The Hulk! #18 - Marvel

Dec. 1979 - "Cast Away"

A less than inspiring cover graces this issue of The Hulk! It's not the painting (by Bob Larkin) that's all that bad, it's the butt-ugly design that really does it in--a super-bright yellow border, really?

Anyway, on the inside cover is a spiffy pin-up by Ernie Chan, who always rendered a particularly fearsome Hulk:

In this issue, the Hulk meets...Tom Hanks?!?

When last we left the Hulk, his alter ego of Bruce Banner was in Africa, being carted away to a nearby hospital. But of course, it doesn't take long for the Hulk to reemerge and find himself fighting yet another group of armed men:

After a quick battle, the Hulk--perennially just wanting to be left alone--leaps into the air, and lands on a tiny island a few miles out to sea. The island is quiet and seemingly uninhabited, which calms the Hulk down enough that he can fall asleep. As he rests, he changes back into Banner.

But of course the island is not uninhabited--a bearded man wanders through the brush and finds the unconscious Banner, and hauls his body out the sun. A few hours later, Banner wakes up, and learns that this castaway--named Thaddeus Hatcher--has been on this island for nine years.

Turns out Hatcher experiences a series of unfortunate events, and after feeling lonely and unwanted by the world, he decided to take off and just let Fate take him. It did, and he ended up on this island, which he considers a paradise. Banner stays with Thaddeus for a few weeks, where they do lots of manual labor, talk, and watch the sunrise. Thaddeus starts to convince his guest that this really is a paradise after all.

All is good until one night, when a lightning storm threatens a new hut they've worked hard at building. Banner goes outside to try and secure, his pulse pounding, leading to, of course:

Thaddeus befriends the Hulk, and before too long Banner has returned. Thaddeus shares some bad news about the island: that it is occasionally visited by pirates, who use it for smuggling. Eventually the pirates stumble across Thaddeus, leading to violence. One of them shoots a young man who happened upon the island with his girlfriend, and as he lay dying, the Hulk returns!

Chasing after the pirates, the Hulk pulls off a truly amazing display of strength, even for him:

The Hulk carts the entire island closer to shore, allowing the authorities to get the boy and bring him to the hospital. The Hulk, now back to being Banner, is also brought there, and when he awakes he finds Thaddeus is gone--and so is a rowboat owned by one of the locals. The last shot we see is of Thaddeus, once again fading from the view of man. The End.

As with previous issues, Moon Knight is the back-up, once again by Moench and the unbeatable art team of Bill Sienkiewiz and Klaus Janson:

Despite the middling cover, this was one of my favorite issues of The Hulk!--I thought the lead story was so involving that I truly felt sorry for Thaddeus, whose paradise was taken from him by events beyond his control. The conservations between him and Banner about the nature of living in what we call society were interesting and well-developed, despite the inherent limits of dealing with weighty topics like that within a comic book framework.

On top of that, Moench managed to work in a great, classic "Hulk moment", where he lifts an entire island; it seems like Moench was trying to top himself every few issues to see just how impressive a feat he could make the Hulk accomplish.

Also, the art by Ron Wilson and Alfredo Alcala is top-notch; the jungle setting is full of rich detail, and with this story colorist Steve Oliff really gets a chance to shine. I'm generally more in favor of the black and white format for these comic magazines (hence the title of the blog!), but once in a while I could see why Marvel wanted to shoot the moon and make this a color magazine--issues like this are truly an impressive package.