I’ve had Bruce Jones’s Hulk comics around for a long time. Anyone I’ve asked has told me to avoid them, but I’m loyal to Jones and they only cost me like $20 for fifty comics on eBay. I finally got around to starting them today because I was giving a friend crap about them again. Right off the bat, the John Romita Jr. art bugged me. He spends more time on pant legs and tree trunks in these issues, titled The Return of the Monster for the trade, than he does on people. The art isn’t bad and Romita gets Jones’s story, which does require a lot of people not talking (one of these issues is the “’Nuff Said” issue, a dialogue-less stunt from Marvel). It isn’t so much visual impact Jones goes for, rather just letting the reader get what’s going on without using a lot of a dialogue. This style doesn’t sound particularly revolutionary, but Jones does it in opportune times. In other comics, a walk down the hallway would either be skipped or would be pages of dialogue. It creates some nice moments.
Overall, however, I’m not particularly impressed. The book is competently written--and I suppose the following problem shouldn’t matter, given the intended audience--but there’s no real hook to the story. It’s about the Hulk, sure, and there are some neat scenes (and Bruce Banner feeds small animals, so who can dislike him?), but it’s not getting me interested. I’m reading it, fully aware it’s not engendering any interest beyond it being written by Bruce Jones. At the time of this story, the Hulk had been around for around forty years, so it’s possible the character’s written out. There’s only so much one can do with a guy who’s going from town to town trying to remain anonymous but cannot (I think there was even a TV show starring Bill Bixby on just that subject). It’s fine, but it’s not enough. Especially not if I was paying the suggested $2.25 cover price.
I just realized how I forgot the Bride of Frankenstein stuff. Jones does a great homage to Bride, then ruins it by rationalizing the scenes. It’s probably the only case of Jones writing too much, since the rest of the story always has just the right amount on emphasis put in. Jones’s situations are good, some of the ideas are intriguing, those nice moments I mentioned earlier, but he just doesn’t have a package for them. The first issue of Return of the Monster takes the same amount of time to read as the last five issues. Something’s wrong about that ratio. The first issue is an exploration, examination, and (quiet) explanation. Instead of embracing those elements, the other five issues abandon them. Even though it doesn’t break the rhythm of the story, the “’Nuff Said” issue might have broken Jones’s writer’s rhythm. So far (I’m planning on reading all nine of Jones’s stories over the summer, though maybe longer), it’s somehow not original, but not unoriginal either.