THE TOTALLY AWESOME HULK #11
Writer: Greg Pak
Artist: Mahmud Asrar
Colorist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: VC’s Corey Petit
Release Date: 10/26/16
Rating: Rated T
Price: $3.99
During the eight months after Secret Wars a lot of things changed in the reformed Earth 616. One change was there was a new Hulk, the Totally Awesome Hulk! Amadeus Cho was a close friend to Dr. Bruce Banner, the Incredible Hulk. When the Hulk had absorbed a lethal amount of radiation even to him, Amadeus Cho used nanites to drain it.
Amadeus didn’t just drain that radiation, but also the Gamma energy that created the Hulk. By doing so Amadeus took the energy into himself creating the Totally Awesome Hulk. Without the psychological and anger issues that plagued Dr. Banner, Cho was able to become a Hulk that wasn’t fed on anger. With his sister Maddy, Amadeus used the power of the Hulk to hunt monsters.
Ulysses, an Inhuman with the power to predict the future showed everyone that the Incredible Hulk will kill the heroes. Captain Marvel recruited a team of heroes to see if the cured Dr. Banner showed any signs of Hulking out. During a confrontation a slight flicker of green in his eyes prompted Hawkeye to kill his friend.
Hawkeye was acquitted because it was Dr. Banner’s fail-safe to kill him, if he saw any glimmer of the Hulk’s return. The fact that Dr. Banner told Clint Barton to do this, didn’t hurt Amadeus any less. It only prompted him into went after him to make him to pay for killing his friend. In doing so put him in the path of Black Panther and his own version of the Hulkbuster armor.
Plot: The Totally Awesome Hulk is within the Black Panther’s claws. Can Amadeus Cho escape in time to save his sister and the citizens of Texas from an emotional leech monster?
Story: The story is pretty straight forward, and honestly not much to it. The battle with Black Panther was very forced and forgettable, so much so that I forgot about it before reading this issue. The only thing more forced than the fight, was the resolution.
The Black Panther had Amadeus totally pinned and on the ropes, ready to give in, then a call from his sister and he ripped the suit apart. But that wasn’t the only forced part of this fight, as we find out that the Totally Awesome Hulk can now generate a localized E.M.P. I don’t like how this seems to be a pattern with Marvel, this new generation of legacy heroes are stronger than their predecessors. Not to mention that the E.M.P. seems to be controlled by Amadeus’ will? I will think so since he didn’t press anything, he just emitted it.
I also found it od that Amadeus didn’t know he was stronger than the Incredible Hulk, since he already broke out of a cell that once held him. This seemed like something one of the smartest people in the universe should know.
Art: For the most part the art was well done, but the lack of background and detail hurt the overall experience. The backgrounds were mainly solid colors, which I never been a fan of. I never liked that take them out of the scene fighting. Other than that the art was pretty solid.
The colors brought a great dynamic to the scenes. The point where the detail was the strongest was in the expressions. Mahmud Asrar does a great job with emoting, you can feel what each character is feeling in this issue. This is crucial for the art in this issue, as the monster feeds off of emotion. This really helped propel the story, even before we knew that the monster fed off of the emotions of others. A lot of the cues really relied on Mahmud Asrar here to deliver those expressions with the art.
Verdict: Overall I thought this was a good issue, but suffers from the forced tie-in with Civil War II that plagues a lot of Marvel titles at the moment.