Hulk #8

The new Hulk comic book is doing very well in sales, and as near as I can tell, there's one reason for it: it has fantastic art.

This issue features two outstanding talents - Art Adams and Frank Cho. Each takes half the comic, with Adams handling the adventures of the original Hulk (who appears in his original Gray color for part of the comic), and Cho handling the reprehensible Red Hulk.

The story each artist tackles plays to each one's strong points. Adams gets to draw an army of monsters - the Wendigos - and lots of beautiful women, as the battle rages in Las Vegas. Cho is asked to draw some beautiful females who decide to attack the Red Hulk (sorry, I refuse to use the silly "Rulk" name for that character), including the She-Hulk, the Valkyrie and Thundra.

Both Adams and Cho are at the top of their game here, and the book is well worth buying for the art alone.

Which is good, because the story by Jeph Loeb continues to be as silly as ever.

Over on the green side of the aisle, we have the usual "superheros fight each other" bit, which would be fine if not for the army of Wendigos who are killing people like crazy. Would it really take until the end of that half of the issue for this to be noticed? I'm also anxiously awaiting the explanation for how the monsters made the trek from Canada to Las Vegas without being noticed.

On the red side... well, I hardly know where to start. The Red Hulk is a mass murderer who has beaten up several heroes - yet after his utter defeat at the end of issue #6, apparently no one felt like trying to cage him - they just left him to walk around the country, killing more people. And the She-Hulk's team - none of whom are in Red Hulk's league, by the way - are asked to discover his civilian identity, as though that were more important than stopping his murderous ways. Oh, and we still have no clue as to who he really it - and frankly, I don't much care.

Perhaps it's old-fashioned to want to see the bad guys brought to justice - but I do like my comics to focus on heroic (or at least sympathetic) characters - and we're only getting half that here.

Grade: C-