Review of The Incredible Hulk Returns

The greatest of all comic book characters (in my own, ever humble opinion, of course) is Thor; as conjured by Jack Kirby. In MARVEL COMICS- THE UNTOLD STORY, author Sean Howe quotes THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS writer and artist Frank Miller, who is giving the eulogy at Jack Kirby's funeral: "An age passes with Jack Kirby... I call it the Kirby age of comics." Me, too. "Comics is journalism," Kirby himself is quoted in the book: "But now it's restricted to soap opera." In THE TEN CENT PLAGUE, author David Hajdu quotes Stan Lee: "We didn't want to change the world." (Howe, of Lee: "For years, he'd been a master of the middle ground.") Thor, Kirby's greatest creation (and his second-longest run on a comic book, ever), was sold to television, which then proceeded to dumb it down. The goof who plays Blake actually carries Thor's hammer around in a gym bag and, when he brings forth The God of Thunder, he holds it out at arm's length and shouts "Odin!" This is a steal from CAPTAIN MARVEL: whenever young Billy Batson wanted to change himself into Captain Marvel, he would shout "SHAZAM!" and be magically transformed. So the producers of this show simply lifted that idea. At one point, someone refers to Thor as "Ragnar the barbarian." In this telemovie, he's a beer-guzzling biker-type, so the description is apt. (In two feature films, THOR and THE AVENGERS, he carries around a "war hammer" that looks like a cinderblock with a toilet plunger handle. The only thing the TV producers came close to getting right was the hammer...) Kirby's Mythological Science Fiction, his Cosmic Concepts, are rich with characters and details that would make for some fascinating adventures- if only the TV and movie folks could get it right. (Hercules- in the comics a Steve Reeves look-alike- actually overpowers the thunder god; the High Evolutionary (think H.G. Welles's Dr. Moreau in outer space) creates man-monsters who give Thor all he can handle; Ulik, mightiest of the monstrous Rock Trolls, who inadvertently unleashes the mighty Mangog on the Gods, ushering in the day of Ragnarok; "Crusher Creel," the muscle-bound bald convict armed with a ball and chain who becomes The Absorbing Man; The Super Skrull, who possesses ALL the powers of The Fantastic Four; and The Hulk and The Wrecker and Tana Nile and Galactus and and... Sigh.) Ragnar vs. a bunch of ordinary Humans- talk about a mismatch...