Issue(s): Hulk #201
Cover Date: Jul 76
Title: "The sword and the sorcerer!"
Credits:
Len Wein - Writer
Sal Buscema - Penciler
Joe Staton - Inker

Review/plot:
Here's a cover featuring Marvel's version of Conan the Barbarian. Now here's the cover to Hulk #201. Now, please guess who the Hulk fights in this issue.

If you guessed Kronak the Barbarian, well, i honestly am stunned. The rest of you, please contact me to join my class action suit. We will get our 25 cents back.

I don't know if there's any back story to this bait and switch, and the lettercols in Hulk suspiciously skip coverage of this issue.

Anyone having the opportunity to flip through the issue before buying it might notice that "Kronak" has an eye injury that distinguishes him from his Hyperborean twin.

Kronak also has a Ruby of Shadows that allows him to summon a Sal Buscema monster.

The story is a standard but fun swords & sorcery tale where the local rebels think they have summoned a champion...

...to free them from their oppressors, Kronak and his evil wizard henchman.

But we're told that the Hulk is really there thanks to the sub-atomic shrinking that began last issue. However, the Hulk begins to shrink even further at the end of this issue, and will wind up in Jarella's world. So are there different levels of shrinkage that result in different worlds? Is Kronak's world on a neutron and Jarella's on an atom? And as issue #203 will confirm, this is all inside Glenn Talbot's head.

Hey, maybe Talbot was thinking up some Conan fan fiction and that's where Kronak came from.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: The Hulk shouldn't appear anywhere but his own series between Hulk #200-203, since he is in various alternate dimensions during that time.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A