An Idiot’s Guide to World War Hulk: A Prelude

First off, the idiot in question is not you, my dear reader. I am an idiot for many reasons, two of which are particularly relevant for our current purposes.

One, I have been the foremost detractor of the Prep Time Posse since its inception. They can’t make a comics post over at okayplayer without me saying something cheeky about how they’re dorks, geeks, or some combination of the two. I hope it’s been clear that this is all in fun. It’s probably less clear (if only to me) that I was using my little jokes to pretend to draw some line between me and Comic Book Nation. As you can tell by my asking to write 10k total words for this blog, there is no line. For God’s sake, I read summaries on wiki of events that happened 15 years ago at least three times a week. It’s time to come out of the closet. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Figure I: JRennolds

The second component of my idiocy is my ignorance. I don’t know comics very well, although I am trying to bring my knowledge up to speed. In that regard, the recommendations of PtP have proved helpful, but my true mentor has been an uber dork in the Philadelphia area that shall only be known as the Inscrutable Dr. Yamada (pictured). He’s the one who feeds me 100 Bullets trade paperbacks and Desolation Jones trade paperbacks and makes sure I understand what a trade paperback is. But remediation is a slow process and, really, I’m still pretty comics dumb.

Figure 2: The Inscrutable Dr. Yamada

The point of my ramblings: don’t expect a particularly nuanced view of World War Hulk. Don’t expect a discussion of how WWH is an allegory for fallibility of all human concepts of the good but that Watchmen did it much better. Don’t expect any attempt to place WWH in any kind of historical context. History is for bitches.

I’m not able to speak to any of that, and I don’t care about it in the least. Here’s what I want to see out of World War Hulk, in outline format.

I. Hulk Smash

A. Prelude (brief)

i. Why Hulk Smashes

ii. Who Hulk Hopes to Smash

B. Actual Smashing

i. The general public

ii. Famous landmarks

iii. Bitch Ass Tony Stark

iv. Reed Richards, former hero, now dick

v. Any other cool shit that gets in the way of smashing i-iv

vi. Hulk turning on and smashing lame extraterrestrial gladiator friends

C. Black Bolt gagged and tied to outside of weird ass spaceship

D. Angst among targets of Smashing (brief)

II. Heroes Smash

A. Ghost Rider using hellfire and big chains in a failed attempt to derail Hulk smashing

B. Stop or contain Hulk in epic smash escalation

C. Involvement of Thor

Figure 3: Komar gets it

Please note that “plot” and “themes” and any other wise guy shit are not in the outline. Frankly, if you need plot to enjoy a four month arc of Hulk smashing, you need to stop re-reading Ender’s Game and go to a strip club. The only standard on which one can judge WWH is whether it succeeds in its obvious goal of being the Tucker Max of 2007 Comics. Tucker Max is many things, but subtle isn’t one of them.

Figure 4: Lame as hell but captivating

But while you may be disgusted by my preoccupation with smashing and my disdain for anything even remotely intellectual, I do hope you appreciate the effort and standards I bring into determining whether the smashing is any good. For example, kindly note that I’ve clearly and accurately singled out the two gentlemen most in need of smashing. I hope we all understand that if WWH ends without Richards and Stark getting repeatedly and brutally smashed, it must be deemed a complete failure. I didn’t read Civil War as a point of pride, but I have figured out that Ironman has been accumulating about a year’s worth of Grade A smash-worthy karma. Even I understand that any time a comic character vaguely resembles a Republican, he’s running into a critical beat down sooner rather than later, which, as a Republican, he obviously deserves.

But the guy I want to see smashed the worst is Reed Richards, for a couple reasons. One, I have a crush on Sue Storm and Richards is way too much of an herb for her. Two, his character in Ultimate Alliance is one of the more overrated video game characters I have played. Those extendo fists are slow as hell, and there’s not a single attack he has that some other character doesn’t do more effectively. Yet all the FF dorks over at IGN keep telling me he’s “one of the best midrange characters in the game.” Whatever—those dudes suck dick for rocks.

Figure 5: You see it

But the most important reason Reed Richards needs to be smashed epically is that he has turned into a very effective and convincing dick. I have read the Illuminati, and Reed’s dickness in those issues borders on the sublime. Who tries to collect the Infiniti Gems? With a 700 IQ, you can’t figure out that’s a bad idea? And not using the Gauntlet to start wrecking shit and fucking Emma Frost just reinforces the notion that he’s somehow, amazingly, improbably, both a dick and a pussy. Now he’s trying to take out some kid who adopts coyote puppies? Man, this dude sucks. Marvel has done a brilliant job making him into the dour assistant principal whose only job is to hand out detentions and who becomes amazingly bitter and Machiavellian as a result. My assistant principal was Keith Godshall (not pictured), and, God, did he need to be smashed. I’ll be thinking of Doc Godshall every time a green fist literally flattens Richards.

Figure 6: Not Doc Godshall, but the closest Google Image could get me

My plan for the next four months is to buy everything with WWH on the cover except the Gamma Corps, which just looks retarded. I intend to write up my thoughts about every 4 issues, or whenever I get so terrified of my book manuscript that I need to do something else.