The Rampaging Hulk by Walt Simonson & Alfredo Alcala
No, you haven’t accidentally wandered into a stray Friday Night Fight post. The above panel is taken from the third issue of Marvel’s black & white Rampaging Hulk magazine, circa 1977.
The gimmick, at least for the first nine issues, is that the series took place between the cancellation of The Hulk’s original comic and his reappearance in Tales To Astonish. Unfortunately, writer Doug Moench’s approach to continuity wasn’t exactly airtight and many fans dismissed the stories as irrelevant.
(That attitude later became canon when later issues of the color comic asserted the events depicted in Rampaging Hulk were purely fabricated.)
Of course, the much younger Fortress Keeper loved the series back in the day for its funky ’70s excesses, which included an alien bird-woman who created phallic techno-organic art that doubled as spacecraft and far-out weapons.
Plus, we enjoyed seeing artists of Simonson’s caliber draw the original, Frankenstein-esque Hulk that Jack Kirby used in the character’s original appearances.
Your humble host still has a soft spot in his heart for the Rampaging Hulk, and Marvel was kind enough to oblige us (yeah, like the Q Continuum even knows - or cares - that we exist) by publishing an Essentials volume of the series.
Pick it up if you’re interested in reading some weird-@$$ stories from the ’70s by some of the leading creators of that era.
I don’t think I ever would have guessed that was Simonson. His art sure has changed a lot in the past thirty years. What about the continuity was so out of whack that it had to be later written off?
Those stories are my favorite work by Moench by a wide margin. I remember enjoying them and subsequently being annoyed that someone at Marvel took such a dislike to them that they had to be (very conspicuously and at great length) written out of continuity.
Admittedly I haven’t read these stories in many years and it may well be that they wouldn’t please me as much as they did at the time, but that incredibly pissy editorial attitude will always irritate me.
I suspect every one I read was written and drawn while under some kind of narcotic influence.
I do love the format though. They should bring those back.
I picked this up over the weekend and really enjoyed it. Total 70’s goofiness.
Also, at the back, it contains the pages from teh Hulk series that explain that the events were fictional (you know, not real like other Hulk stores).
Also, it’s 2008, why don’t we have techno-artists yet?
Justin - I suspect some of the difference is due to Alcala’s ink. He had (has?) a very distinctive style. As for the continuity “errors,” I believe Moench’s tales of the Hulk’s “first meetings” with such characters as Namor and various Avengers-Before-They-Were-Avengers contradicted Stan & Jack’s original stories.
RAB - I agree the Hulk stories number among Moench’s best at Marvel, although I also like his equally memorable stint as a Planet of The Apes chronicler.
Siskoid - I wish more writers today drank the same Kool-Aid as Moench, Gerber etc. Plenty of writers draw upon ’70s characters and storylines these days, but everything is all grittied up and no fun at all.
Jason - Didn’t Bill Mantlo write those “everything was a dream” stories?