Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
| 1971-05-01 00:04:11 |
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Hulk #140
Issue(s): Hulk #140
Cover Date: Jun 71
Title: "The brute ... that shouted love ... at the heart of the atom!"
Credits:
Harlan Ellison - Plot
Roy Thomas - Script
Herb Trimpe - Breakdowns
Sam Grainger - Finishes
Sam Grainger - Inker
Review/plot:
Having been accidentally shrunken into the microverse by Psyklop, the Hulk finds himself on a planet full of green skinned people in a medieval fantasy setting. After fighting pig-dogs...
...and totally impaling one with its own tusk..
...the green people treat the Hulk as their hero...
...and use spells to restore Banner's brain to the Hulk's body. Banner/Hulk is to married to the green people's queen, Jarella...
...something Banner seems to have no problem with.
He makes no attempt to return to his own world and has no real concern about the fact that he's betraying Betty. After getting involved in some D&D style political intrigue, Psyklop finds him and restores him to normal size, which the Hulk isn't happy about.
When the Hulk is done with him, Psyklop's Lovecraftian masters beat him up as well.
Jarella's world will eventually get called K'ai, but not in this first appearance.
Quality Rating: D
Historical Significance Rating: 6 - first Jarella
Chronological Placement Considerations: Continues directly from Avengers #88. Cameo by the Avengers from that issue.
References: N/A
Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: Marvel Super Heroes #91
Inbound References (6): showCharacters Appearing: Captain America, Falcon, Hawkeye, Holi, Hulk, Iron Man, Jarella, Lord Visis, Moli, Psyklop, Redwing, Thor, Torla 1971 / Box 6 / Silver Age Previous:
Avengers #88Up:
MainNext:
Iron Man #39-40
Comments
One aspect of the ending didn't make too much sense to me. Unless the Lovecraftian monsters had other servants beside Psyklop, weren't they sorta screwing themselves by obliterating him?
Harlan Ellison gets a D?
Woof. Tough crowd.
I'm a fan of Harlan Ellison's work, but he really was just taking some well-worn tropes from his writer's handbook -- Lovecraftian elder gods, worlds within worlds, and the perfect yet unobtainable love -- and stirring them together. The biggest problem was Jarella had no personality of her own, and nobody else could ever figure out what to do with her.
On another note, Roy Thomas was playing his old game of throwing as many outside references into his stories as he could fit. The captions and dialog of this issue contain numerous awkward uses of the titles from Ellison short stories: Deeper than the Darkness, Paingod, A Boy and His Dog, The Waves in Rio, The Scenic Route, Worlds to Kill, Shattered Like a Glass Goblin, Try a Dull Knife, Santa Claus Vs Spider-Man, Wanted in Surgery, Asleep with Still Hands, S.R.O., Run for the Stars, The Discarded, and even Repent Harlequin Said the Tick-Tock Man. And the title of the story itself is a play on The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World.
Also, Jarella's sorcerers are names Holi and Moli, a reference to Captain Marvel.
One more thing: Herb Trimpe really knocked it out of the park on this book. While he's obviously not as talented a draftsman as Barry Windsor Smith or Jim Steranko, that first two-page spread where the Hulk shrinks through worlds while the Avengers fight Psyclop is as cool as anything they ever did.
Do we ever find out who or what exactly Psyklop's "Dark Gods" are?
@AF: You do get some answers in What If? Vol 1 23, but not all of them.
Yep, I actually posted bits from that What If on the issue where Jarella dies!
Psyklop never got to fight Cyclops. That really should have happened.
