The Immortal Hulk, Vol. 11: Apocrypha

The Immortal Hulk (Collected Editions)

by Al Ewing, Bill Mantlo, Peter David

Collects Immortal Hulk: The Best Defense (2018) #1, Defenders: The Best Defense (2018) #1, Absolute Carnage: Immortal Hulk (2019) #1, Immortal Hulk (2020) #0, Immortal She-Hulk (2020) #1, King in Black: Immortal Hulk (2020) #1, material from Immortal Hulk: Time of Monsters (2021) #1.

Complete your collection of Al Ewing’s incredible saga of the IMMORTAL HULK! Stephen Strange is dead. All that is left is a charred skeleton. Bruce Banner wants to know why, and he won’t stop until he knows the truth. The road to answers will lead to the return of the Defenders! Then, the symbiotic nightmares of ABSOLUTE CARNAGE and KING IN BLACK engulf two very different Hulks! And when Jennifer Walters falls in battle during EMPYRE, she steps through the Green Door…and learns the full horror of being an Immortal She-Hulk. Plus: Revisit the tortured relationship between Bruce and his father that inspired IMMORTAL HULK!

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Horror, Comic Book, Fiction

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 11, 2022

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apocrypha collects all of the event tie-ins.
Is that worth your time and money?



Normally, I'd say definitely not. But this is Immortal Hulk, so it's a lot easier to give volumes like this a pass. Plus, even out of context, they were pretty interesting.



Immortal Hulk 0 was probably the best and most (to me) insightful of the bunch, but they were all better than decent.



Worth it for anyone who loves Al Ewing's run, but absolutely skippable for someone who is just a casual fan.

[Baba · Rating 4 out of 5]

Al Ewing's Immortal Hulk even handles the event 'crossovers' better than the average series by putting them all in a standalone volume and not making them critical for readers, yet making them worthwhile reads... mostly! You can skim the 'Best Defense' return of the Defender stories as there have limited Immortal Hulk relevance but the four other stories collected are very good. Incredible Hulk #0 incorporates (whilst fully reprinting!) two of Bruce Banner's integral origin stories Incredible Hulk (1962-1999) #312 and Incredible Hulk #-1 and pairing them up with new content that seamlessly and entertainingly makes them part of the mythos; and it works superbly well.

The Absolute Carnage and King in Black are world class crossovers with that truly grounded the Immortal Hulk in the wider Marvel universe, for a few a bit. The crème de la crème for me was the Immortal She-Hulk #1 that details Jen's immortal status and more intriguingly her bid to understand it by talking t the likes of Wolverine and Thor. An Al Ewing masterpiece which for me, is likely the best She-Hulk volume ever published. Another 8 out of 12, Immortal Four Star read, even for this filler volume!

2024 read

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do have to give Marvel credit for keeping all of these tie-in books out of the ongoing Immortal Hulk comic and letting Ewing tell his 50 issue story uninterrupted. The King in Black tie-in takes place after issue #40 and the rest before that so you don't need to read this last even though Marvel marketed it as volume 11. This whole collection is pretty much only for completists.

Immortal Hulk: The Best Defense - Art by Simone Di Meo ★★★
Bruce Banner finds Dr. Strange's body in a small town where everyone is locked behind closed doors. It's fine but a little boring.

The Defenders: The Best Defense - Art by Joe Bennett ★
This was stupid. The original Defenders are all in space trying to stop a cosmic train the size of solar systems that is destroying whole planets at a time. It's all a plot for some demons to short souls like they are stocks.

Absolute Carnage: Immortal Hulk - Art by Felipe Andrade ★★
Andrade's art is terrible. Not much happens in this tie in.

Immortal Hulk #0 - framing sequence by Mattia de Iulis ★★★★
Combines 2 old Hulk issues with a framing sequence by Al Ewing. It's actually done pretty well.

Incredible Hulk #312 by Bill Mantlo & Mike Mignola
Mignola keeps the art in Marvel's House style. The story goes back through Bruce's history with his father, who has apparently been crazy since Bruce's birth, certain that Bruce is a monster.

Incredible Hulk #-1 by Peter David & Adam Kubert
The Minus One issues were a flashback event did one month across all of their titles. In this one, the Hulk remembers some repressed memories about his father and how he died.

Immortal She-Hulk - Art by Jon Davis-Hunt ★★★★
She-Hulk died during Empyre and saw the Green Door. Now she's dealing with the fact she may be immortal.

King in Black: Immortal Hulk - Art by Aaron Kuder ★★★
In a completely silent tale, the Hulk and Joe Fixit trade off fighting some of Knull's symbiotes over Christmas. Pretty inconsequential but good art.

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Immortal Hulk: Grab Bag might be a better title as it crams together some specials created for a Defenders crossover and the "Absolute Carnage" and "King in Black" events. There's also a retelling of the life of Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk in light of all the Immortal Hulk revelations and revisions and the story of some guy in 950 B.C.E. encountering a gamma-ray infused meteor. It's all a bit incomplete, but aside from the stupid cosmic crap, I actually enjoyed chunks of these.

Most interesting for me was Immortal Hulk #0, which has a new framing sequence by Al Ewing bookending reprints of two seminal stories that have been mined extensively in Ewing's Hulk opus:
• 1985's Incredible Hulk (1962-1999) #312, wherein writer Bill Mantlo pissed off Barry Windsor-Smith by jumping the gun and spoiling the story for Smith's in-production Hulk special about Banner's abusive father that was subsequently withdrawn and eventually reworked into the 2020 graphic novel, Monsters.
• 1997's Incredible Hulk # -1 (that's Minus One, a line-wide Flashback event numbering gimmick Marvel did) wherein the death of Banner's father is revisited.

I haven't had a chance to re-read these stories since I first bought them as new comics back in the day. Mantlo's writing is stiff and stilted, but it was interesting to pick out all the bits that survived into Monsters. And the Peter David issue reminded me why he was one of my favorite comic book writers of the 1990s, especially his run on Hulk. Good stuff.

Heh. Given how much I disliked some of Ewing's storylines in the main title, this may be my favorite Immortal Hulk collection.

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Also known as Immortal Hulk: And All The Rest. Not sure why this is collected like this when they had all the other one-shots thrown into an unnumbered volume (probably because these are all written by Ewing, I guess?).

Throwing all these issues in here seems a bit pointless to be honest. The zero issue is a reprint with a new framing sequence, and the two Best Defense one-shots are part of a bigger Defenders story that's collected elsewhere.

The King In Black one-shot's not bad though, acting as a Christmas special and almost a 'Nuff Said as well, and while the Absolute Carnage one-shot's one of the better tie-ins to that event, it's not really impactful on its own here.

The best issue though is the Immortal She-Hulk, which is both an epilogue to Empyre (where she died and got replaced by a plant monster for a bit) and sets up her actions in the later few issues of Immortal Hulk. Given that Jen's been mostly absent from Immortal since she's been involved in Aaron's Avengers, it was nice to at least check in with her before Immortal Hulk ended.

A bit of a mishmash, and mostly not necessary. Stick with the main ten trades, unless you're an utter completionist like me.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this certainly makes you appreciate that Ewing got to tell an uninterrupted 5o-issue story, because these various crossovers would have caused the main story to flounder, as is the case for just about every other Marvel title.

With that said, these are pretty good. Ewing really brings the Immortal Hulk ethos to The Defenders and Carnage and all the rest. In fact, I felt like the stories, particularly with their focus on Brian, gave some background to the big arc.

So, well worth reading, but it's great this didn't impinge on the main comic.

(Also nice to get the Mantlo & David stories in "#0". The Mantlo story is particularly a masterpiece, and you can see how they influenced Ewing's writing.)

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Este número 11 de O Imortal Hulk é um requiem para a fase de Ewing e Bennett, contendo vários one-shots, especiais que sairam durante a run dos dois artistas. O primeiro deles é Immortal Hulk #0, que traz duas histórias clássicas do Hulk por Bill Mantlo e Peter David, mostrando o passado de Brian Banner, o pai do Hulk. As duas histórias são entremeadas por intervenções de Ewing e DeIullis. Depois temos uma história bem qualquer coisa em que o Homem-Aranha se torna Hulk. E isso que é por Tom Taylor e Jorge Molina. Segue uma historinha morna de Jeff Lemire e Mike Del Mundo, em que a arte fica muito melhor de acompanhar do que nos trabalhos de Del Mundo para os Vingadores, por exemplo. Declan Shalvey traz uma história divertida do Imortal Hulk contra sua antiga professora do primário. Por fim, uma historinha curta do Imortal Hulk contra o Espantalho da Marvel, bem bobinha, bem bobinha. Assim, que este especial vale mais pela curiosidade das histórias especiais, do que por qualquer outro motivo. Quem quiser encerrar a coleção do Imortal Hulk no número dez pode fazer sem nenhum comprometimento em ter que ler a onze.

[Ronald · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Defenders issues were interesting to great.
The rest not so much, I might have read immortal She-Hulk in single issue thinking it was a new ongoing comic. It was good.
But so much of this collection was just re-hashing puny Banner's life and traumas. Which at this point of reading Immortal Hulk is just re-treading old old old news.
This could and should have been better.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wolverine told me it don't change anything. Thor told me immortality didn't exist. Ignore it, deny it, forget it. And the worst part is...maybe they're right. Maybe I should do that...because something happened last time. I don't remember what, but something happened. And it scared me. But then I died. Don't die again, Jen. Don't die again.

from "The Three Deaths of Jennifer Walters"

Apocrypha is an odd collection of side-issues tangentially related to Al Ewing's Immortal Hulk series: We have Defenders, She-Hulk, Venom and others--and, really, not much Immortal Hulk. When you finish the series, and you want to explore more niches of the universe Ewing creates, then this is your bag, Poppa.

[Sesana · Rating 3 out of 5]

A grab bag of Ewing's side stories related to his Immortal Hulk run. Certainly there's nothing bad in here, I just don't really see the point of these stories being collected like this. The two Best Defense issues that kick off the book are part of a larger Defenders story, and should probably have been left with those issues. The Absolute Carnage story is actually really good, but it's also so directly related to the event that it doesn't sit well by itself here. Immortal Hulk #0 is just a reprint of two older stories with a few pages of new framing device by Ewing. The back story is probably good to have, since I'm sure there are many readers who aren't familiar with Bruce's family history, but surely this could have just been in one of the numbered volumes. Time of Monsters shifts the action to prehistory, and is only tangential to the Immortal Hulk story. King in Black is another really good story, but this one at least largely stands on its own outside of the event. And then there's Immortal She-Hulk, which reimagines the character in light of Ewing's extensive reworking of the gamma characters. This was probably a necessary story to write, but I just don't see why this couldn't be collected in one of the numbered volumes. I guess where I fall on this whole collection: good to great stories, but they didn't need to be put in a separate book.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

4

[Justin Partridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

“\YOU BEAR MY MARK\

\I TURN MY FACE TOWARD YOU\

/I AM THE ONE BELOW ALL/

\WITH THESE HANDS I BREAK\
\WITH THIS MOUTH I HOWL\

\MY WEAPON IS HATE\”

\\\

“Hate you?? Why SHOULDN’T I hate you? Why shouldn’t I hate ALL mankind??”

Yeah, it’s kind of crazy how a comic like Immortal Hulk is so good, it can sustain itself across 3-4 separate events; one of which is like only accessible to weirdos like me who have obsessed over Defenders scraps for decades at a time.

But also, happy all these got collected in one thing because it shows just how much of an idea of the scale and timbre Ewing had for IH for the whole time (seemingly). It’s proven in the reprinted stuff from The Best Defense and Immortal Hulk #0, the latter of which I forgot actually HAD a lot of reprinted stuff in it.

It’s like he’s playing with Mantlo. He’s dancing between the raindrops of PAD. And yet STILL…IH just stands apart from basically everything and everyone on the shelves. While also making it feel accessible and cool and new in a way a lot of superhero comics actively don’t.

And then he caps off the whole thing with a genuinely sweet and funny silent issue (drawn by Aaron “New Favorite Superman Person” Kuder no less!) and a wild ass time exploring some body horror with Alex Paknadel (who also rules rules rules).

Is this essential? Probably not. But damn are they fun. And prove that the special, once-in-a-blue moon scaffold of Immortal Hulk can sustain a bunch of different (all very cool) things.

[Markus Santos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Esse é o último volume da série do Imortal Hulk lançado pela Panini. Mas não é o último volume da história do Imortal Hulk. Esse foi o volume 10. Aqui é uma série de histórias fechadas que se passam durante a série, com a personificação do personagem que o Al Ewing fez. A primeira história, do próprio Al Ewing, pega duas histórias antigas do Hulk, pelo Bill Mantlo e pelo Peter David, que o Ewing costurou pra ajudar a contar a história do pai do Bruce, o Bryan Banner. Ficou bem amarrado com a série principal. O resto são histórias aleatorias, como o Homem-Aranha com os poderes do Hulk, obra do Loki, uma história de uma garotinha desaparecida e que o Banner (e o Hulk) vão ajudar, que é o ponto alto dessa edição, uma velha professora do Banner que também foi exposta a radiação gama e por último uma história curtinha com o Espantalho da Marvel. Num geral foi um bom complemento do que o Ewing vinha fazendo com o personagem, a melhor fase dele em muito tempo.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good stuff here, but taken out of context? I'm pretty sure I've already read at least half of the stories in this volume in other places, at other times. If you really loved Al Ewing's take on The Hulk, this will be essential reading. Otherwise...

[BRAMBILLA SIMONE · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hulk vuole solo morire

[Pat · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I had more of an understanding of the different crossovers I am sure my rating would be higher. I spent most of the time confused and worse a bit bored. There were a few highlights the Mantlo and David stories but oddly nothing Ewing related.

[Rick Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of one-shots sequestered into a bonus volume for those who couldn't get enough of Al Ewing's and Joe Bennett's The Immortal Hulk run. Collected in here are the Defenders: The Best Defense one-shots, the issue #0, Immortal She-Hulk and the tie-in issues to Donny Cates' Absolute Carnage and King in Black events.

The two issues from the Defenders: The Best Defense miniseries are solid, but they feel disjointed without the other one-shots to complete the crossover. I'd suggest reading that crossover on its own since these being collected separately barely makes sense.

Immortal Hulk #0 is effectively a brief intermission in the ongoing run (between issues #36 and #37) which mostly serves to reprint a classic Bill Mantlo/Mike Mignola issue - Incredible Hulk #312 - "Monster". This issue may be more famous now for being the one issue which Barry Windsor-Smith accused Mantlo and Marvel for plagiarizing, though thankfully Windsor-Smith has since got his opportunity to tell his version in the relatively recently published Monsters. This issue also reprints Incredible Hulk #-1 by Peter David and Adam Kubert. Taken together, these issues point towards the abuse Banner faced at the hands of his father and the ensuing psychosis that shaped his young life. The reprinted issues are interspersed with artwork from Mattia De Iulis who does a fantastic job with his limited pages.

The Immortal She-Hulk one-shot explores the concept of the "Green Door" from the eyes of Jennifer Walters, who has famously died a few times over the course of her comic history. She meets up with Wolverine and Thor to ponder the concept of resurrection and immortality. The issue itself is fine and doesn't add to much, but if you're a big She-Hulk fan there might be enough in here to hope for an eventual She-Hulk series that ties in some the cooler ideas from Ewing's The Immortal Hulk run.

While I'm not an event reader, I found both the Absolute Carnage and King in Black tie-in issues to be a fun bit of added texture to the run. You don't have to read the main event to understand what is happening in these issues, nor are they necessary installments to be read if you're sticking with the main run of The Immortal Hulk. The King in Black one-shot in particular was a nice bit of wordless storytelling involving the Hulk tussling with a symbiote on Christmas. The artwork by Kuder captures the grotesque body horror found in the main run very well, making for a nice addendum to the series.

For a bunch of unrelated one-shots, this was pretty good. Fully supplemental and not necessary reading, but fun enough to not disregard altogether.

[Blindzider · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of short stories featuring the Immortal Hulk. A couple were from various Marvel events and the rest I'm not sure where they original showed up.

Overall I liked most of them, some more than others. Each played around with one or more of the Hulks.

The Best Defense - a two-part tale, first with Hulk alone, that had a neat way to artistically duplicating panels of old Hulk comics to tell the story. The second part is a Defenders reunion wrapping up the tale. Both of the them had excellent art, unique to each.

Absolute Carnage - Bruce talks about just what happened to him during that event. It plays on some of the Peter David stuff where he's talking to what seems like a therapist, but he's also talking with his other personalities.

Immortal Hulk #0 - Reprints a couple stories from Bruce's past, the first one Ewing used as the catalyst of his entire run. I haven't read much of Hulk before Peter David's run, but Mantlo sure wrote a tale of abuse. It's intense and you can see why Bruce's psyche was damaged at that point. The two tales aren't just reprinted, there's a little story that wraps those two together and has some beautiful art as well.

Immortal She-Hulk - Takes a look at Jennifer and her mind as she deals with the trauma of being reborn multiple times. It's not bad but a little hard to follow not knowing the other stories she is referencing.

King in Black - A fully silent Christmas tale as two of the Hulks just try to walk around during that event. Strangely heart-warming.

Time of the Monsters - Despite it having much more of the horror vibe, my least favorite. A tale of Hulk from a long time ago.

In order to fully grasp some of these, it helps to know a little about what's going on in the Immortal Hulk series, however, they did a decent job of giving you a little recap before each to set the stage. I'm curious if Marvel will be putting these into the last OHC for the series or in its own collection. It's good enough to have for completists who enjoyed the run.

[Ma'Belle · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

The term "Apocrypha" will be familiar to anyone coming from the Protestant Christian traditions who's spent time doing Biblical studies, as it refers to the apocryphal or deuterocanonical texts included in many Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles. They are often simplistically derided as "extra books of the Bible" and therefore deemed heretical garbage by Protestants whose theologies have come to elevate a particular version of the book itself as being literal and/or infallible. So this name is very fitting for this volume, which I read not knowing until I had finished it that it was taken from other series and compiled. I actually thought the stories were fantastic, but I have personally come to really love what Al Ewing has done for the Marvel Universe and comic readers by bringing Hulk and Bruce Banner back to being a bizarre, complex, horrific, psychologically relevant book about the magnified effects of CPTSD.

I went back and read this, not knowing it existed, after reading Hulk, Vol. 1: Smashtronaut! by Donny Cates, which I think is clearly taking the renewed permissions opened up by this series and running with them in wild, interesting directions.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice collection of some very different stories with some functioning as event tie ins and others almost more as supplemental material to the main story.

The Best Defense: A very wild over the top little story with some funny writing and insane cosmic scale wrapped up into two little issues.

Absolute Carnage Immortal Hulk: Not much to say on this one, it's not bad but feels incredibly incomplete outside of the event it's a part of.

Immortal Hulk #0: A bit of a reissue of classic Hulk framed with some gorgeous artwork tying it into the events of Immortal Hulk. As someone who's never read much previous Hulk I quite enjoyed this one.

Immortal She-Hulk: This one feels a bit like it should have been featured in the main run, it's really good and shows Jennifer interacting with The Green Door various times when dying and sets up her joining the Gamma crew in the main run over the Avengers she came with

King in Black Immortal Hulk: Just a really nicely illustrated Christmas short

Immortal Hulk The Time of Monsters: This one was really good, I won't go into details too much but it's a beautifully illustrated little tale.

[Ernesto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Como relatos adicionales son funcionales, sin embargo, tendrían un mejor desempeño si vinieran dentro de los 10 tomos contenidos anteriores, además, faltan al menos 4 relatos con la marca "Immortal Hulk", así como algunos otros pertenecientes a la miniserie "The best defense".

Lo anterior entorpece y daña la experiencia de lectura, pues el tomo tiene el gancho: "completa tu colección", sin embargo queda a deber.

En cuanto a lo positivo, es sumamente valioso el contenido extra. Puesto que, el añadido, llena vacíos y complementa el cómo funciona la narrativa, sobre todo el número 0, muy a pesar de ser un compilatorio, le da mucho valor a todo.

En resumen, es un tomo recomendable en tanto el lector tenga noción del Status Quo global de ese momento y los eventos. Sin embargo, es necesario saber que faltan varios cómics, algunos importantes y otros no tanto, los cuales dan mejor cierre a la narrativa.

[PMoslice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I nice tie-in bring some stories that see the Hulk interacting with a diverse cast of characters from the Marvel univerese.

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really a last volume as it's listed on here, more a side story anthology with collecting tie-ins that are almost all interesting but I don't think they'll all hit for any one person. Stylistically the issues all quite different in both art and tone, so if you don't like one, you'll probably like another.

I didn't love the Carnage works as a whole (or maybe I specifically didn't like the limited peek we got here) but I don't intend on reading that run anyway. I did really like the Christmas issue that doesn't have any speech. Outside of that we get some nice moments with Stephen Strange and She-Hulk, so this is worth reading for those issues alone if you have any interest in them.

[Joshua]

A collection of odds and ends is exactly the sort of thing the trade paperback format is horrible for but Immortal Hulk was such an insane and jaw-dropping ride that I felt compelled to give these a ride, considering them something like the appendices at the end of Lord of the Rings. With that mindset I did enjoy this collection well enough though I would by no means consider it the final volume of the Immortal Hulk epic. More like the “volume *” or something.

The King in Black tie-in is particularly great.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

I nearly didn't read this after finishing the main run but I'm glad I did. Ewing's writing is so strong and it was good to go back to little snippets and short stories that fit in elsewhere and made me curious about some of the off-shoots. It's particularly good to go into if you were left a bit disappointed by the ending of the main run, as there's some great smaller form stories in here which remind you why you liked the journey so much.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of one-shots completes the Immortal Hulk series as it includes tie-ins to Absolute Carnage, King In Black, and the epic Immortal Hulk series. Most are good or better but would have been better served collected within the regular run. The Defenders story was unnecessary. There was some creative stories with the two event tie-ins. She-Hulk's tale was very good. The art, as a whole was very solid. Overall, a good but oddly collected book.

[Rocky Sunico · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main story of the Immortal Hulk comics had ended with the previous volume. So this last volume is a grab bag of one-off stories from crossover books or things tied to events like the King in Black and such. So it doesn't quite stand well as a coherent collection, but it does have some interesting stories as individual experiences.

[RubiGiráldez RubiGiráldez · Rating 3 out of 5]

El titulo de Apócrifo la verdad es que oculta bien un conjunto de tie ins asociados a la etapa de Ewing que no aportan demasiado. Quizás lo mejor sea el dedicado a Hulka en su infierno gamma personal.

En lo referente al padre de Bruce. Pues está la labor de recanonización de historias del pasado siglo Marcelita. Pero no hay nada a más de lo visto en la saga troncal.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, it was a really good story. When I started, I really expected this to be the finale, not the last volume. This had mostly really great single issues and a couple that were good but felt out of place. Luckily, Al Ewing's writing is fantastic!

[Ian Raffaele · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of all the ancillary one-offs that tie into the Immortal Hulk series. It fills in all the gaps to flesh out the story at large. Includes the Immortal She-Hulk comic. I enjoyed it, though I wish they slipped in these stories into the trades as they appeared in the storyline.