The Wrath Of The World Breaker!

Having seen the events which led up to the 2007-08 series, World War Hulk, we know that Tony Stark, Reed Richards, Stephen Strange, and Blackagar Boltagon (that still sounds silly) are going to be made to answer for their actions toward the Hulk and, by extension, Bruce Banner--and though we'll discover that those actions don't amount to the level of transgressions that the Hulk intends to hold them accountable for, our four "heroes," in addition to a number of others as well as a sizable part of New York City, will suffer considerably by the time his rage and this series have run their course.

Which makes this more "NYC War Hulk" than what the title implies, since confining your attack to one city doesn't engulf an entire planet in a war. Still, when the Hulk emerges from an alien ship dangling his first victim, every costumed figure worth his salt knows that the Hulk's threat to extend his attack to the rest of the world must be taken seriously.  (Or so the Hulk would have them believe, should his demands not be met.)

The Hulk's announcement also serves to offer readers who passed on the "Planet Hulk" storyline (such as myself) a capsulized glance at the tragic events of that story while boiling down the Hulk's grievance against his four targets in a nutshell--which seems an effective way to handle a five-issue, 200+ page series in a single PPC post (hey, I'm not at war with the Hulk!) while offering a look at the work comprising this ambitious project.

As you might guess, the story's first order of business is to feebly tie the hands of the one person who could end this conflict with a single incantation.

It's a necessary scene, though it sidesteps the fact that Strange's immediate intervention is the one possibility that the Hulk and his "Warbound" haven't prepared for.* How embarrassing it would be for the Hulk to make his grandstand announcement, only to find himself and his little strike team suddenly appearing in one hostile dimension after another, in five-minute intervals, while the Illuminati put their heads together to come up with a more permanent solution.

*Or have they? Nothing stood out for me in that regard, but perhaps the more eagle-eyed among you picked up on it.

But that won't do in the real world, where a certain comics company is expecting to reap a mountain of $$$ from this project--and so as New Yorkers begin evacuating, we get right to it, as Iron Man engages the Hulk in his formidable Hulkbuster suit--a struggle which, after a fierce and well-planned battle, doesn't end well for the golden Avenger.

Two down, two to go. But when the Hulk moves to take down his next target, Reed Richards, he and his posse also capture the entire Fantastic Four--along with a few Avengers souvenirs.

That of course leaves Strange, who manages to talk the Hulk down after a punishing attack by the military leaves him open to Strange's influence. But prior to reaching Earth, the Hulk was prepared well by his brothers-in-arms in terms of harnessing his anger rather than letting it get the better of him and thus giving his enemies a predictable foe--and so, while Strange feels he has made headway in reaching Bruce Banner in a sincere effort to help him, he has in fact been lured into lowering his guard by a canny adversary who now deals with the greatest threat to his plans.

Strange would later resort to the risk of merging his essence with Zom, an immensely evil and powerful mystic foe who continues the battle in Strange's form and tears through the Warbound before taking on the Hulk in a brutal and, by all appearances, one-sided battle. Yet with Strange still struggling to assert himself over Zom's will, he becomes distracted when innocents are threatened by his own actions--giving the Hulk an opening to strike him down.

To cover one more base, the Hulk decides to approach Charles Xavier in order to put the question to him of whether he would have joined the other members of the Illuminati in voting to exile the Hulk, had he been present to do so.

Not unexpectedly, the Hulk has to wade through all of the X-Men before presuming to take charge of Xavier; but what changes the Hulk's mind about doing so are the words of a student who pleads with the Hulk to let their teacher be, making the argument that Xavier is already suffering from the losses sustained on M-Day as well as the actions of mutant-haters. As for why the Hulk never sought out the Sub-Mariner (also a member of the Illuminati) for the same reason he looked up Xavier, Namor had abstained from the group's vote, flatly and forcefully rejecting their decision to send the Hulk into space (information which the Hulk could have presumably learned from interrogating Stark).

With his captives now secured with "slave" discs which ensure their compliance, the Hulk gathers them in a stadium, where he forces the four to take center stage in an "arena" and fight for their lives in full view of public witnesses. Throughout, Richards and the others proclaim their innocence as far as being responsible for the shuttle's explosion which destroyed countless lives on the Hulk's world--to no avail.

And when the four somehow prevail against the horrid monster unleashed against them, they are then forced to battle each other, to the death. But even the discs that enslave them are taxed to the limit in compelling such a directive.

What surprises everyone is that the Hulk never sought their deaths here, but to simply expose them for the liars and murderers he believes they are. And following that exposure, the final step:  to destroy New York City, perhaps as a reminder to everyone on Earth of what these four have wrought with their schemes and shamelessness. It's a decree as old as the human race: they've sown the wind, and now must reap the whirlwind.

And perhaps they would have, having no apparent means of stopping the Hulk. But Stark's ace in the hole has finally decided to enter the battle--though despite the hopes raised in the arrival of the Sentry, whose power is many, many levels above and beyond anything the Hulk has faced, New York might still be left in ruins by the time it's all over, whoever prevails.

Yet it's actually Banner who would prevail against the Sentry's attack (without being incinerated in the process--that's quite a trick for a normal human)--a conclusion that, granted, is hard to swallow. (I've gone over it several times and I'm still dumbfounded by how that scene is virtually force-fed to the reader.) But only afterward does the Hulk learn that it was one of the most trusted of his team, Miek, who was complicit in an assassination attempt put in place by the faction on their world opposing the Hulk's rule--an attempt which involved planting an aged warp core aboard the shuttle, and detonating it while the Hulk was nearby.

Blaming himself for what happened almost as much as he blames Miek, the Hulk goes mad with anguish and guilt, lashing out in all directions and fully embracing his description as "world breaker"--and while the carnage mounts, and with encouragement from the Hulk himself, Stark remote-activates a satellite which finally incapacitates the Hulk and allows Banner to be captured and secured.

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And so it falls to you (and rightfully so) to give World War Hulk and its resolution a "yea" or "nay."  Looking at it as a whole, you'll likely benefit from the experience of reading the entire series from beginning to end, if you have the opportunity. While it's almost tedious to flip through page after page of the Hulk (for all intents and purposes an invincible, invulnerable walking mountain) continually brutalizing the opposition as if it didn't exist, there are some interesting character moments to be found throughout (I found the tie-in with General Ross nicely handled, for example). For all the story's fanfare, however, I found myself more interested in Banner's fate once the whole thing was over, a man who presumably would never again be allowed to see the light of day; and did Richards and the others have to cope with any repercussions from their exposure in all of this?  Those loose ends will hopefully be explored in the PPC at a future date.