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Every Monday, Matt. Murray reviews, revisits and rambles about comics, cartoons and their interactions in and with related media.

by Matt. Murray

(Warning: Contains spoilers for Hulk vs. DVD)

I love the Hulk. That goes without question. Most fanboys with a conscious memory of the late 1970s do. This is largely thanks to Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno’s double turn as the conflicting sides of Dr. David Banner’s psyche in the seminal series The Incredible Hulk, which ran from 1978 to 1982.

In the spring of 1979, a common site on my block was me running around dressed only in my Underoos bottoms, bending into a full body flex while growling at passers-by. With my two-and-a-half-year-old id fueled by images of a green painted Ferrigno and the delusion that I was seven feet tall, I was the Hulk of 123rd Street.  Everybody knew it. And when they would see me skulking down the street in my regular persona of Li’l Mattie Murray, everyone was quite keen on the fact that they only had to curl a lip at me, or scowl, and I would rip my shirt off and hulk out on them.

This alter ego would follow me until I was eight, surviving the cancellation of the live-action TV show and lasting through the run of The Incredible Hulk cartoon that was attached to Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Of course, I had no real rage to drive me, just a complete disregard for pants and an imagination fueled by the adventures I loved to watch on my family’s wood paneled console tube.

It was with a desire to tap back into that sense of wonderment that I brought a copy of Marvel Studios’ Hulk vs. over to my parents’ house, popped it in the DVD player, and fired up the hi-def digital projection television.

I took my pants off and hunkered down on the couch, expecting to go on a rampage.  Although my folks no longer live in Queens and their new neighbors would lack the context of that 30 year old specter, I was expecting to create a new legend in the PA suburb that they now called home. I mean how often do you get to see a 32 year-old man running around the streets of Bethlehem in his boxers screaming?

It’s pretty boring there. So, in case you were wondering, the answer is not so often.

I was disappointed to say the very least. Little did I know that the Hulk of Forrest Avenue would be spurred by an actual sense of rage… outrage.

A scant seven months on the heels of Ed Norton and Louis Leterrier’s noble “reboot” film, The Incredible Hulk, Hulk vs. Wolverine and Hulk vs. Thor reduce the Jade Giant to a plot device in “his own” featurettes using the Hulk mainly as a departure point to introduce Wolvie and Thor’s own worlds – which will be fully developed in follow-up cartoons Wolverine and the X-men and Tales of Asgard (both due later in 09), respectively.

Although wonderfully designed and more than adequately animated, the two “distinct” featurettes have basically the same freakin’ plot, which can summed up thusly:

Villain captures Hulk to use as a weapon, other hero must save the Hulk to save himself and defeat the bad guy. The Hulk breaks a bunch of stuff and the day is saved. And while this plot can be handled effectively in a single 10 minute cartoon, instead they use two different segments checking in at 37 minutes (Wolverine) and 45 minutes (Thor).

The Wolverine segment is almost nauseating, if not just structurally confusing. A definite primer not only for the X-Men cartoon, but the upcoming Origins movie, it ties itself into self-congratulatory knots to include as many of the characters and storylines that have been promised to be referenced in the live-action film and have appeared in the other Jackman movies, as possible. The Hulk is relegated to a cameo in the opening and then is put on the back-burner for nearly half an hour as we take a convoluted mashed-up trip through Wolverine’s origin and the entire history of the Weapon X program. Look, there’s Logan in the Barry Windsor-Smith helmet! Hey kids, Sabertooth! Is Lady Deathstrike a freakin’ robot? They have six people who are the “perfect weapon” but they still need to kidnap and brainwash the Hulk? Why is Deadpool in this? Will the Hulk please come back and smash some stuff? Wait, has he been captured yet? It’s years before? Nope there he is. Okay… Hey Hulk, tear down that one pillar that holds up the entire Weapon X complex. Awesome.

But, that was it? Really?

The Thor featurette is at least straightforward from a narrative perspective.  In short it involves a hibernating Odin, and Loki kidnapping the Hulk to take over Asgard.  Thor and everybody that ever appeared in an issue of Thor have to stop the Hulk and in turn Loki.  Evidently, it borrowed heavily from Walt Simonson’s run on the book, but honestly I never really gave the character enough of my attention over the years to know. It ultimately was a decent short, but after watching Wolverine I was completely turned off to it. Maybe some other time, I’ll give it another shot with a cleansed palate. I mean, I bought the disc. Might as well try to get some of my money’s worth.

While the Thor segment is superior, neither explains, furthers or even bothers to contribute to the Hulk mythos along the way. The creators were so transparently fixated on how “cool” the other heroes’ characters and milieus are, that watching the Hulk tear through them gave me more of a perverse pleasure than probably intended.

Of course, having followed the small and large screen, animated and live action, exploits of Ol’ Purple Pants for over 30 years, I had seen this kind of shameless schilling of other characters before. In 1988 and 89, Bixby and Ferrigno returned to Banner-ville in television movies – The Return of the Incredible Hulk and The Trial of the Incredible Hulk – that were made not only to reignite the 1970s Hulk phenomenon, but to sneak other superheroes on to the screen scene – Thor (I see a pattern!) and Daredevil – in “back door” pilots.

The problem was, these films did precious little for launching the careers of any superhero except Stan Lee, who made his onscreen debut in Trial, and only reinforced the popularity of the titular titan who was finally given two hours of his own in 1990’s The Death of the Incredible Hulk. Unsurprisingly, this is the best of the three Hulk TV movies.

Basically, the moral of the story is as follows: if you’re going to make the Hulk the title character of any project, you better make him the star.

What’s the problem then? Why didn’t this current crop of Marvel movie producers use the lessons of 20 years ago?

The easy answer would be cash. Show business is fickle, and what didn’t work 20 years ago may very well work, now. Using the Hulk to launch less established properties like Thor, or to sound the drum for upcoming new titles like Wolverine… may succeed in creating buzz this time around. Also, unlike the proposed Thor and Daredevil live action shows from the late 80s, Asgard and X-Men are already in production and are foregone conclusions. There’s no real gamble being taken, and anything that draws attention to the forthcoming videos can’t necessarily harm them.

A less obvious answer may lie in the gamma irradiated DNA of the character himself. There’s only so much you can do with an anger-driven destruction machine. That’s what the Hulk is. That’s what makes him cool to kids from two-and-a-half and up, and it’s ultimately his shortcoming.

Let’s face it, not even his creators, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, could sustain the Hulk’s original series beyond six issues. When he showed up again in the pages of the Avengers and Fantastic Four he was a villain and a foil for the likes of the more complex and moving monsters like Ben Grimm (aka the Thing… aka another large, forceful, comic book character I had delusions of being as a child thanks more in part to Saturday morning television– “Thing rings do your Thing!”)

The most interesting stories are centered more around his alter ego, Banner, and how the two interact with and within society. That, in addition to Big Lou’s bristling biceps, is what drove the success of the 1970’s television show and just about any major run of the comic. (The most successful perhaps being Peter David’s turn as a writer, which went on for 12 years and saw the incorporation of all of the Hulk’s personalities and incarnations into a near omnipotent super-duper Hulk, often referred to as the Professor.)

On his own, the best thing you can do with the Hulk is use him as weapon – drop him as a stand-in for the gamma bomb that created him. For an example, just see how he’s used in Mark Millar’s Ultimates. (Are there many scenes better than the one where Captain America kicks Banner out of the cargo hold of a helicopter? Norton and Leterrier didn’t think so, as they cribbed it for the climax of their film.)

But, the Ultimates, is a team book, and it’s not called The Hulk vs. the Alternate Universe Kinda-Avengers. So, considering that was the best that they did with him after a dozen some odd issues, it doesn’t have the same temperature rising effect as having to muddle through the Hulk vs. Wolverine.

Ooh just thinking about it makes me angry again, and well… you know the rest.

Matt. Murray earned his BFA in film, television and radio production from NYU.   He has curated exhibits focusing on the art and commerce of Saturday Morning cartoons and the adaptation of illustrated media into live actions films and animation.  Murray is the country’s leading (if not only) Smurfologist.  His personal blog, It’s Time for Some Action, can be found at http://actnmatt.blogspot.com/