What's so great about this run and Ewing in general?
It's more a case of being the least awful title than being particularly good.
>>150171025>>150170948This. Bennett's art was good (Jewery, kek), Hulk personas getting time to shine and use their unique perspective in dedicated issues, Banner being more rebellious and actually fighting against corporations as well as the Avengers, and cool imagery alongside respect for Hulk continuity was cool. Red Harpy is cute. However the cosmic parts where Hulk in the future devours Metron or the conservative dad issue, or the doctor/nonbinary black woman self insert for Ewing or whatever that scene was where Devil Hulk nods respectfully to the nonconforming folx was lame. I still don't get the point of dedicating pages to showing a Hulk becoming evil and destroying worlds. We already got that idea with Devil Hulk and the ending explaining the story. Namor also could have been used more.Xemnu and Minotaur also stretched too long alongside some of those issues with Hulk and Banner separated. Tired of Marvel using that trope of separating heroes and creating an awkward hook for the reader to latch onto.
>>150170948It had excellent art and was a relief after all the Generations stuff.
>>150170948Flash in the pan.
>>150170948He kinda just used Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing as a framework.
>>150171257Thanks for the more in depth explanation.
>>150171025>>150171536THIS
>>150171257>Hulk personas getting time to shineThat's more fanservice than anything, and while it's not inherently a bad thing, it's not necessarily a good thing either. It could just be dangling a shiny thing to distract from the shit story.
>>150170948It treats banners multiple personality disorder as a story point rather than different power sets. Why does he have multiple hulks? what do they represent? and at this point in his life how do the hulks feel if they have come to understand what part of some broken mans mind they represent.Its just a very good take on a character that had gotten stale. Similar to Alan Moores Saga of the Swamp Thing run.
>>150173695Yes that definitely was and can still be the case. But I did like them taking over Bruce in human form or Devil Hulk being more fleshed out to a degree. They didn't get executed to a deeper extent but the ideas were good.I'm also a little salty Emil never came back during the run.
>>150171257>Xemnu and Minotaur also stretched too long alongside some of those issues with Hulk and Banner separated. Tired of Marvel using that trope of separating heroes and creating an awkward hook for the reader to latch onto.At least we got a good running gag out of it. I hope they keep bringing Minotaur back just to keep killing him in increasingly humiliating ways.
>>150170948I think Ewing gets 'it'. Some people do comic books and fuck it up but some people just get the medium better.Stuff like this and being able to manage it. it's punchy, it's fun. I'm not saying its got to be quippy but theres a way to write a superhero comic.
>>150170948After Thor I hope that fucker gets to do Hercules or something dude.
>>150174529>I think Ewing gets 'it'.I disagree.
So the /co/ntrarians are now saying Immortal Hulk is bad?
>>150173794He's in (Im)Mortal Thor with a new human body.
>>150175161Came to post this. You can’t ask for an honest opinion on something popular on /co/ because you’ll have people like >>150173695 who didn’t even read what they’re commenting on and just going “ITS SHIT ON A CANVAS”
>>150175161No, we are just finally allowed to say how we really felt about Immortal without Marvel shills spamming the thread to hide people's issues.
>>150175226White incel hands typed this post.
I still don't understand why Ewing retconned Banner and Leader into distant relatives.
>>150175300I guess it was just a thematic way of showing how everybody is connected. I thought it was a little clumsy, the right hand is mercy bit works well on its own, wonder why Ewing felt it was necessary
>>150175215I was speaking in general.
>>150174529>I think Ewing gets 'it'.I mean, he definitely knows the material, which is more than can be said for most. But an annoying amount of the time, it feels like he just wants to brag about that. It's not as bad in Immortal Hulk, although bringing back that PAD gamma couple and winking at the audience about the girl's name got under my skin, but it's a persistent flaw that gets in the way more often than I think people'd care to admit.
>>150175317>the right hand is mercy bit works well on its ownYeah, it's not like Leader and Banner were aware they're related... Hulk decided to forgive him out of his own goodwill.
>>150176021>winking at the audience about the girl's nameHonestly, it wasn't that bad. It was just a line about the old woman not being able to remember her name, and to be fair, PAD shouldn't have made that name. I still consider that to be one of the all time best Hulk issues because it was the perfect way to frame the fact that Hulk has had such wildly different interpretations over the years. It's the kind of story that wouldn't feel out of place as a filler issue in just about any run.
>>150170948There is nothing great about Ewing
>>150176624>and to be fair, PAD shouldn't have made that nameIf he or editorial had a problem with the name of a forgotten character from the 90's, there's a real simple solution: don't use her.Ewing can't help himself, though; he has to make sure everybody knows that he knows all the lore. While he does sometimes pull off fun stuff because of that, it's always secondary to him.
>>150170948Legend goes it's one of the few comics to make an anon quit 4chan despite Mr. Burn's disclaimer.
>>150170948To explain why this comic is good, you would first need to read all prior Hulk material, which would wear away at your brain so much you'll start liking very mediocre comics.
>>150170948simple, it revitalised Hulk again after years of just being "big angry green Avenger" especially after how the MCU treated him. putting Bruce's split personalities in the spotlight and making Hulk thematically horror again alone makes it a great run
>>150170948I hated all the digital compression and lettering. Ruined it.
>>150171257Yeah this, I dropped when it started virtue signaling. It was decent up until that point.
Ewing is a constructivist i.e. he actually tries to incorporate elements of the character's history and other writers/artists work into his own presentation. He doesn't feel like leaving anything off the table and even if it's something outside his wheelhouse, he will try to find a use for it. This used to be the default: almost everyone working in comics did it and editors would encourage and enforce it across the whole line. However, certainly at the time IH was starting and running, this was not at all common in current day comics. Writers would come in, shit on everything for a quick bit of controversy, do some retarded fad-chasing character arc, all sorts of crap. I haven't really read many modern comics since probably early/mid-2021, but I found Ewing's work on IH and The Ultimates to be pretty refreshing for that reason. It felt like he cared about what had previously been written about the characters and like that contributed to the motivation of him telling his own story. He likes to do new stories, but without throwing out the old. He also likes to leave stuff in the toolbox for future writers: again something that used to be common, and became much less so.
>>150177538I disagree in this case. As someone who didn't know about Jailbait before the issue, it didn't detract from the story, and even after I learned about her, I didn't feel like it mattered. It's one panel at the end that had zero impact on the story that's being told. Still, for better or for worse, drawing on as much lore as possible is Ewing's style. I think he's the only one who could have fixed the CW2 fuck up with Samson, and let's not forget the Roxxon arc. Aaron fucked up by having Roxxon "defeated" off screen, and Ewing ran with that. That lore made Roxxon feel much more powerful as they bragged about how "no one actually cares" and how their stock kept going up in spite of betraying all of Earth and having a monster as a CEO.
>>150170948There has never been a good Hulk run.
>>150181365i still laugh at how Bendis kicks off CW2 with Thanos having a random fucking gun for some reason, and Ewing uses his little story as part of that to explain why there's a fucking gun. I don't like everything Ewing writes but he has the soul of a comics guy for sure.
>>150180978>Writers would come in, shit on everything for a quick bit of controversy, do some retarded fad-chasing character arc, all sorts of crap. Coincidentally, Cates did this with his Hulk run. He ignored Banner finally making peace with the Hulk.
>>150174529I agree with your take wholeheartedly. It's why I loved USAvengers. He can embrace the campiness unironically while still writing a decent science fiction plot that has something to say, and that is a rarity among writers nowadays who go too far in either extreme.
>>150171025>>150171257Yeah
It falls apart around the middle when Ewing backpedals hard on Devil being a vindictive asshole.
>>150181423I think Ewing has milked CW2 for all it was worth. >hulk died, ewing brings him back>thanos has a gun, ewing tells you about the gun>samson is back, ewing comes up for a reason whyHell, he even made CW2 the offical split between the main Marvel timeline and 2099. That Thanos attack is canonically the even that was going to wipe out every hero except for Deadpool, Iron Fist, and Thor. I'm kinda surprised that we never got a What If that actually shows the events as they should have happened to lead to 2099's world.
>>150181830I think the best way to sum up Ewing's approach is that he doesn't sweep bad stories under the run like other writers understandably do. Instead he takes bad choices and makes the most of them.
I'm convinced /co/ suffers from extreme bouts of recency bias and just because All-New Venom is trash they now have the compulsion to go back and consider every piece of Ewing's bibliography as trash and/or overrated
>>150176021>>150176624>>150177538I've not read Immortal Hulk, what's this name and why is it such a big deal?
>>150175161They always said this.
>>150175161it is OK and that is. Bruce jones, BOTH byrne runs, erk larsen run, BOTH greg pak runs are better, and gerry duggan run is better too.
>>150182021Jail Bait. Her name is Jail Bait. She is from a run many years ago. The issue never said her name for obvious reasons.
>>150181998I'll agree with that. Hell, for the first 10 issues or so, the Hulk threads were basically 100% positive. Over time there were a few detractors, but they were in the minority. Looking at King in comparison, I remember /co/ holding up his Vinson as one of the best comics of the year, After Batman happened, everyone was suddenly less positive to Vision.
>>150182406>BOTH greg pak runs
