The Incredible Planet Hulk

Planet Hulk comes to a close this week. The final issue of this 14 issue epic by Greg Pak is something I have been looking forward to. Not it ending, but HOW it was going to end.

A couple of years ago, a friend convinced me to give Bruce Jones' run on The Incredible Hulk a try. After the end of that, I really didn't want to have anything to do with The Hulk anymore. And, by the way, it is The Hulk. It's a title, not a description.

Any-who, I got sucked right back in a few issues later when I saw The Hulk, wearing gladiator armor, fighting the Silver Surfer, similarly attired. The Surfer was even using his board as a giant shield! Ok, that got my attention. I picked up that issue along with the two or three others that had already come out. Fantastic!

A lot of people who have been reading comics a lot longer then I have have told me that The Hulk went through something like this before actually. Which, they did allude to in the comic, but only briefly.

I bet the original pitch was some thing like this, "How can we make The Hulk into Conan?"

Yeah, Conan. But it worked. It worked great. Here's how you do it. Toss The Hulk into DEEP space. Now Hulk's mad, madder then ever before! A wormhole opens up and dumps Hulk on an alien world. Hulk Smash! Except the first two alien soldiers who show up beat the crap out of him and throw him in the slave pits. Or straight in to the gladiator arena, I forget exactly. And what happens? Hulk gets MADDER! And for the past year or so The Hulk has been getting madder and madder and madder! He is now to that planet what he was to the Earth when he left. And now he has a mission, get back at all the people for putting him on that planet in the first place. The Illuminati.

Now this isn't a pump up for WW Hulk. This is about Planet Hulk. Many of you have been saying how much you want to read this, but were waiting for the collection. The wait is over. PLANET HULK HC, $39.99, collecting issues 92-105, is in the brand new Previews. If you order now, you can pick it up before World War Hulk starts and go into that all caught up.