Why you should give a shit about The Incredible Hulk.

    Why should anyone give a shit about the Hulk? He's big, he's green, and he breaks stuff and gets mad. I'd never really read Hulk that deeply until Immortal. I didn't really know about the Peter David stuff at the time. Hulk has kind of always been treated as a joke in media, big mean green dumb guy, punchline to Avengers quip, yadda yadda. You get that. I read Waid's Indestructible Hulk a few years back and while I liked it, I didn't really have a grasp on the character until now. I want to write these posts a bit spaced out because I don't wanna spend all night writing on and on why I think the big, green guy is cool. This will cover about the first 3 trades, up to Issue #13.

    I love every everything about it, sadly, yet the meaning Hulk brought back to my life as I've been sitting in a life slump, working a dead-end job, trying not to focus on the terror in the world and future. The question still sits in my mind, "Is he Man, Is he Monster, or is he BOTH!?". Al Ewing writes about this at the end of Immortal Hulk #1 in the letter and it sticks with me all the way to the end of the series. He asks through the mirror at the end with "What do you think?" Which isn't just a question for the characters, but to the audience. He drops these throughout the story, questions to the audience about the Hulk. He goes on about humanity, on about the demons and Judaism's on what created the Hulk. He always asks you the question "What do you think?" 

    Immortal Hulk is absolutely full of questions. Why is the Hulk like this now, why is he always changing, getting crazier and crazier? This story is the answer. Gamma energy is in itself batshit insane and way out of my knowledge of radiation expertise, but it's in short, very high energy. Hulk has always been this rogue explosion to a story, you never know what he's going to do, will he make things easier or harder? Hulk throughout the years has suffered from severe Dissociate Identity Disorder, his mind is split between Banner and the brutish Hulk and other array of personalities that represent parts of Banners damaged psyche. He's an agent of chaos, a real devil.

    This story brought back the real devil the Hulk can be after years of, very fun, archaic smashing and Avengers shenanigans. Ewing kills the Hulk, again. 

    Comic book characters have a stay dead problem, because of things like monetary value, we bring back characters because they're popular and keeping them, dead is a stupid waste of money and resources. However, this time, the Hulk can't stay dead long. As when the night rises, the Hulk will walk the Earth. 

    Back when Hulk first appeared, before anger changed him, it was the time of day. For just a short time, Banner would only change into his alter ego at nighttime. The night is when the real monsters come out. We see Hulk throughout this story early on roaming around, finding new horrors every month to destroy and ask the real questions. In issue #2 he fights a gamma irritated skeleton man who like Hulk, can't die, and breaks off his limbs and buries him alive in a mountain, miles from civilization. What kind of man would do that to a person?

    Hulk travels until he reaches his own origin point in life, the place where the Gamma Bomb was dropped, he's brought in by a shadow of his abusive father. Upon reaching he, upon the arrival of Absorbing Man, opens a Green Door, mentioned a throughout the story, taking them all to gamma Hell. 

    We open with Ewing asking the question of what Hell is. A place that has always been absent of God. A place with no rules, pure gamma, pure chaos. We see husks of humanity who has only brushed against gamma, only spouting off memories gone by. We get asked about anger, about the chaotic wrath of Gods own anger, when god gets angry, does he show a Hulk? We get another meaning to Hulk, a physical one. Something "large, unwieldy.", says Ewing. "The primary definition is a rotted ship. A shell." 

    Ewing talks about duality here, light, shadow, black, white. The Quabalah and Qlippoth. The highest and lowest points. Unity, in which what Banner and Hulk have. This place has none for them, Gods own search for complete emotional unity. Gods Hulk. The One Below All.

    Hulk's abusive father here with his gamma knowledge and history as a character, wants nothing more than to kill the "devil" he saw in his son and the world. Ewing then begins to talk about this. The Tempter, The Destroyer, and the wish to break the societal norms which binds us. Saying the world is tainted by a corruption. Yet those in power wish nothing to help. So, what is seen as abnormal, is seen as evil, and so is deemed the devil. We are then told of Job.

    The Immortal Hulk is a retelling of the story of Job, a man forced to walk a world where he struggles to live and demands to know why, a man left to wonder why society breaks him down, makes him rot, suffer. God responds, yet Job does not and will never know. This gives a lot of new meaning to older Hulk stories. In his earlier eras he would wander the world, searching for places of peace, only to be denied at the end every time, like Job, Hulk's path is only obstacle. The Savage Hulk, the Hulk we see largely in fiction, small minded, childish, would later beg in this story, "Why must Hulk always hurt."

    With all these questions, Al Ewing ends this piece with asking again, what is the Hulk? Light and Darkness? Angel or Devil? The Quabalah and Qlippoth, and the single point below, Geburah, yet a light side of that called Golachab, true righteousness, strength in destruction. Strength, power, judgement, all these biblical topics, yet Hulk still remains the question. What is the Hulk to YOU? The point of the question literally is The One Below All. Hulk battles the foe and ultimately wins here; we are then told of balance. Geburah and Golachab, the left hand of God, and the right hand of mercy. Is he man, is he monster, is he both?