Looking Back on the Hulk

Originally published March 12, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1321

I wondered if I would be able to read it.

I stood there in the comic book store I frequent once a week and observed the new titles. Apparently it was Books-I-Used-To-Write week. It’s kind of like standing outside a frat house from which you’ve been rejected, knowing that there’s a party going on and that you’re not invited to attend.

There was the latest issue of Aquaman with the newest installment of the systematic dismantling of everything I did in the series. But I was pretty much used to that by now. Right nearby, however, was issue #1 of The Hulk. No longer incredible, but the recipient of a massive ad campaign, a Marvel-created website, and lots of other support that they hadn’t given the title for years while I was writing it.

I stared at it. And thought back to twelve years ago, when Bob Harras approached me about writing it…

Back then, you see, I was still working in the sales department. I had an iron-clad, inviolable rule: Between nine and five, I never discussed editorial matters with anyone. I was striving to keep my writing career and my sales career separate. Of course, since my writing career wasn’t going anywhere at that time, it wasn’t that difficult a chore. My only assignment until that point had been Spectacular Spider-Man, from which I’d been fired by Jim Owsley who was trying to placate Jim Shooter (and hopefully save his own job. Although for some reason Owsley kept trying to get me to change my name to Moishe Rabbi. Could never figure that one out…) So it wasn’t as if editors were banging down my door. In point of fact, no one really wanted me on their books since the idea of a sales guy writing a comic was anathema to practically the entire staff.

It was with some degree of surprise, then, that I looked up from my stack of rack credit forms to see Bob Harras standing in the doorway of my office, asking me if I was interested in taking on The Incredible Hulk. I told him to come back after 5 and we’d discuss it then. He did and we did.

It wasn’t as if there was a ton of interest from other writers. People simply weren’t falling over each other to hop onto a book that many considered to be a dead end. Bob could offer me the title without putting editorial noses out of joint because, unlike the flagship Spider-Man titles, no one in editorial particularly gave a damn about who was writing Hulk.

So I said sure. I figured I’d last maybe six months on the title.

Bob showed me the artwork of the artist on the series at that time, a young artist named Todd McFarlane. He wanted to make sure I was okay with McFarlane staying on the title. He’d previously had him working on GI Joe, but writer Larry Hama absolutely couldn’t stand his artwork. Hard to blame Hama; at that point, McFarlane’s art was rife with weaknesses, most of which he’d managed to hide during his previous work on Infinity, Inc., thanks to flashy storytelling stunts such as panels drawn on the side of giant dice (and this isn’t me just being mean in my assessment; McFarlane critiqued his early work in exactly those terms in later interviews.) Harras was determined to get McFarlane to knock off the stunts and concentrate on storytelling, but Hama wasn’t interested in GI Joe being McFarlane’s training grounds. He wanted McFarlane off GI Joe, ASAP.

Harras, however, didn’t want to tell McFarlane that a popular writer wanted him as far from a successful series as possible. He was worried that such a flat rejection might be upsetting to a young artist, discouraging young McFarlane so much that he might not be able to afford home run balls someday.

So instead Harras came up with a cover story, telling McFarlane that it was Hasbro who had arbitrarily said they wanted “a different look” for the book. That way it would seem far less personal. Instead it came across like the capricious demands of an unfathomable corporate mentality, and editor and artist would be able to shrug their collective shoulders and say, “Well, what can you do against such stupidity?” In short, he’d be able to spare McFarlane’s feelings. In the meantime, to keep him busy, he assigned McFarlane to Incredible Hulk.

Was that okay with me, I was asked. If it was, he could make McFarlane’s assignment to the series permanent. My suspicion is that if I’d said no, Bob would have kept him on the title anyway and then asked me to grin and bear it. But, as I noted, I figured I wouldn’t be around for too long on the title anyway, so I chose the path of least resistance. I said, “Yeah, sure, I can work with him.”

Thus began my very unpromising tenure on Incredible Hulk. Unpromising in that, when readers realized that I wasn’t going to change him back to green-and-stupid, I was universally condemned for it. What few letters (and there were very few, I assure you) we received hated everything I was doing. But by and large, fans didn’t bother to write in at all. Missives were so scarce that I wound up publicly pleading for reader feedback just so we wouldn’t feel as if we were operating in a vacuum.

I endeavored to tailor my stories to Todd’s strengths. I asked him what he wanted to draw. “Machinery… lots of huge machinery. And Wolverine. I’ve love to draw Wolverine.” So I gave Bruce a high-tech RV to ride around in, or huge robots to fight. And Harras and I moved heaven and earth with a somewhat intransigent X-office, which didn’t especially feel like lending out X-characters at that time, until we managed to finagle Wolverine for a guest shot.

(I know, I know. I’m speaking of a time when writers had say over which artists were on their books, and there was reluctance to overexpose the X-characters. Not only does it sound like I’m describing another era, it seems like another planet.)

Sales during McFarlane’s run were not particularly good. They spiraled downward until the issue guest starring Wolverine. We had a nice sales spike there, then they plummeted again… but slowly began to build over the following year. Apparently non-regular readers liked what they saw, because they showed up and stayed.

Before I knew it, I’d racked up a year’s tenure, and also developed a long-term game plan. A story had appeared in an earlier issue of Incredible Hulk which established that Bruce Banner had had a remarkably abusive father. The story was credited to Bill Mantlo, although Barry Windsor-Smith has since stated that it was actually he who developed the concept and that it was co-opted by Marvel editorial. Since Mantlo is unfortunately in no condition to say, and my inquiries into the matter with Marvel editorial months ago yielded nothing concrete, I can’t say for sure, although Windsor-Smith certainly makes a convincing case. In any event, the story suggested to me the notion that Bruce Banner actually suffered from what was then called Multiple Personality Disorder, and I knew eventually I’d do a story wherein the Hulk was “cured” via a merging of the personalities. It was just a matter of laying the groundwork for it. Took me four years, but I finally did it.

During that time, I pretty much got to do whatever I wanted on the series because no one cared what I was up to. It was, after all, Incredible Hulk. Bob Harras stepped aside after a year and his assistant, Bobbie Chase, stepped in as editor, and remained for the duration of my tenure on the book. I probably formed a tighter creative bond with her than I did with any other editor, and came to trust her judgment implicitly.

I sailed along peacefully until hitting my first road bump around #359, when I was informed that the highers-up had decreed that a pregnancy storyline I’d embarked upon had to be—you should pardon the expression—aborted. I was furious. I considered resigning from the title at that point, but I still felt I had stories to tell… including the merge story that I’d been working towards. I refused to write a story in which she lost the child, however, so Bob Harras was tapped to write it. It was one of only two issues in my entire run on the series that didn’t bear my name.

Every so often I’d take a whack at tackling controversial subjects. A story on capital punishment, in which I depicted a character being electrocuted on panel, prompted a firestorm of protest. Mightn’t this be too upsetting for younger readers—and even many older ones? My attitude was, Excuse me, this was a fictional character. In the real world, however, real people are really killed by the state. If that’s so upsetting, then it might behoove readers to do something to prevent real executions, rather than raise protests over fictional ones.

Probably the most controversial angle was when I revealed that former Hulk sidekick Jim Wilson had AIDS. As that story developed, I realized I was in a no-win situation when it came to explaining just how Jim had contracted the disease. If I said he was gay, I’d be accused of feeding into the gay-equals-AIDS mindset. If I said he got it through straight sex or a blood transfusion, I’d be accused of being too weasly to reveal that a mainstream Marvel character was gay. Ultimately, as I waffled, I realized that I had inadvertently backed into the point of the story: It didn’t matter how he had contracted the disease. What mattered was that he had it and needed help and support. I wound up giving that exact exchange to Bruce and Betty.

Ah, Betty.

I will never forget when Bobbie suggested knocking off Betty.

“It’d be a way of really shaking up the book,” she pointed out. “Betty’s always been his anchor… and if he were cut adrift, imagine how—”

“Fine, she’s toast,” I said.

But it quickly became clear, once the storyline had been started, that highers up at Marvel wanted a series completely different from what I was prepared to write. The death of Betty, I was told, was to launch a storyline which would take the Hulk back to brainless, inarticulate savagery. Big fights, ideally with the Avengers, and crossover storylines would be the order of the day. I tried to come up with storylines that would address what Marvel wanted while, at the same time, maintaining something of what I wanted to bring to the storyline. The highers up didn’t like any of it.

Or maybe they just didn’t like me anymore. I was, after all, old news. Marvel is event-driven, you see, and my being on Incredible Hulk is simply not an event. You can’t start a book over with a #1 when it’s the same old writer on it. I found myself wishing that they’d gone through with their earlier plans to drop the title during the Heroes Reborn mess. That way I might have gotten the prodigal son returning welcome that Mark Waid got on Captain America.

In any event, it was made clear to me that, since I was unable or unwilling to produce the stories they wanted to see—that I felt the direction they wanted for the series was just wrong—my presence was no longer wanted, needed or required.

Their prerogative, of course. I had mentally prepared myself for it years ago, ever since Chris Claremont spoke of how he had come to think of the X-Men as “his” characters, and how difficult it was for him to come to terms with losing them. I endeavored to learn from that and never lose sight of who owned the Hulk, so that when the inevitable time came that I was shunted aside, I’d have insulated myself.

I was given an opportunity to write one last story to try and “wrap up” my storylines. I gave them nothing they were expecting, jumping to a point ten years down the line. Convinced that within a very short time, no one would remember or care about everything I’d put into the series as subsequent writers would doubtlessly undo or ignore all that I’d accomplished, I split my own persona, speaking alternately through Bruce (“My legacy will be nothing but fallen, forgotten rubble.”) and Rick (“There’s other things in life, y’know?… Realize what’s important. Family, loved ones… that’s the important thing.”)

And as Rick held a child on his knee who bore a striking resemblance to my youngest, Ariel, he spoke on my behalf once more as he said, “I could keep on talking about (the Hulk) for ages… but sometimes you reach a point where something stops you.” Yeah. Something like a desire to bring in someone new.

When I’d been forced off the series, John Byrne proclaimed on his computer board that my leaving was proof that “there was a God.” Empathetic talk from someone who’d had his own share of editorially-motivated departures. I wondered how long it would take him to grab the series. Not long, as it turned out.

So there I was in the comic store, my mind awash with mixed emotions over my tenure on the series. And questions. What would the book look like? What angle would the storyline take? Would there be gaping plot holes? And most importantly… how long would it take for Byrne to show up as a character in the book, a la She-Hulk? (I’d materialized on panel as the priest at Rick and Marlo’s wedding, but that was nine years into the run. In my last issue, Rick spoke to an off-panel writer named Peter, but that could easily have been Peter Parker since he worked for The Bugle.)

Ultimately, I did something I always scold other people for: I skimmed it/read it in the store. Yup. The Hulk drawn as big and monstrous, quite ably and satisfyingly unsubtle. Just what Marvel wanted.

Bruce Banner, afraid that he’s rampaging and presenting a danger to people in the town, remains in the town rather than getting the hell out of there so that he won’t endanger more people. A sheriff trustingly leaves his young daughter in the care of a stranger he just met. Gloriously huge plot holes. And lo and behold, there was Byrne on the last page. I admired his restraint. At least Bruce didn’t look like Dr. Quest anymore.

It was like reading about a stranger. I put the book back, bought the latest Strangers in Paradise and Cerebus, and left, certain that the book would likely be a big hit. I could hear the noise of the party going on without me. Ah well. There’s always other frat houses.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)