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The Hulk never lasted long in his original incarnation in his 1962 series - a mere six issues - but when Marvel Comics began outselling their Direct Competition* (and distributor!), the restrictions on the amount of titles Marvel could publish quickly vanished. Limited to only eight titles a month, Marvel found homes for characters like the Hulk in what were then known as the 'split' books, titles that were previously home to monster stories like Tales To Astonish, Tales Of Suspense, Journey Into Mystery and Strange Tales. Iron Man, Captain America, Dr. Strange and the Submariner all shared books together until the stupendous success of the Amazing Spider-Man title allowed Marvel to find a new distributor and begin growing a comic book empire to rival that other company who published Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Supergirl, Green Lantern, the Justice League et al.. So, anyway, here we have the Hulk tales Tales To Astonish issues 80 to 101 and issue 102 where the title of the comic became The Incredible Hulk. These stories are not especially bad or especially good but this volume does contain artwork from the likes of Jack Kirby, Namor the Submariner creator Bill Everett, Marie Severin, a fledgling John Buscema whose legendary style was not quite in evidence quite yet and most importantly, the almighty DC Comics giant Gil Kane whose work here includes the 1st appearance of classic Hulk villain, the Abomination (himself a reworking of an aquatic monster Kane drew at Tower Comics' Undersea Agent title) in #90. You also get a very nice two part Silver Surfer appearance here as well so volume 3 is a worthy purchase! As long as you don't expect the pseudo-depth of the recent Batman films or the so called edgy profundity of a DC Vertigo comic, you'll find these stories fairly entertaining in a campy, melodramatic old school fashion. After all, most of these stories are almost fifty years old now!?! Eek!Read full review
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