Incredible Hulk: The End

    (Marvel, 2002)
™ and © Marvel Entertainment Group

Writer Peter David and artist Dale Keown reunite for Incredible Hulk: The End, an out-and-out horror story chronicling the final days of the less-than-jolly green giant.

Like Robert Neville in Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (1954), Bruce Banner finds himself the last man on Earth. However, unlike Neville, who was a mortal contending with vampires, Banner is plagued by a vicious breed of roaches and by his alter ego — The Incredible Hulk. To pass the days, Banner explores the post-holocaust world, bemoans his fate, and struggles with the Mr. Hyde aspect of his being.

“Hulk smash” this is not. In fact, Hulk’s only physical altercations in the story are against the roaches, which repeatedly devour his skin and various other body parts, only for Hulk to regenerate in a matter of minutes. The literarily adept, socially conscious Peter David, who refers to Hulk as “the living symbol of the atomic age” and the “heir to Prometheus,” describes Hulk’s roach-induced suffering as punishment for mankind’s creation of the atom bomb.

Keown complements David’s thoroughly engaging script with gorgeous renderings of a war-torn planet, an enraged, pumped-up Hulk, and a seemingly-older-than-Methuselah Bruce Banner. The pair create a lonely, desolate future.

Incredible Hulk: The End may not go down as an all-time classic (it’s not as good as David’s Incredible Hulk #467, which took place 10 years in the future), but it’s a fine beginning to The End.

— Brett Weiss
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#1

August, 2002
Cover Price: $5.95
2 copies available from $11.00 		Peter DavidDale Keown