Ben Johnson vs. World War Hulk

I'm first, so what!

Ben you are correct in your analysis of the sub par WWH. Like Civil War and House of M they have pumped up a major event in the Marvel Universe but left the ending open to be tied up in future individual issues. I liked it better when major crossovers such as Infinity Gauntlet and Dark Phoenix shattered the status quo and had a definite ending to that event. Heck, even the Onslaught saga had a pretty definitive ending, though they did continue alternate corny universe storylines to continue their money whoring!

I never got my main questions answered that WWH was supposed to close. So it seems Hulk is a bit stronger than the Sentry, so what the hell is the 'Power of a billion exploding suns?' And throughout all that now there's a red hulk, and a son of hulk, and I'll be the son of a biscuit that goes and buys more incredible hulk titles to see where the story goes! What a capitalistic medium!

no no no...I'm first... uh.
anyway, Hulk got somebody pregnant on another planet? To me thatsfar more interesting than "HULK SMASH" again and again. I never got into Hulk but Planet Hulk did look interesting. I've never gotten excited over Marvel Comics (the superhero ones) I do like Spiderman though.
I used to read Joe Kubert's war comics (and Batman in Detective Comics) Now I'm lost when I enter a coic book store... I stopped buying books way back in 2000 yet I still see some of my issues still selling on the racks of various stores, not in the back issue bin, but sitting right next to the new releases... whats up with that?

I'll have to respectfully disagree wholeheartedly with Ben here.

I found WWHulk FAR SUPERIOR to the Civil War, House of M, etc crap that Marvel has been pumping out.

Like Infinite Crisis, I truly enjoyed the ending. The series took all the snide comments of "comic book fan experts" about how "Hulk must have killed thousands of people by now" and turned them on their head. The series took the concept of "vengeance" and "an eye for an eye" crap that is so in keeping with Punisher, Wolverine, Civil War, and turned it on its head. The "heroes", in attempting to stop Hulk, again went to lengths that show just how un-heroic they truly are - whereas despite all the property damage and sacking of a city that Hulk and his crew did, he constantly went out of his way to protect innocents from being hurt and, in the end, when the Sentry play went horribly wrong he again saved the day.
And he didn't kill anyone.

If WWHulk did anything, it showed exactly how wrong all of Civil War and all the decisions given to us, the audience, by Tony Stark and his fascist crew was.

Hulk, in invading New York City on a mission of vengeance, proved more heroic than all the rest of the super-heroes combined.

Just because WWHulk failed to explore the themes and issues that Ben and others might have wanted it to doesn't mean it failed to explore themes that I and another set of readers wanted to see. I could care less to see another modern tale of "it was for the greater good" crap - the argument is stale and stupid - doing evil for "greater good" is still doing evil. End of discussion. This isn't new territory - these are philosophies that have been hashed and rehashed since Machiavelli first wrote the Prince, wait, no, since Sun Tzu wrote Art of War, no, wait, probably prior to that! I prefer to see a story about a man who was betrayed by his friends, comes back to seek revenge, and in the end he instead saves them and everyone, yet again, because deep inside (as Cho and Jones knew) he's a hero, not a monster.

That's what WWHulk was really about - establishing, over a period of nearly 2 years, exactly who and what the Hulk is. As well as what a hero does and what a monster does.

Tony Stark is the monster, one greater than Victor Von Doom, for the simple reason that Doom isn't a hypocrite and Doom doesn't lie to himself and others about who he truly is and why he does what he does.

The Hulk I see, the Hulk I read, is the one that Amadeus Cho knows. The one that Rick Jones knows. The one shown in WWHulk.

Those of you looking for gray upon gray and malleable, translucent morality - go reread Civil War and get your latest issues of Punisher. Better yet, look outside of mainstream super-hero comics, please. The less like the Authority that Marvel becomes the better.

I find these HUGE intra-magazine crossovers maddening and unneeded...I'll stick to my independents and the occasional Marvel/DC TPB.

I didn't find WWH to be all that "huge" in terms of the number of books you needed to buy to follow the story. It actually got me interested in Heroes for Hire. I don't think it was too sprawling.

And I did enjoy it for the most part. I am probably the only one, but I liked the X-Men crossover part. Amadeus Cho and the new Champions looks great. It was nice that they kinda sided with the Hulk... sort of. And I liked seeing the heroes in chains.

The only things I did not like was we didn't get enough gladiator combat and the last issue. I just don't care about The Sentry enough to shift my focus from the Hulk to him.

I really liked the X-Men 3 part WWHulk mini. And I loved the Amadeus Cho group and story.

While I want less Sentry, or Sentry dead and removed as the stupid idea that he is, it was nice to see Sentry both beaten by Hulk and, again, the "great weapon for security" devised by Stark & Co. backfiring again and being more of a threat than what said weapon was being aimed at (like, oh, Clor.)

WWHulk wasn't nearly the beast that Civil War or House of M was. You could get almost the whole story from the 5 part series itself. You can't say even close to the same about House of M or Civil War.

WWHulk = "The Trial of Mr Fantastic" writ large.