A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE to the late Corben, who was born 84 years ago, on Oct. 1, 1940…
By PETER STONE
For decades, the Hulk was simply a violent behemoth. He was a combination of Jack Kirby’s early monster comics, Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde. He roared and destroyed things, somehow never killing hundreds of people.
Gen. “Thunderbolt” Ross tried all sorts of military plans to destroy the man who loved his daughter. Doc Sampson gained some of the Hulk’s strength, power and invulnerability, but was often beaten by the creature who was “the strongest one there is!”
Then in 2001, Brian Azzarello and Richard Corben brought a seismic change to the Hulk’s canon, with the four-issue, mature-readers miniseries Startling Stories: Banner.
Suddenly, we all saw the Hulk in a new and different way. Bruce Banner was a permanently miserable, lost human who just wanted to end it all. He couldn’t take destroying towns, cities and everything else in his path. These were things we readers had never really thought about before.
At the end of the first issue, Bruce Banner puts a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. At the start of the next, the Hulk spits the bullet out. Eleven years later, that very scene shows up as dialogue in the first Avengers movie. For those who hadn’t read Banner, it was shocking — and added so much to Mark Ruffalo’s version of the Green Goliath.
The same concept showed up in Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s 2002 Ultimates, where Banner gets chucked out of a helicopter to force him to transform into the Hulk. The Hulk was no longer just a beast; he was now unkillable.
We’ve seen Planet Hulk, the possibility that Banner’s father was an abuser, John Byrne’s short run, and all that’s followed. Jason Aaron, Greg Pak and Bruce Jones are among those who have added their own shades of green.
But it started in earnest with Azzarello and Corben, and it was particularly wonderful to see the artist on a regular Marvel book. Corben spent his career drawing horror and fantasy titles like Den, with naked women and men. Fantasy and wish fulfillment.
But Corben drawing Bruce Banner was perfect: a nerdy looking dude who couldn’t possibly transform into that monstrous creature. The illustrator accentuated the size and power of the Hulk, making him an unstoppable force of nature. The punches co-star Doc Sampson takes are bone-rattling and jaw shattering. You’re begging for the next fight and you never have to wait long.
Corben went on to do Luke Cage with Azzarello and the Punisher with Garth Ennis. He returned to drawing horror at Dark Horse and other companies but it was a glorious treat when he stepped into the mainstream world, drawing Big Two comics in his big-guys-with-lots-of-muscles-and-beautiful-bodacious-women style.
—
MORE
— BURIED TREASURE: Jan Strnad and Gil Kane’s SWORD OF THE ATOM. Click here.
— BURIED TREASURE — Dr. Strange and Dr. Doom: Triumph and Tragedy. Click here.
—
Peter Stone is a writer and son-in-law of the late Neal Adams. Be sure to check out the family’s twice-weekly online Facebook auctions, as well as the NealAdamsStore.com.
