Incredible Hulk #312 Review

Issue Review
Incredible Hulk #312

Direct Market Release Date: June 18, 1985

Credits

Title: Monster
Story: Bill Mantlo
Art: Mike Mignola & Gerry Talaoc
Letters: Jim Novak
Colors: Bob Sharen
Editor: Carl Potts
Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter

Summary

The past. After a difficult delivery, Bruce Banner is born by cesarean section in a Dayton, Ohio hospital. The child's father, Dr. Brian Banner, who didn't want the child in the first place, wonders if his lifelong work around radiation would have affected the child's genes.

Time passes. Dr. Brian Banner becomes increasingly jealous of the attention his wife gives the infant Bruce Banner. Bruce is left in the care of Nurse Meachum, a mean nanny who Bruce sees as a snarling reptile. The only love the boy knows is from his mother, and seeks comfort in his playthings - a shining star that hangs above his crib, and a doll who keeps him company.

Time passes. A young Bruce Banner opens his Christmas presents early, while his parents sleep. His intelligence allows him to easily master an erector set. Brian Banner awakens, and angry that his bright boy's aptitude might mean he is a mutant, trashes the set, and attacks his wife and son. As with his nanny, Bruce sees his father as a reptilian monster.

Time passes. A brilliant student, Bruce banner is bullied by his peers. His mother was killed at his father's hands some time ago, and he is left in the care of his aunt.

Time passes. Banner encounters his father while visiting his mother's grave. His father attacks his, claiming that he is a genetic monster, and that some day, the world will thank him for killing Bruce. After Brian leaves, Bruce places the star that used to hang above his crib as a child on the grave site.

Time passes. Bruce Banner arrives at a military base to build a gamma bomb. General Ross arrives, and after getting into an argument, picks up Banner's childhood doll and rips it's arms off. General Ross takes the form of a reptile. In short time, Banner runs out onto the gamma bomb test site to rescue Rick Jones, and is caught up in the accident that transforms him into the Hulk.

The present. The Incredible Hulk is stranded at the Crossroads of all dimensions with three manifestations of his consciousness: Guardian, Banner's instinct for self preservation, manifesting itself as the doll ripped apart by General Ross, Goblin, Banner's rage, manifested as the evil lizard he envisioned his antagonists to be, and Guardian, Banner's reason, manifesting itself as the star that hung above his crib.

The Beyonder, sitting in a hotel room in Washington D.C., suddenly notices that this universe is made of of an endless number of different dimensions. He explores various aspects of the Multiverse, such as Asgard and Mephisto's realm, and comes across the Crossroads. While ruminating on Banner's plight, a stream of energy passes by, and the Beyonder senses that it wants to take the place of a life in this dimension. Deciding to help Banner, the Beyonder changes the course of this energy to head straight for Bruce Banner.

Quotes

Caption: Although many miles from Ground Zero, Bruce Banner was bathed in the full force of the mysterious gamma rays. He screamed, but no one heard him... just as no one had heard his silent screaming all his lonely life! The awesome forces of gamma radiation were released that day! But so was the long pent-up rage locked inside a lovelorn child... doomed from childhood to become that which his father had always feared he would become! More than a man! A MONSTER!

The Beyonder: This man is puzzling. He is miserable, and yet makes no effort to seek gratification! He forsakes his intellect and even the strength of the raging beast locked inside hi to embrace despair-- like a lover! Better the embrace of despair than loneliness and fear? Is there gratification in this? That I have yet to experience or understand?

Commentary

The Incredible Hulk #312 is perhaps the best telling of the Hulk's origin and back story that I've ever read. It's a very dark story, and Mignola's pencils (not immediately recognizable under Talaoc's inks) give it a palpable tension. Mignola masterfully depicts Bruce Banner's inner emotions at every age with a rendition of the Hulk appearing overtop of Banner in green lineart, displaying sadness, rage and confusion with such skill that the story pulls at the hear at every turn. It also reinforces the theme of the issue: that the Hulk has always been a part of Banner's subconscious, and the Gamma bomb released him.

Also moving is a splash page of a doctor lifting a newborn Bruce Banner up into the shadow of a snarling Hulk, juxtaposing the child with the anger that it's life will bring. Interestingly enough, Mike Mignola admitted in an interview for the book Mantlo: A Life in Comics, that none of the baby Bruce Banner drawings were done by him! "Bill gives me this flashback story of Bruce Banner's childhood. I couldn't draw babies and little kids! in that issue, all the babies and kids were drawn by my then-girlfriend. Even with that I still remember hating every minute of doing that one."

As far as a crossover with Secret Wars II, the Beyonder is used here as a means to get the Hulk out of the Crossroads storyline. It works well as a tie in, and also begins to introduce the Beyonder to love, which coincidentally enough, is the theme of the fourth issue of Secret Wars II, where the storyline continues!

Up next...

Secret Wars II continues in Secret Wars II #4!