Issue(s): Hulk #260
Cover Date: Jun 81
Title: "Sunset of a samurai!"
Credits:
Bill Mantlo - Writer
Sal Buscema - Penciler
Sal Buscema - Inker

Review/plot:
Hulk's World Tour brings him from Russia to Japan, but instead of meeting a local Japanese super-hero, Glenn Talbot catches up with him.

Unfortunately for Talbot, his much anticipated battle with the Hulk does not go well. His high tech plane is destroyed and he burns to death. For real.

This is his last appearance. Oddly, it's not exactly played up. I had to check the MCP to confirm that he was really dead. It's certainly no loss. He was never a very sympathetic character and recently he'd been treated as being even more driven and crazy than Thunderbolt Ross.

There's also a subplot involving an old samurai forced to pimp himself out to giant monster movies. There's too much of that old Japanese 'honor' stereotype, but it works pretty well for this particular story.

Meanwhile, Rick Jones gets responses from all around the world to his call to set up the next generation of the Teen Brigade. This is, of course, a terrible idea.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 4 - death of Glenn Talbot

Chronological Placement Considerations: Hulk World Tour!

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

It was around this time that the British Hulk reprints from Hulk Comic Weekly stopped in Marvel Super-Heroes, but a new wrapup for that storyline was done by Fingeroth/Hannigan/Giacoia, so those reprints may be in-continuity as well.

Always sad to see a long term member of the supporting cast die. Even if they haven't been utilized well, there is always the chance another writer can do better. Unless the story is truly excellent, it's just better to "retire" the character by moving them off screen and write him out of the book. That way he can be brought back later.

It's appropriate that Talbot should die in battle with the Hulk. But it really needed to be played up in a plot of its own and resolve things with the character.

'Sanshiro Sugata' was the title of the 1943 debut film by Akira Kurosawa, Japan's master director.

I tend to agree that characters shouldn't be killed easily on a meta level. That said, Talbot was never really developed past being second banana to Ross and Banner's competition for Betty. Ross and Betty had been developed in ways that they didn't need Talbot. That left Talbot in the role of a second rate Ross. The Hulk is unique in some respects, because it's a title that has a body count. People who get mixed up with the Hulk sometimes do die. Armbruster, Jarella, and now Talbot. In titles like Spider-Man, I don't think death is really appropriate because it undermines Parker's guilt for Uncle Ben by giving him more people to feel guilty for(like Gwen Stacy for instance). One should be enough! But in the Hulk, Banner's life is a tragic one and it's appropriate that death turns up from time to time. Talbot's time came and it was as pathetic and useless as it should have been. He was a man who had no real convictions besides an unthinking patriotism or likable characteristics(see the previous 200 issues). Ross's hatred of the Hulk at least came from in part from a parent's selfless love for their child. Talbot just wanted the girl and was patient enough to wait for Betty to get worn down by Banner's life. His death was no big loss and the fact that he's stayed dead is a testament to that.

Talbot DID come back, under PAD. PAD never explained exactly how Talbot survived, but he came back during "Ghosts of the Future". He even shot Betty very first thing upon his return and generally speaking, resumed being huge asshole to Banner/Hulk for a while.

Sadly, the entire resurrection got deep sixed by the petty jerk that was Jeph Loeb. Talbot was supposed to be Red Hulk but people figured it out, so Loeb decided to be a prick and revealed that Leader had personally murdered Talbot some point early in his career as a villain and that he had been using LMDs of Talbot over the years, to infiltrate the US military. Red Hulk killed the most recent LMD of Talbot and with the whole thing exposed, Leader couldn't activate a new one to replace the one Red Hulk had destroyed.

That wasn't Glenn Talbot in PAD's run; it was explicitly his nephew Matthew. And it was hinted that he was being mentally manipulated by Omnibus.

Has anyone in the history of marvel comics actually died in an explosion?

Appropriately enough, the very first Hulk villain, the Gargoyle, died in an explosion in Hulk #1 back in 1962, and has stayed dead ever since as far as I know.

It helps that he was eventually replaced by an almost identical son, the Gremlin...who also died in an explosion and has stayed dead. It must run in the family....

Oh, and Glenn Talbot stayed dead; again, the guy from PAD's story was a nephew, Matt Talbot.

@kveto: I believe that (spoiler alert) Thunderbird died from an explosion in X-Men #95.

It seems we can count all the deaths by explosion on one hand:-)

Oh, I can add more, but it'll go further and further off topic, and the characters will get more and more minor.

Given that this is the Hulk's book, perhaps it's worth noting how may characters were *created* in an explosion?

When they were doing that nonsense about "who is the Red Hulk" a few years ago I really thought it would have been Glenn Talbot, which would have made sense if they could retcon it a bit. I have never read that series but was aware of the hub-bub about that storyline and figured Glenn Talbot, last seen exploding in a volcano, would make the most sense and it would have a link to (if I recall correctly), the Red Hulk having some kind of flame-when-angered power/side effect. Silly me, discounting Gen. Ross as a possibility because I remembered his "death" in The Hulk in the early 90s' (and the death of his personality in Zzazzx back in the late 80s!)

Considering he's in Japan, which seems to be as much of a hub for "radioactive monsters" as the American Southwest (thank Godzilla for that), I wouldn't have been surprise if Talbot was mutated here into some sort of gamma freak. Hell, a kaijuu monster would have been amazing...but no, he's still dead and we have Ross-Hulk.

@Wis- PAD brought Ross back in 1998. He never explained why Ross was still a general after everything he did but the writers used that as part of the rationale for him being Red Hulk.

Ataru, you have already given a better storyline suggestion than anything Marvel has done in the past decade.

Michael, I had no idea, the last issues of Hulk I was getting before hesitating as a teenager and then dropping it (I had been getting it monthly since the #280s or so, when I was 5) was when Kubert was the artist and the Hulk became one of Apocalypse's acolytes or whatever. I remember checking back in out of habit and flipping through and it seemed like PAD was just feeling his way through and the storylines were lacking the cohesiveness they'd had during the Grey Hulk era. But the last time I remember seeing Ross was (I believe) as being revealed as being in the Redeemer armor, albeit brain dead. I have to wonder how many of these ideas in 1998 and beyond were PAD's or enforced by Marvel.