Week Ending

  The previous week in Marvel UK had me worried that reading and reviewing old comics might be an essentially fruitless task due to my adult cynicism. Then, as if these disturbing thoughts had reached out to the past and galvanised Marvel UK editorial team, they step their game up with a belter of a week and I am eight years old again. Mighty World of Marvel #61 Ron Wilson and Mike Esposito supply a serviceable if somewhat cartoonish replacement for the moody Herb Trimpe/John Severin original. So different is the feel of each work, any comparison seems unfair. The Incredible Hulk: The Monster and The Man-Beast! Reprinting The Incredible Hulk #109 After several weeks reprinting the fantastic covered but disappointingly contented (this phrase scanned way better in my head) Hulk Special #1, we are back to the regular story. Back too is the increasingly magnificent Herb Trimpe, John Severin adds inks to pages that are bursting with scope and scale. The backgrounds and composition have the

 The past really is a foreign country, though some of it is a bit like Devon or the Isle of Wight, basically rubbish but full of great childhood memories. Reading some of these early stories, which I'm sure must have seemed amazing on their original publication, has made me appreciate the ones that I read only a couple of years later all the more.  Mighty World of Marvel #60 Perspective takes a holiday as the Hulk dukes it out with a slightly constipated looking Black Bolt. Ron Wilson and Frank Giacoia serve up a slightly flat looking cover, which also promises us a surprise guest-star.  The Incredible Hulk: In The Land of The Inhumans! Reprinting The Incredible Hulk Special #1 I fully intended to lay into this story heavily, I love Marie Severin's work normally, Syd Shores inks don't do her any favours here, but this is a mess. However, I believe that several pages were cropped out of this story for the UK reprint, so the incoherent visual storytelling can't be laid at