Will Cates' goofy Hulk run be looked upon more favorably in posterity when it's not following Immortal or taking up current publication space?
Will Cates' goofy Hulk run be looked upon more favorably in posterity when it's not following Immortal or taking up current publication spac...
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No one already cares about this shit, since Cates left the book and Hulk goes back to horror roots. People won't even remember or talk about this run
Not to the diehard Cates detractors, but I don't think there's anything wrong with a dumb action spectacle run as a breather after Immortal Hulk.
no one said it was wrong. It was very badly written. Both Pak and Loeb did "dumb action fun" 100 times more enjoyable than Cates with his garbage-ass Gundam Hulk
I hate the fact that we've gotten to the point where Loeb's Hulk really is preferable to a lot of bad comics in the past decade
I literally dont even remember this run as its going on.
no because Cates couldn't even finish the run, it'll be remembered as the objective and literal abortion that it was
doesn't change the fact that his Venom was kino
No.
I mean, anything following a run as big and influential as Immortal would be shit on no matter what, but his Hulk was so shit that it overshadowed the hate it would have gotten otherwise.
In some ways, this was the best followup there can be. At least the next run has a chance of standing out.
Nicely put.
What about Thor? It hasn't been made official his departure, but it's closer he isn't coming back. Are people still natively hoping he returns, even though that book is also treading water and just waiting for a mercy kill?
Thor has been better received, although the hype died off over time. Even before Cates stopped writing it people stopped talking about it, though nothing has been bad enough to cause them to start dropping the title.
No. I work at a comic book store and this run had no impact aside from the Thor crossover. Cates fans constantly mention how it's not as good as his Venom run. All of his other books have had a strong response from casual readers coming in late and picking up the trades, but we can't get anyone to buy Smashtronaut which hurts since we went heavy on it anticipating demand.
Mediocre like every marvel book.
That's the reason i stick with Marvel, DC can't even get a glimpse of mediocrity being so deep into the shithole they buried themselves into.
It will be forgotten completely.
It will be looked upon with the knowledge of it's saga
It'll be remembered as that weird, brief in-between between Ewing and PKJ
People will recall it more when discussing Cate's divorce
heh
Cates laps up and regurgitates Aaron's scraps.
Pray he never gets ahold to Avengers
I havent really payed any attention to marvel at large outside of Immortal Hulk. Once it wrapped up though I really got the feeling that a horror anthology angle for the Hulk should become the standard, atleast for a seperate stand alone series or something. It would be interesting to see different horror writers come in and apply different genres of horror to hulk. I never thought taking Hulk down the swamp thing route would work but here we are.
Idk why it took so long for it to become a real thing, barring some past brushes in his publication history. I thought the hulk was fucking scary as a kid, big green/grey golem that'll pop your head off if he can
to be fair the earliest hulk issues lean slightly into horror themes of the day. the first book reads like a strange tales anthology story and the following two issues read like atlas monster romps. that said I get what you mean. in a better world we could have gotten hulk handled by the EC comics stable. then in the 70's shit could have gotten way darker instead of campier.
>hulk was fucking scary as a kid, big green/grey golem that'll pop your head off if he can
ironically that's what always drew me to the big guy. I always had an affinity for monsters as a kid. pic related
Holy shit Abiyoyo, that takes me back
Once did a play for this at my school
Can’t remember who I played, or if I was even an actor and it was a different class that did the play, but dang this takes me back.
I didnt care until recently. Then i liked it until hulk started killing the gamma planet fellows. It lost comfy status and is now default marvel again
it's kind of fascinating that Hulk won the affections of rebellious youths and kids alike despite Banner being such a square. I've always wanted to see Hulk run through the Spiderman formula like they did with Iron Man, the X-Men, and the FF over the years. In terms of all ages content I think a teen Hulk played straight would appeal to alot of teens and kids alike. At the end of the day Marvel still owns Chester Weems, and if they pulled their heads out of their asses for just a minute and focused on profits and good story telling long enough to do something worthwhile with the idea maybe we could get somewhere fun. Instead we're stuck with the hulk bunch and dr ruffalo. being a hulk fan is rough.
No, it will be looked at with the same disdain and disgust the second Byrne run did. And I would not be shocked if it's wholesale declared non-canon like the second Byrne run and the Bruce Jones runs were.
>Bruce Jones
Hey now. I liked the first two and a half issues of that run.
its going to be forgotten like Jason Aaron's run
not really
I'm happy that the next run is going back to horror, but it being written by PKJ makes me worried
At least Klein's art will look good
Interesting
Now that it's hit a "planet of the Hulks" it's starting to bog down. But I like it. I prefer the more psychological take on Banner and the Hulk- the man who hated his job and life So Much, post job era. But they keep making the Hulk be "the smashing guy" and this series has called him out on it. It's like an action movie. Full throttle, all action, no explanations- just chaos.
>people who praise cates never read pre planet hulk stories
At best it will be looked upon as "If it came out BEFORE Immortal Hulk it might have been a fun bullshit saga. But it came out after AND dropped everything good from Immortal, so it's objectively bad."
pkj said his run will be directly influenced by immortal/horror
Someone give me a qrd; I've not been to /toon/ in months.
Last I heard lil Donnie was bailing cause it sucked so bad.
Is it still going?
QRD on PKJ; no idea who that is.
>QRD on PKJ; no idea who that is.
The guy that's been leading the Superman books the past couple years, who will be taking over HULK
https://aiptcomics.com/2023/03/08/hulk-johnson-klein-2023-marvel/
>“The work that Al, Joe and the rest did with Immortal Hulk was so impactful and spoke so clearly to me personally, it was impossible to come up with an idea that wasn’t inspired by it,” Johnson continued. “We’re getting back to Stan Lee’s Frankenstein/Jekyll & Hyde inspirations for the character, and giving readers a proper monster book in the best, truest Hulk tradition. If you loved Immortal Hulk, if you love ghost stories, if you love Marvel monsters, if you loved old school ‘adventure of the month’ stories from books like Marvel Team-Up, and if you want the best, most timeless Hulk art you’ve ever seen, you DO NOT want to miss this return of INCREDIBLE HULK.”
In Cates run, an incident in El Paso (which is later revealed to be Bruce somehow being able to transfer Hulk’s anger into other people) causes Bruce to turn the Hulk into a sort of mech that he controls from within his mind. The Hulk persona is kept in an “engine room” and is forced to fight simulated battles that have various levels based on how much strength Bruce wants to use. He goes on a multiversal trip and ends up in a universe where Rick Jones never ended up at the Gamma Bomb Test Site, allowing it to go perfectly, which caused a mass production of gamma bombs that Ross then used to nuke every other country on earth. Also there’s a new alternate personality trying to take over called the Titan.
Thanks, guys.
I'll be looking forward to the new book; lil Donnie phoned this shit in.
Also, did he finish the run? If not, who took over?
Ottley did. Cates only went as far as the Hulk & Thor crossover, and by that point the book was delayed to hell and back, until his own artist took over the writing.
Bastard is unbelievably lucky that he had Cate's run as a buffer if he's gonna do a run influenced by Immortal
can he fly?
I don't think it will be talked about that much, too short really to leave an impact
It will be remembered as utter dogshit.
Absolute dogshit.
There has been countless dogshit 15 issues issues series throughout big two history
Honestly, the Spaceship Hulk thing was really too out there and short-lived in people's heads to really be more than a weird footnote in the Hulk's long history. The next run would have to really be bottom tier or boring for anyone to reminisce about this one, and from the sounds of it they're going to be pushing back to far more familiar territory, so I wouldn't count on it.
Do people remember fondly Aaron's run? No, as a matter of fact i'm sure most people don't even remember he was on the helm of the ongoing for sometimes - and his run was much better than Cates. Being the writer who took over after Ewing made the comments on his work more sour, but it's something he brought on himself being so egocentrical to take over a critically acclameid run.
I'm really starting to believe his Doctor Strange and Venom runs were lightnings in a bottle.
>I'm really starting to believe his Doctor Strange and Venom runs were lightnings in a bottle
I've said this many times! Once you get past all the manufactured hype, it's really easy to see the guy has more misses than hits. Let's take a look at Cates' track record:
Thanos Wins: Overall good, but it enabled all the tropes he would later use to double down his bullshit
Doctor Strange: Good but short
Venom (plus events): Good to great, in the absence of a decent Venom series until then
Marvel Knights: So mediocre, people forgot he even wrote it
Cosmic Ghost Rider: Mediocre, same shit as Thanos Wins but features the quickest cross media jump for a character that was barely months old before he got his first figure
Guardians of the Galaxy: Mediocre and short, only mentioned among "essential" GOTG runs but it's skippable on its own
Death of the Inhumans: Savagely bad
Thor: Mediocre to decent, overall a retread of Aaron's run with his own particular style, borderline messy (the overarching arc is nowhere near clear yet)
Silver Surfer Black: Entirely carried by the visuals, if it was a silent comic no one would even miss him
Hulk: Terrible
I don't think I missed anything, but since every single run of his is self-referential, they all share the same problems with his writing, which skews him towards mediocre.
What I find ironic is he started at Marvel with a Secret Wars story about a Hulk character(General Ross), and Marvel didn’t like it so he didn’t get another chance to write there for two years. And now it’s coming full circle with him ditching Hulk! I was intrigued by the Ultimate Universe stuff in his venom run, but it looks like Hickman will be writing what happens there. Quite unfortunate for him I guess, maybe if he didn’t abandon his stuff, he’d be writing that Ultimate story with Hitch!
>mentioned among "essential" GOTG runs
wat
I don't even remember anything of note happening that run, seemed like Quill spent all 12 issues moping in his room
I know, the run is trash and unmemorable through and through, only known for destroying Knowhere and setting up Ewing's GOTG in the Annual. But for some reason every comic article mentions it among the "must reads" even though there's nothing of note in it, so we know it's just because it's mandatory to hype Cates works even when they're hot garbage.
>in the absence of a decent Venom series until then
remenders is far better
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Where the hell is Cates anyway?
He got dumped
Divorced
Probably focusing all his creative attention on Vanish
He got divorced and then relapsed into drugs, which explains his absence and his refusal to elaborate on why he's not writing anything.
People say the opposite happened (his wife found out about the drugs and divorced) but I don't think that explains why someone would just drop off the face of the Earth while simultaneously going on a Twitter binge, replying to everyone.
I stopped reading it. I liked the first arc, and the Thor crossover was alright. The Hulk planet stuff really turned me off and I quit reading it. Might jump back in when Philip Kennedy Johnson takes over again.
it's literally nothing fucking happens and will be forgotten a month after it ends. Only way it will be remembered is if Cates OD's while shoving rolls up issues of his run up his ass