Review by Ian Keogh

Jim Steranko’s iconic illustration of the Hulk struggling against his own logo pressing down on him graces the cover of this fourth Hulk Masterworks. How many copies of the Hulk’s first annual were sold on the basis of that cover alone back in 1968? Sadly, the story it graced is unlikely to have lived up to expectations, and all these years later nothing within this volume approaches the inspiration of the cover.

Volume 3 saw the first time anyone other than Stan Lee wrote a solo Hulk story, and it’s only toward the end of this volume that he takes the reins again, continuing into Volume 5. Gary Friedrich opens the reprint section with a weird tale of a depressed alien. Friedrich overwrites the drama either featuring or about Bruce Banner, and based on the dialogue his Hulk’s IQ is higher than Lee’s version, but there’s a weird satisfaction to the Hulk and Space Parasite’s action scenes. Marie Severin’s art really sells them, but she can also deliver a posed melodramatic look.

Roy Thomas would later show considerable imagination in writing The Incredible Hulk for a few years (starting with Masterworks Volume 6), but there’s little to commend his début on the feature, first sharing the writing with Bill Everett, then Archie Goodwin. They revert to the Hulk’s simpler speech patterns, but that’s about the only commendable aspect of battle with the pitiful Missing Link. Friedrich continues a story that’s overstayed its welcome and come to involve S.H.I.E.L.D. and Soviet agents, to which Friedrich adds the Mandarin. Lee concludes what’s been overlong and uninspired.

The story is notable, though, for being the transition between Severin’s art and the long run Herb Trimpe would have pencilling the series. Trimpe’s introduction notes that as editor Lee was unimpressed with his drawing, but extremely complimentary about his ability to tell a story. Trimpe has the good grace to credit Severin for laying out his first issues, yet Lee’s assessment is accurate. There’s not the power of Jack Kirby, the elegance of John Buscema or the graphic design Neal Adams brings, but Trimpe moves the action well.

Friedrich and Severin provide the story originally graced by Steranko’s cover, in which the Hulk meets a bunch of renegade Inhumans recently banished by Black Bolt. They’re then all used by the ruler’s cousin Maximus to ferment a revolution. The villains are visually distinct, but an uninspired bunch and the twists intended to surprise are transparent means of prolonging a story without any great plot.

Lee deposits the Hulk in the Savage Land by the final two-parter, which again throws too much into the mix and results in a cliffhanger ending leading to the next volume. Severin’s versatility, though, is on display in the bonus material featuring a number of the cartoons she drew satirising Marvel staff.

Perhaps one day Steranko’s cover will grace a Hulk collection worthy of it, but this certainly isn’t it.

Everything here is collected in black and white in Essential Incredible Hulk Vol. 2, and in oversized format as part of the second Hulk Omnibus, but as yet not in a colour paperback edition.