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Essential Rampaging Hulk #1

Essential Rampaging Hulk, Vol. 1

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Not a hoax, not a dream, not an imaginary story...so what IS it? Judge for yourself as the gamma-powered gargantua's long-lost black-and-white adventures are reprinted for the first time! Rarely seen moments of Hulk history featuring aliens, magic, horror and wonder - the full gamut for Marvel's great green giant! Guest-starring the Avengers, the X-Men and more! Collecting RAMPAGING HULK #1-9, THE HULK! #10-15 and INCREDIBLE HULK #269.

576 pages, Paperback

First published June 25, 2007

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About the author

Doug Moench

2,068 books122 followers
Doug Moench, is an American comic book writer notable for his Batman work and as the creator of Black Mask, Moon Knight and Deathlok. Moench has worked for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Dark Horse Comics and many other smaller companies; he has written hundreds of issues of many different comics, and created dozens of characters, such as Moon Knight. In 1973, Moench became the de facto lead writer for the Marvel black-and-white magazine imprint Curtis Magazines. He contributed to the entire runs of Planet of the Apes, Rampaging Hulk (continuing on the title when it changed its name to The Hulk!) and Doc Savage, while also serving as a regular scribe for virtually every other Curtis title during the course of the imprint's existence. Moench is perhaps best known for his work on Batman, whose title he wrote from 1983–1986 and then again from 1992–1998. (He also wrote the companion title Detective Comics from 1983–1986.)

Moench is a frequent and longtime collaborator with comics artist Paul Gulacy. The pair are probably best known for their work on Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu, which they worked on together from 1974–1977. They also co-created Six from Sirius, Slash Maraud, and S.C.I. Spy, and have worked together on comics projects featuring Batman, Conan the Barbarian and James Bond.

Moench has frequently been paired with the artist and inker team of Kelley Jones and John Beatty on several Elseworlds Graphic Novels and a long run of the monthly Batman comic.

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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
Profile Image for Sophia.
2,683 reviews380 followers
February 17, 2021
Only read the Moon Knight parts.
For whatever reason, I thought this was going to recap all of Moon Knight’s appearances so far.
That did not happen.
Although, the story we did get was pretty good! There was a flashback to when Marc was working for ‘The Company’ and a brief mention that Marc sometimes doesn’t even know who he is (having multiple personalities or ‘identities’).
Profile Image for Michael.
1,602 reviews207 followers
February 3, 2019
Wieso hat mir niemand gesagt, dass es in den Siebzigern ein schwarz/weiß Hulk-Magazin gab? Ich liebe s/w=Artwork, und das Heft hat mich, nachdem ich es bei eBay entdeckt und natürlich sofort gekauft habe, nicht enttäuscht.
Rick Jones und der Hulk fliegen nach Rom, weil dort die Krylorianische Konspiration stattfindet (okay, und wer auf Alliterationen verzichten kann sagt einfach Alien Invasion). Das Heft steckt voller Hulk-Goodness, will vor allem heißen: Hulk smashes! - und zwar reichlich.







Fiese Aliens, viele Alliterationen, dolle Marvel=Tech, ein Wiedersehen mit Gargoyle und der Erstauftritt der schönen Bereet, einer Außerirdische, die von ihren bösen Landsmännern gejagt wird -das ist klasse=klassische Unterhaltung.

(Und weil ein s/w=Magazin eine gute Chance ist, neues Material zu erproben, findet sich in diesem Heft auch die erste Bloodstone-Story)

Merged review:

Abgesehen vom Zeichnerischen wird der HULK schon recht stiefmütterlich behandelt, vor allem, wenn man bedenkt, dass es ja immerhin sein Magazin ist.



Neben "HULK SMASHES" gibt es keine großen Variationen, immerhin aber ein paar witzige Szenen.
Die Handlung aus Heft 1 wird fortgesetzt, eine gute Zusammenfassung findet sich hier:
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Rampag...

Es kommt zur ersten Begegnung zwischen dem Hulk und dem noch ganz jungen X-Men Team, was mir als X-Fan natürlich gefallen hat, wobei die Artwork die X-Men auch super aussehen lässt:





Und wenn wir schon bei der Optik sind: Das Cover ist doch auch wirklich klasse!
Profile Image for Rich Meyer.
Author 50 books57 followers
December 22, 2012
Nothing about this book is "essential" by any meaning of the word. In fact, the first nine issues were declared to be "imaginary stories" a few years later, since they played so fast and loose with Marvel Comics continuity. About the only things of any note that came out of this book were establishing that Bruce Banner had been an abused child, and the excellent Moon Knight feature penciled by Bill Sienkiewicz.

The Rampaging Hulk was originally a magazine-sized black-and-white comic, and featured some interesting art by Walt Simonson and Alfredo Alcala. Keith Pollard unfortunately brought the book down to his level for several issues, before Ron Wilson took over the art chores when the magazine became full-color and started being billed as a tie-in to the Incredible Hulk TV show.

Unfortunately, the Wilson stories reprinted in this volume are reprinted with the color separations, so all of the art is murky and even the text is hard to read.

This is also a very violent book, with the Hulk smashing even more often than usual. The wandering Bruce Banner of the TV show is ill-represented here.

I'd give this one a pass unless you are a Marvel Comics completist and you have a budget.
Profile Image for Momina.
203 reviews51 followers
August 27, 2016
I am so, so biased with Hulk comics, and I'm not even ashamed! There's one thing that troubles me - the alienation between Hulk and Banner. I would have liked to think that The Hulk is just another face of Banner (like Hyde of Dr. Jekyll) - metaphorically, the evil in all of us, that we sometimes have no control over and that leads us to heaping piles of regrets later on. But in this comic (and perhaps in several more, I imagine) they've given The Hulk the identity of a separate being; an entity, although conscious of Banner, but completely disentangled from him. I don't think I like that. You take away the poetry from the tragedy this way. The Hulk should have been an unconscious raging monster, with no ability to think or feel - this would have made the pathos of Bruce more profound. But you try to humanize him and it just feels... odd.

Sometimes, I must confess, in this book, his lines did feel real and effective, and one doubts whether the 'humanizing' isn't that bad after all. But still I'm like 60% in the favor of Hulk being an imbecile - give all the literature to Bruce, thank you.
Profile Image for Little Timmy.
7,362 reviews59 followers
February 13, 2016
Great old Hulk stories. I read these in the original magazines a few years ago. This is a great reprint of those stories. Recommended
Profile Image for Woody Chandler.
355 reviews5 followers
May 15, 2020
These were all brand-new to me! I remember when they were on the newsstand, but they were: a) in B&W at first and what self-respecting kid wanted to read B&W comics?; b) prohibitively expensive at a time when every penny counted & you could score four (4) or five (5) "regular" comics for the price of one & c) of a rather adult nature, having flipped through a few out of a base curiosity.

I am glad that I waited! These were interesting stories that fell outside of the established timeline & the first nine (9) ended up being revisited in the regular comic book in issue #269. I'm not going to say how or why, but it did give a lie to some of the early taglines. No matter.

It also sparked a sense of nostalgia in me. The book was initially cancelled & then returned in color (!) as a companion to the TV series "The Hulk". This was around the time of the end of my age of innocence. I got hip to drugs in my early-teens & comic books, baseball cards & so many of my other childhood interests began to fall away. Reading these stories & thinking about watching the TV show with my Pops & younger brother made it even more worthwhile.

On to Vol. 2!
Profile Image for Fraser Sherman.
Author 10 books33 followers
July 2, 2021
The Rampaging Hulk was a B&W magazine rushed out to capitalize on the hit Hulk TV series. For the first nine issues, Marvel made the odd but engaging choice to set the book in the period between the demise of Hulk's first, unsuccessful comics series and his return in Avengers #1. The Hulk, Rick Jones and their alien ally Bereet battle an ET invasion while also encountering the original X-Men, Namor and Iron Man.
That stuff was fun, but also ignored Hulk continuity (back then he changed to Bruce and back via a ray machine, not through rage) so Marvel switched it to contemporary stories more in keeping with the TV show's tone. At which point I lost interest (I'm not a big Hulk fan) and didn't finish.
Profile Image for Skjam!.
1,636 reviews52 followers
March 15, 2015
Doctor Bruce Banner was one of the nation’s top physicists, and an expert in gamma radiation, when he was drafted into creating a new kind of nuclear weapon called a “gamma bomb.” Just before the device was about to go off, Dr. Banner saw a young man (soon to be known as Rick Jones) driving into the danger area. Ordering the test delayed, Banner went out to save the boy. But a Communist agent prevented the order from being received in hopes of killing Banner and crippling America’s bomb research.

Rick Jones was tossed to safety, but Dr. Banner was struck by a massive dose of gamma radiation, which had a bizarre effect. Under certain circumstances (initially nightfall, later anger) Banner would turn into a monstrous green creature of destruction that was codenamed the Hulk. General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross became the Hulk’s mortal enemy, not realizing that the monster was also the romantic interest of his daughter Betty.

Bruce Banner had to evade having his secret revealed, while the Hulk battled the army and various supervillains. And that was the premise of the six-issue The Incredible Hulk series. Sales weren’t that hot, and the Hulk was rotated out for other features, not having a solo outing again until Tales to Astonish put him in the same magazine as Namor.

In 1977, Marvel Comics had started producing black and white magzines as well as their regular comic books. These were primarily aimed at slightly older readers as they evaded the Comics Code, and were sold in stores that no longer bothered with a comics rack. The Rampaging Hulk was a bit of an exception. It was retroactive continuity, revealing what Banner and Jones had been up to during the period in the early 1960s they weren’t being published.

These longer tales involved the Hulk battling the menace of the Krylorians, an alien race bent on conquering the Earth. He was aided by Rick Jones and a renegade Krylorian artist named Bereet. The Krylorians were somewhat comical–they could disguise themselves as humans like the Skrull, but often weren’t very good at it. They were also a squabbling, backbiting lot who barely cooperated at times. The X-Men, Namor the Sub-Mariner, and a pre-Avengers assemblage of the Avengers made guest appearances.

That storyline ended in issue 9. With the success of the Hulk TV series starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno, it was decided to make the magazine a tie-in of sorts to that. The name was changed to The Hulk! though the numbering was kept for tax reasons, the setting was moved to the current day, and the series was now in color. The stories focused on Bruce Banner as a wanderer who kept running into problems no matter where he went, and invariably wound up Hulking out. The stories involved such contemporary issues as terrorism, racism and child abuse (one of these stories is apparently the first one to suggest that Bruce Banner was abused as a child, which was later used to explain some of his issues.)

Hulk’s usual supporting cast was absent, although there was a brief crossover with back-up feature Moon Knight.

There were a variety of artists, from Walt Simonson to Bill Sienkiewicz (in his Neal Adams homage period). One issue has a fill-in story by Jim Starlin that is kind of trippy. The character of the Hulk wasn’t really a good fit for Doug Moench, but his writing is serviceable throughout. The switch to color in later issues is lost in this reprint, which makes the art muddy in places.

This volume collects up to issue #15. There are a few pages from Incredible Hulk #269, a story by Bill Mantlo that brought Bereet into the present day by revealing that the events in The Rampaging Hulk #1-9 were in fact her alien fanfilms, with her as a self-insert character. This did explain a lot of the continuity glitches and a couple of other questions, but some readers felt it was a cheat.

This volume is primarily for die-hard Hulk fans; others will want to check their local libraries.
Profile Image for Mike Clooney.
29 reviews2 followers
March 11, 2013
I've been a big supporter of the Marvel Essentials line from the beginning. They're bargain volumes with a lot of pages for the price, and have collected a lot of obscure Bronze Age material never reprinted elsewhere. Case in point: The Hulk's late-1970s magazine-format adventures presented here. Many fans balk at the black-and-white Essentials, but since the majority of stories in this book were originally published in B&W, you can feel content that you're reading them as they were intended to be seen.

The original concept of this series was to present flashback tales to the early 1960s, accounting for The Hulk's period of publishing dormancy in between the cancellation of his first short-lived series and his re-emergence a few years later in TALES TO ASTONISH. That being the case, the first 9 issues showcase encounters with the original X-Men; a Sub-Mariner still at war with the surface world; and a pre-AVENGERS #1 grouping of Iron Man, Thor, and the Ant-Man/Wasp team. Because of the continuity problems these stories presented, though, writer Bill Mantlo later retconned them out of existence as "films" made by the alien Bereet as entertainment on her homeworld (as an aside, I hate when one writer goes out of his way to shit all over the work of another, regardless of its quality. Better to just ignore it and pretend it never "happened").

With the 10th issue, the series switched gears to appeal to fans of the live-action Hulk TV show, which was huge at the time. It adapted the show's formula of Banner as wandering nomad, trying to establish a normal life for himself, only to inevitably have his brief moments of happiness disrupted by his alter-ego. These stories were designed for a casual readership more familiar with TV than comics, with no super-villains or references to the larger Marvel Universe, save for a brief tertiary crossover with the book's backup strip Moon Knight.

Doug Moench - one of my favorite comics writers of the 1970s, with classic runs on MASTER OF KUNG FU, WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, MOON KNIGHT, and others - is clearly slumming here, cranking out hackwork on a star character to pay the bills while he devoted himself to the lower-selling series that were more labors of love. The plots are derivative of a thousand others, the dialogue is standard comic book clunky, and Moench has no real affinity for Hulk/Banner.

This isn't one of those cases where the art saves the story, either. There are some truly bizarre penciler/inker combos seen here, pairing up artists whose styles just don't mesh. I mean, Walt Simonson inked by Alfredo Alcala? Both greats in their own right, but the resultant mess is the comics equivalent of putting a hamburger in a blender with a chocolate shake. The heavy inkwash on the first 9 issues, in a medium where clean linework is necessary for fluid storytelling, makes the art look almost amateurish. The Jim Starlin/Alex Nino team on issue 4's sci-fi/fantasy romp works very well, though, and it's the highlight of the book.

So yeah, the Essential volumes might give you quantity (particularly so here, at close to 600 pages), but much to my disappointment, this one doesn't hold up on the quality end. Worth a look only if you're a hardcore Bronze Age fan interested in seeing material that hasn't already been reprinted a dozen times before.
Profile Image for Chadwick.
306 reviews4 followers
June 27, 2008
This is a totally fun collection of non-canonical Hulk stories printed in The Rampaging Hulk magazine, a black-and-white publication intended to cash in on the more adult Hulk fan-base created by the Bill Bixby TV series. Still pretty silly stuff, but Banner is portrayed in the more wandering stranger manner that Bixby made famous. Thankfully, most of the real-estate in this collection in given over to the Incredible Hulk going on rampages and smashing stuff. Along the way, he fights terrorists, rescues children from abuse, and of course, saves the earth from aliens.

The art is largely fantastic, the black-and-white format allowing the artists to play with media in a way that looks very different from the bulk of mainstream 1970s comics art, bringing to bear everything from crayon and expressive ink-washes to the squiggly pen-work of Jim Starlin. The artists and writers involved seemed to see the non-continuity status of the title as an excuse to take the Hulk to some very strange places. The Hulk as eco-terrorist, in "The Thunder of Dawn," for instance ("Hulk feels...SMALL. TREES are so BIG...and so QUIET here...like Banner's CHURCH...and light here is GOLD..."), or the Hulk as cosmic champion in Starlin's blazingly weird "The Other Side of Night." All in all, a great way to spend 20 bucks (it's a heck of a lot of hulk).
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews

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