Incredible Hulk #2

The Terror of the Toad Men
Enter…The Toad Men/
Release: May 1, 1962
Cover: July 1962
12 cents
Credits: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Inks: Steve Ditko (uncredited)
24 pages

I read this comic in Incredible Hulk Omnibus vol. 1. The table of contents credits Steve Ditko with inks.

In truth, lots of aspects of this comic look more like Ditko than Kirby to me. Hulk himself looks very different from the first issue, and I attribute that to Ditko having a heavy influence on this issue.

It’s also attributable to Hulk being green. Pretty sure he was grey last issue. Did something happen to cause him to change color? Well, they recap his origin and when they illustrate him in events which happened last issue, they also color him green.

I’ve heard different explanations over the years for why he went from grey to green. I’m pretty sure they couldn’t stick with the grey because it was too difficult or expensive for coloring prices of the time. Hulk is also something of a villain and green is an acceptable standard for villains. If you look to the FF issues we’ve read, you’ll notice that Moleman and Dr. Doom both wore green, and the Skrulls have green skin. The thing I’m less certain about is why he was grey in the first issue. I’m pretty sure they wanted him to be grey, noticed after one issue it was impractical, and then made him green. I’ve also heard he was always supposed to be green, and the first issue was a printing mistake.

Actually, I don’t have to guess; Brian Cronin has spent years confirming or debunking various comic industry rumors with his Comic Book Legends Revealed Column. He’s even put out a couple books on the subject. Let me pull one off my bookshelf. Aha. Was Superman a Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed. Chapter 6… The Incredible Hulk… Brian tells us Hulk was intended to be grey, but after printing the first issue, they realized their coloring process could not render grey consistently, making his skin color appear many different shades. So they changed to green and pretended he’d always been green.

Here’s the transformation in issue 1 vs. the recap in issue 2. We have always been at war with Eurasia.

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Let’s return to the subject of understanding the character and motivation of Hulk. Last issue, he seemed basically intelligent, but confused. He sometimes seemed to follow Banner’s motivations out of instinct. He was willing to slap Rick and also smash whoever got in his way.

Now we see him wrecking things in a town randomly while the town’s citizens flee. We then see Rick is able to calm him down and get him to walk away. It wasn’t clear last issue that Hulk particularly liked Rick; in fact, he kept slapping Rick pretty hard. Which is what Hulk will also do later in the issue. He’ll also take Betty hostage at one point. Her charms don’t seem to help soothe Hulk either. Let’s see what Hulk decides to do once he gets ahold of Toad Men weapons. Seems decently smart and also pretty evil. Not so different from one of Moleman’s speeches.

We again see his motives seeming to come from Banner. General Ross had locked up Banner for treason because he was found in the alien ship (the charges don’t make a lick of sense; I had prepared a rant about them, but let’s move on), so Hulk wants to go smash Ross.

To sum up, Hulk begins the issue by savagely attacking a town for no particular reason, but for the rest of the issue, he seems pretty calculating and malicious.

It’s interesting to note that the citizens of that town all seem to know who the Hulk is. Word has gotten around. However, Bruce Banner has been turning into Hulk every night, so we can’t really have missed that many nights between issues. Interesting things happened every night. This issue will end with a plan for Hulk at night, which can create a bit of a status quo, allowing a bit of time between issues.

Similar to last issue, the struggle between Bruce Banner and Hulk is pretty good and enough to drive the issue and more than enough to fill 20 pages. But Stan doesn’t seem to think so. In both issues, he wants to introduce a villain and have the villain defeated. In both issues, there’s just not enough room for that. The Gargoyle story of the first issue was a pretty good one, albeit rushed. The Toad Men story of this issue is pretty dumb.

The Toad Men are all about their magnetic technology. What can their magnetic power do? Locate the mind of the most brilliant person on earth. Hurl people against walls, make cities fly, empty oceans, knock the moon out of its orbit…

The plan as I understand it is first to bring the entire fleet near earth ready to invade, and then to start learning the first thing about earth by kidnapping its most brilliant scientist for interrogation.

As with the alien invasion in FF, the whole thing is resolved way too easily. A couple panels where Bruce turns on his gamma gun and uses it to hurtle an entire fleet of space ships out of the solar system. Because science. The one possibly interesting thing is that it’s Bruce Banner, not the Hulk, who wins the day.

A question one can often ask in a shared universe such as this is, where are the other heroes? The Toad Men broadcast their threats to the entire world. And a giant fleet of spaceships invades. Just what are the Fantastic Four up to?

General Ross is oddly dismissive of one of the military’s top weapons manufacturers, calling him a milksop and claiming he’ll hide whenever danger threatened. Yet Ross saw this “milksop” run onto a bomb testing field to save a teenager and then get caught in the blast of a bomb. What exactly does it take to earn this general’s respect? Singlehandedly saving earth from an alien invasion doesn’t do it either, it turns out.

Rating: ★★★☆☆, 51/100
Significance: ★★★☆☆

Ditko over Kirby makes for some good art. I remain fascinated by trying to understand the character of Hulk. The entire Toad Men plot was just too dumb for my tastes.

Characters:

• Bruce Banner/Hulk
• Rick Jones
• Toad Men
• General Thunderbolt Ross
• Betty Ross
• Torrak (captain of Toad ship)

Minor characters:

• Bobby (child fleeing from Hulk)

Story notes

• I’m going to amend my reading order. Not seeing too much connection between this and FF#5, I decided to read them in publishing order, putting FF#5 first. CMRO did the opposite, and I think they were correct. There can’t be much time between Hulk 1 and 2, and we see there’s already a Hulk comic in FF 5.
• The Fantastic Four also fought aliens in their second issue.
• According to Toad Men technology, Banner is the most brilliant mind on earth.
• Bruce describes the Hulk as unpredictable.
• Hulk’s torn clothes are purple in the first panel!

#12 story in reading order
Next: Fantastic Four #5
Previous: Amazing Adult Fantasy #14, Story B