What If General Ross Had Become the Hulk?

(Marvel, 2005)
™ and © 2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Peter David writing The Hulk is a sure sale to me, even when it’s a special issue of What If? It’s not that there haven’t been a lot of great issues of What If?—Marvel has published many—it’s that there have been far more lousy issues of What If? But David? Him, I’ll bet on.

I confess to disappointment with this issue. The writing is fine, but the need to put so much into 20–odd pages hurts the overall story. Characters are disposed of quickly, events are altered not so much as a natural consequence of the “big” difference (Ross becoming The Hulk instead of Bruce Banner), but to move things more swiftly toward this or that shock. The event leading to the tale’s resolution is too coincidental for my taste, but, given its nature, the conclusion rings alarmingly and satisfyingly true. Pat Olliffe’s layouts and pencils are in keeping with the grim nature of this tale, but the Bronze Age boy in me would have liked to see inker Sal Buscema handling both ends of the art.

— Tony Isabella

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