The Rampaging TV Sensation

(With a tip of the hat to Steve Does Comics for this post's inspiration!)


Like a number of Marvel's line of B&W magazines from the '70s, I passed on the original run of The Rampaging Hulk magazine from 1977-78, though I remember taking a quick look at a couple of issues when browsing the magazine rack. The book's time period preceded that of the present-day Hulk, going back to the days just after his first series when he had a little more on the ball in the brain department, a facet of his personality which writer Doug Moench took further so that the Hulk's manner and speech resembled that of the character we saw during his brief stint in The Avengers. That alone wouldn't have been a problem for me; in fact, I liked the Hulk when he was almost always in a bad mood and had a hair-trigger temper, when you could never tell what was going to push him over the edge. But the mag also made an alien race called the Krylorians the Hulk's perpetual foes throughout the run of the initial series, and they just didn't appeal to me--mostly because Moench wrote them as if they'd modeled their speech and cognitive patterns after street-savvy Americans, something I couldn't reconcile with alien invaders. Boiled down, they seemed to be really snarky versions of the Toad Men, though frankly I enjoyed the Toad Men.

Also of note is that Marvel's magazines tended to be churned out depending on the trend of the year, whether it was martial arts or monsters or a popular film. In this case, when The Rampaging Hulk was retooled to a color magazine in 1978 with more contemporary stories, it hitched its wagon to the 1978 television series The Incredible Hulk, appealing to the show's fan base with interviews and behind-the-scenes segments. Naturally, the Incredible Hulk comic followed suit with prominent "Marvel's TV Sensation" captions appearing on its covers, though I can hardly fault them for striking while the iron is hot.  At the time, however, I wasn't a regular view of the show--so the large-format Hulk magazine just didn't reach me on any level.

But having recently taken a look at a good number of the magazine issues from each of its runs, I found that there were many things to appreciate about them, creatively speaking. I can't say I didn't have a few problems with Moench's at times meandering style (for instance, an interminable amount of time is spent having Rick Jones, in hot pursuit of the Hulk, trying to determine from the air which direction Queens would be)--but some of the stories were engaging (many of the action sequences more so), and, in all fairness to Moench, each was packed with a whopping 60+ pages of material. In addition, there is some truly spectacular artwork to be found in the series, which will be the primary focus of today's post.

It's only fair to start at the beginning--that is, the Hulk's beginning, following Bruce Banner's exposure to the radiation emitted from the explosion of his gamma bomb. Without the aid of a colorist, the scene is all the more chilling, thanks to artists Walt Simonson and Alfredo Alcala.

If I remember correctly, my attention was first drawn to the magazine by its cover to issue #5, which featured the Hulk meeting the Sub-Mariner for the first time. The story spanned two issues of the bimonthly mag, and features some stunning art by Keith Pollard--inked in Part 1 by Alcala, and in Part 2 by Tony DeZuniga.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Jim Mooney inks Pollard in the next issue--and though Mooney's style tends to soften the pencils he's finishing, the strength of Pollard's pencils is (you'll pardon the word) incredible.

When The Rampaging Hulk segues to The Hulk! in 1978, the mag gets an infusion of other artists and writers--notably, Jim Shooter, Denny O'Neil, David Kraft, Gene Colan, Ron Wilson, Bill Sienkiewicz, John Buscema, Mike Zeck, et al. Colan's work on the book tended to shine more in the overall story and its supporting characters rather than in his depictions of the Hulk, but he had his moments:

Inked by Alfredo Alcala

As for Buscema, he and Shooter are mostly remembered for the controversial segment in their story where Bruce Banner was nearly raped, though it was perhaps the magazine's "have our cake and eat it too" decision to hawk itself as a companion mag to the television series which was partly responsible for how it was received. On the one hand, The Hulk! and other large-format magazines with similar content were published with the understanding that they were geared to the more adult reader; yet on the other, because this particular magazine also made an effort to supplement its readership with fans of the TV series, there was every possibility that its stories were being read by the show's younger viewers who also browsed comics and magazine racks.

In addition, it's worth noting that, by now, there have been many fictional segments in mediums across the board which have dealt with the subject of rape, either homosexual or heterosexual--a number of them far more graphic than the segment in the story in question. And with the topic also having appeared in news feeds that are read by millions, it's become as much a part of our national discourse as other subjects that were previously off-limits. In October of 1980, when this story was published, topics such as rape were broached, rather than something someone could routinely come across in an article or news story--and it would be a rare day to find fictional accounts.

Looking at the story through today's eyes, Shooter and Buscema do a fair job with its portrayal, since there's no reason why Bruce Banner should be more immune to such detestable behavior than any other man or woman--and I felt the Hulk's reaction as a result was handled particularly well, not remembering the specifics of who or what but knowing that something is responsible for inflicting hurt on him.

Inking by Alfredo Alcala and/or Steve Oliff

Reader response to the story, as you can imagine, was plentiful, with Shooter responding personally to several of the printed letters. In a later issue, he also issues an apology to John Byrne that clarifies a previous response he gave to one of the letter contributors. I found it fascinating and compelling reading, as were many reader forums of the day (e.g. The Comics Journal) that included a number of views.

The Hulk! finally folded following its 27th issue in mid-1981 (about a year before the television series came to an end)--a successful experiment, all things considered, maintaining a readership with a bimonthly publication schedule which, cumulatively with The Rampaging Hulk, produced a run that lasted for 4½ years.

BONUS!

A very cool portrayal by Ron Wilson and Bob Layton of the one and only Leader.