Issue(s): Hulk #230
Cover Date: Dec 78
Title: "The harvester from beyond!"
Credits:
Elliot S! Maggin - Writer
Jim Mooney - Penciler
Bob Layton - Inker

Review/plot:
This is a weird fill-in story about the Hulk having a run in with some rural folks and then a space alien looking to improve its planet's harvest (apparently having never heard of soil).

The Hulk busts out of the space ship while the alien happily inspects the soil samples it found under the Hulk's fingernails.

Meanwhile, Samson puts Karla Sofen in charge of General Ross' recovery. Whoops!

It's nice to see a fill-in keep up the sub-plots of the series, and the main story was cool too, in an early 1960s Tales To Astonish sort of way.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: This fits in well after the Hulk has jumped off in disgust after the events of Defenders #62-64. This begins a tight sequence for the Hulk; see the Hulk Smash Avengers #2 entry for more.

References:

• The Hulk transforms into Banner for the first time since Hulk #227.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Elliot Maggin was pretty much an exclusively DC writer; this may be his only Marvel effort.

Bernie Wrightson was announced as drawing a Hulk fill-in around this time, but I don't know if it ever appeared.

Maybe it got turned into the Hulk-Thing Graphic Novel? I remember some people saying that it had to have been written years ago when it first came out.

Mark, you probably know this by now since it's been a few years since your comment, but Elliot Maggin did an issue of Spidey Super Stories and an issue of Spectacular Spider-Man before this.

I presume Layton added the copy of IRON MAN (which he was then inking and co-plotting) seen amid the alien's "samples"; the nameplate on the sheriff's desk reads "R. Neckk."