Issue(s): Hulk #196
Cover Date: Feb 76
Title: "The Abomination proclamation!"
Credits:
Len Wein - Writer
Sal Buscema - Penciler
Joe Staton - Inker

Review/plot:
Last issue the Abomination proposed an alliance with the Hulk. The Hulk just wants to be left alone and/or to have friends, so it's surprising that villains don't try this tact more often. But it was handled pretty well since the Abomination was only fighting the Hulk under duress in the first place.

I kind of expected them to return to the Hulkbuster base and extract some vengeance on General Ross, but the Abomination has a different idea. They attack the Kennedy Space Center.

Their biggest challenges at the base are a super-powered moon buggy...

...and an overzealous supervisor...

...so they take over the base pretty easily.

However, where the plot loses me is when the Abomination demands a ransom for a bunch of diamonds.

I don't see how the Hulk could get behind a scheme like that, and i don't really even see why it's something the Abomination would want. He's insanely powerful and invulnerable and can basically take whatever he wants. What's he going to do with diamonds? Amnesty would make sense. "Cede us New Mexico and leave us alone" is something more ambitious i could see both gamma guys getting behind. But diamonds?

Anyway, Doc Samson comes up with the good idea to broadcast Betty Ross all over the Space Center, and as expected, it causes a rift between the Hulk and the Abomination.

The Abomination does a fair job trying to convince the Hulk that the humans are just trying to confuse him, but it doesn't work and the Abomination tries to escape in a rocket. The Hulk, however, doesn't want to let him go so he crawls up the side of the rocket.

This could have a chance for the Abomination to win back the Hulk ("Oh, Hulk, i'm glad you're ok. Let me help you into the rocket.") but it doesn't work out that way and the rocket explodes.

It was pretty much inevitable that i was going to be disappointed by a Hulk/Abomination alliance since for it to play out in a way that i think would be logical, the status quo of the Marvel Universe would have been altered more than would have been ok at this time. But it could have been done better than this.

We're in a transitional period at Marvel and i think Len Wein's writing exemplifies it. The scripting is definitely more natural and that makes me expect more of the plots as well. But while this sort of crept up to the edge of interesting, it seems to back away without allowing the implications of the plot to reach their natural conclusions.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: It's been 48 hours since the Hulk and Abomination joined forces last issue; they've been off the radar until the start of this issue. I would love to have been privy to the conversations between the two gamma guys between these issues.

References:

• Doc Samson kicks himself for failing to capture the Hulk in Hulk #193, and General Ross trumps him by noting that he should have never allowed Banner to be put in the situation that transformed him into the Hulk in the first place in Hulk #1.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

That supervisor...is a bad ass.

That moon buggy looks an awful lot like the Jupiter Landing Vehicle that plays a role in Count Nefaria's "death" a few years later.