Look how interesting the Spider-Man is there. Finch never drew a Spidey that cool in UXM or Avengers. Really upping his game. Inside…
Real Ditko hours. Back at the fight, Hulk is dragging Iron Man out of the wreckage as Luke Cage, Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, Ares, Doc Samson, Spider-Woman and others prepare to face off with him. But then his Warbound show up, his alien homeboys, ready to defend their leader who clearly doesn’t need it. Area decides to just lay into them, but…
Hulk puts down Ares with one hit, which is pretty fun, and then everybody’s fightin’ everybody. As the heroes brawl with the aliens, Spider-Woman points out they don’t have a chance, that they can’t win a fight like this. Ms. Marvel says hopefully they won’t have to, that they’re buying time for Reed Richards. The FF (Which is currently Human Torch, Thing, Black Panther and Storm, you’ll recall) are joined by Reed & Sue on the roof of the Baxter Building, where Reed is building a giant thing, as he so often does, with the help of T’Challa’s intellect and Storm’s lightning. Reed thinks it’s done, and urges the others to leave, saying it’s not their fight.
Johnny Storm and Storm, (What a team!) unleash a ton of fire and lightning on Hulk, creating a crazy light show, but it has no effect. A whole building collapses under him, and he just walks out. Thing is watching it happen.
The oldest physical rivalry in Marvel Comics! But Hulk was always stronger than Thing, Ben’s edge was he was smarter and faster. And now Hulk’s smart and off-the-charts powerful, so…
It appears the Sentry has come to calm Hulk down in a flash of light. Thing tells Korg the Sentry always could, because he and Hulk were true friends. But then it’s not Sentry, it’s Reed in some weird light rig, for some reason, mostly because this comic has 3 more issues. So Hulk proceeds to beat the hell out of Reed, smashing through Sue’s force fields to do it. Once her husband is quite literally flattened, Sue calls the real Sentry. Why did they not do this first?
Gotta have Rick Jones show up to one of these things. The Warbound know who he is, bringing up how he abandoned Hulk for Captain America IN THE 60s, and accuse him of being a tool of Cap’s, so Rick gets to tell his old friend that his other old friend is dead. Rick seems to be getting through to him, getting him to calm down, so of course, that’s when Dr. Strange puts the whammy on him.
Trotting out all the Hulk people. This stuff’s just a lot of empty fighting. Romita is absolutely giving it everything, but it’s not really about anything. Hulk has now had the chance to kill 3 of his 4 supposed tormentors and hasn’t. And won’t. Because he’s not allowed to, and also because he’s a good guy, even in this state. And why is Sentry STILL not involved? There’s just very little actual story here. And it somehow goes on 3 more issues. World War Hulk #2 does something I don’t think any other event has ever done. Maybe Secret Wars. It has a letter page. That just seems kinda crazy. But why not?