main premises of the character are:
* Hulk Smashes, Banner builds: being one of the smartest characters in the Marvel universe, Bruce Banner is set to create world changing/Nobel price worthy technological advances as a way to compensate all the destruction the Hulk causes.
* Banner has accepted that the Hulk is an chronic condition that must be managed, just as diabetes, cancer, or multiple sclerosis (his words).
* Hulk should no longer be seen as a bomb set to explode at any time, but as a cannon that can be directed.
To accomplish the above, Banner offers his services as The Hulk to S.H.I.E.L.D. in exchange for an equipped lab, access to the latest research and technology, and a team of researchers to work for him.
The premise is amazing, the delivery is not as great. We don't get to see much of the "Banner builds" side of the equation, and the Iron Man encounter seems to fulfill no role other than give the fans a battle to talk about. However, I did enjoy the book and am reading volumes 2 and 3 with the expectation that the writers can do more with such a good character state.
The 3 main premises of the character are:
* Hulk Smashes, Banner builds: being one of the smartest characters in the Marvel universe, Bruce Banner is set to create world changing/Nobel price worthy technological advances as a way to compensate all the destruction the Hulk causes.
* Banner has accepted that the Hulk is an chronic condition that must be managed, just as diabetes, cancer, or multiple sclerosis (his words).
* Hulk should no longer be seen as a bomb set to explode at any time, but as a cannon that can be directed.
To accomplish the above, Banner offers his services as The Hulk to S.H.I.E.L.D. in exchange for an equipped lab, access to the latest research and technology, and a team of researchers to work for him.
The premise is amazing, the delivery is not as great. We don't get to see much of the "Banner builds" side of the equation, and the Iron Man encounter seems to fulfill no role other than give the fans a battle to talk about. However, I did enjoy the book and am reading volumes 2 and 3 with the expectation that the writers can do more with such a good character state.
crookedtreehouse's review against another edition
3.0
If you're reading this because it was tagged "Daredevil" and wondering what sort of drug I was on when I confused these two books, there is a connection, even though Daredevil does not appear anywhere in this title.
The easy part of the connection is that they're both written by Mark Waid. I enjoy much of Waid's superhero work, and his concept: Bruce Banner decides to use his Hulk curse to his advantage by deploying him for SHIELD missions is well-executed. Unfortunately, I don't quite care about any of the characters in this book. I know it leads into Waid's Daredevil storyline, as issues #9 and #10 of Indetructible Hulk are in [b:Daredevil, Vol. 6: Serpenti|39294205|Daredevil, Vol. 6 Serpenti|Mark Waid|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1521174341l/39294205._SY75_.jpg|25073662]. But do you need the story that leads up to it?
Nah.
If you're a Hulk fan this may be your cup of smash but, for me it didn't hook me enough to want to read volume two, even though I can see it from where I'm sitting.
The easy part of the connection is that they're both written by Mark Waid. I enjoy much of Waid's superhero work, and his concept: Bruce Banner decides to use his Hulk curse to his advantage by deploying him for SHIELD missions is well-executed. Unfortunately, I don't quite care about any of the characters in this book. I know it leads into Waid's Daredevil storyline, as issues #9 and #10 of Indetructible Hulk are in [b:Daredevil, Vol. 6: Serpenti|39294205|Daredevil, Vol. 6 Serpenti|Mark Waid|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1521174341l/39294205._SY75_.jpg|25073662]. But do you need the story that leads up to it?
Nah.
If you're a Hulk fan this may be your cup of smash but, for me it didn't hook me enough to want to read volume two, even though I can see it from where I'm sitting.
mjfmjfmjf's review against another edition
4.0
Surprisingly good. One of the advantages of reading everything on a list is that occasionally stuff I'd never read is worth reading, as this one certainly is. The art around Hulk could be a little bit better but the writing was pretty impressive. Especially the little bits around Phil Coulson and Tony Stark which perfectly echoed the live-action versions which I think is a good thing. I'm very much looking forward to see what Banner (and to a lesser degree Hulk) does next.
gohawks's review against another edition
3.0
I love the idea of Hulk working for SHIELD and being an agent. I'm just not all that interested in the fighting with underwater races storyline. It just seemed like a storyline that ultimately won't go anywhere with characters that are not worth hearing from again. I like Waid, but this first plot line was not so hot.
devinr's review against another edition
4.0
Boy, that Mark Waid sure can write some good comics. With an interesting take on the Hulk and on Bruce Banner, Mark Waid has really opened up the door to completely new Hulk stories. While the potential for Hulk/Banner conflict is still there, he puts it on the back burner, and gives one of the most brilliant minds in the Marvel universe his due. He's a scientist, he's a problem solver, and (for now, at least), he's solved the Hulk problem. With Lenil Yu putting in some beautiful ugliness and great action, this is a Hulk title that I'm actually excited to read for the first time since Planet Hulk.
"I knew it. You wouldn't like me when I'm happy." Brilliant.
"I knew it. You wouldn't like me when I'm happy." Brilliant.
ohnoflora's review against another edition
4.0
Read for the Stan Lee Excelsior Award 2014 - http://www.excelsioraward.co.uk
icarys's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0