Featuring: Hulk
Release: November 3, 1964
Cover: February 1964
12 cents
Written with the sparkling skill of Stan Lee!
Drawn with the peerless power of Steve Ditko!
Inked with the classic clarity of George Bell!
Lettered with the TV set on by: Artie Simek
10 pages
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Recall we read the Giant-Man/Wasp story in this issue a while back, but we’ve saved the Hulk stories for a big push.
Interesting that Stan refers to this as “the only super-hero soap opera”. I feel like that phrase with epitomize Marvel comics for decades to come.
I think it’s time to bid farewell to George Roussos, one of the most prominent inkers of our early reading, always under the pseudonym George Bell (oft abbreviated to Geo. Bell). We’ve read almost 50 stories with his inks, including Fantastic Four, Sgt. Fury, Iron Man, Thor, Human Torch, Giant-Man/Wasp, and Hulk stories. He’s off to do other work. He’ll return to Marvel in the 1970s and become one of Marvel’s most prominent colorists. He’s also been coloring much of the work we’ve been reading, but I’ve read most of his stories in recolored reprints, so miss out.
We open with Banner in jail, suspected of treason. He is taking tranquilizer pills to keep himself from transforming. Remember, it’s now strain that triggers the transformation.
The chronology is tricky as these Hulk stories are happening fast. We’ll assume there are long gaps of time when we get them. For example, Banner may be in jail a while. My guess is that Rick’s appearance here takes place sometime before the Masters of Evil battle in Avengers #15, but not long before.
Rick visits the president of the United States. It stands out to my modern eyes how optimistic this comic is toward the office of the president. He’s portrayed as the most trustworthy man in America, simply because of his position. Rick trusts him with Hulk’s secret and he agrees to keep it. Now two other people know Hulk’s true identity.
Later comics will not be so generous toward the office. In particular, the president following Johnson will forever change American attitudes toward the presidency. And eventually a new generation of writers will take over for the World War II generation creators like Stan and Steve.
We come to a somewhat interesting point in the Banner/Talbot relationship. Talbot is characterized by jealousy of Bruce and Betty and his belief that Bruce is bad. Bruce comes to understand that belief is genuinely held, and that Talbot is a patriot, just as he is.
For as long as he’s been around, Stan has been struggling with the character of the Hulk. How evil is he? How smart is he? How verbose is he? Stan seems to be leaning these days toward a toddler-level intelligence. He repeatedly describes the Hulk’s brain as “clouded”. He shows Hulk thinking full thoughts in complete sentences, but then adds an editor’s note that the thoughts formed slowly.
As with most issues these days, this one ends without conclusion. Hulk is in battle with the Leader’s Humanoids and Talbot has called soldiers to storm the island to arrest Banner. Ditko has the battle nicely framed against a setting sun.
We’ll pick up here next time.
The President and Chronology
Obviously this is the Marvel world, not our own. But it often seems to have intersection with our own history, so our own history is a fine starting point for attempting to figure out when all these events takes place.
My general operating assumption so far is that the first Fantastic Four mission was in 1961, during Johnny’s junior year of high school. Cosmonaut Gagarin’s flight is our biggest clue to try to tie their early history into our own. Johnny is now late in his senior year, so it should be around spring 1963. Of course, this comic was released in 1964 and most of our reading is up to 1965. Publication date shouldn’t matter in terms of when the stories should take place. What should matter is that neither Pete nor Johnny have yet graduated.
In Journey Into Mystery #96, we saw the president. He wasn’t named, but looked a lot like JFK and had a daughter who looked like Caroline. He references his daughter riding Macaroni, which was the name of Kennedy’s horse. We can assume the president was Kennedy. In our world, Kennedy was killed in November 1963.
Before these comics were published, but after they should be set.
However, in Fantastic Four #37, the Fantastic Four went to Cape Kennedy, which (in our world) had been so renamed from Cape Canaveral after Kennedy’s death.
Now, we again see the president. And he does not look like JFK. He is again not named, but he bears a resemblance to Lyndon Johnson, who was president in our world when this comic was published, but not when it should be set.
When George Olshevsky made the Official Marvel Indices, he used the phrase “temporal flavoring” to describe certain details. His take is that these stories are best considered as unmoored from history and time, and that certain details in the story shouldn’t be treated as canonical, but rather bits added by the author to suggest the comic takes place concurrently in history with when it is published.
These details can include references to dates, politicians, music, fashion, or even what wars heroes fought in. That last is where I struggle most with the concept. As for example the World War II service of Reed and Ben or Tony Stark’s captivity in Vietnam seem like significant plot points.
I do tend to ignore dates, when we see them written in newspapers or a character mentions the year. That’s easy enough to cross out and fix. I also ignore fashion as I don’t have any sense of what kids were wearing in a particular year. Neither did Steve Ditko, I suspect.
Modern Marvel editors refer to the concept as its “sliding timescale”. Their take seems to be that current comics do take place in the present and references in older comics which contradict that idea are noncanonical. This take I outright reject.
The “temporal flavoring” take I can’t outright reject, as it’s going to come up more and more. But we’ll hold off on accepting it until we have to. I prefer when things just make coherent sense.
Continuity is not broken yet. Maybe Kennedy died earlier in the Marvel Universe. Maybe my assumptions about the FF battle with the Mole Man being set in 1961 were incorrect. It’s early enough that we can explain away these inconsistencies. But the tide will turn against me.
History is just going to pass faster than Peter and Johnny age.
Rating: ★★★☆☆, 55/100
Significance: ★★★☆☆
I read this story in The Incredible Hulk Epic Collection vol. 2: The Hulk Must Die. You can also find the story in Marvel Masterworks: The Incredible Hulk vol. 2. Or on Kindle.
Characters:
- Major Talbot
- General Ross
- Dr. Bruce Banner/Hulk
- Betty Ross
- Chameleon
- Leader
- Rick Jones
- President Johnson
Story notes:
- Full title may be: “The Incredible Hulk Battles… The Horde of Humanoids!”
- Rick’s top priority Avengers ID card gets him into see the president.
- President’s face unseen; resembles Johnson more than Kennedy.
- President pardons Banner; Pentagon orders him immediately to Astra Island to conduct nuclear test.
- Banner’s nuclear absorbatron can absorb an atomic explosion.
- The Major upsets Banner and triggers a transformation.
- Hulk’s brain described as clouded; thoughts come slowly.
| Previous | #349 | Next |
|---|---|---|
| Tales to Astonish #63, Story B | Reading order | Tales to Astonish #65, Story B |
| Tales to Astonish #64 | Tales to Astonish | Tales to Astonish #65 |
Ditko was the only superhero guy doing this kind of large scale long term plotting, huh? Definitely made for good reading 60 years later in book form – but might have been annoying at the time.
Ditko started it with Hulk, then took it up with Dr. Strange. Kirby followed suit not long after with Thor and then with Fantastic Four not long after that. The Dr. Strange arc stands out because except for a couple odd issues, it really reads like a novel that was planned that way, flowing from beginning to end. Hulk is more like the old serials, episodic adventures that all end in cliffhangers with a big bad lurking in the background.