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Incredible Hercules #116
Posted 29 Apr 2008
Writer: Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente
Artist: Rafa Sandoval (interior), John Romita Jr. (cover)
Letters: VC’s Joe Caramagna
Ink: Roger Bonet (interior), Klaus Janson (cover)
Colors: Martegod Gracia (interior), Dean White (cover)
Publisher: Marvel
5.00 out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Adam McGovern
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Okay, I give up – Incredible
Hercules is now the best book Marvel publishes. Why argue with
the strongest man in history? When writers Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente
continued the “World War Hulk” storyline with two of its
supporting characters as the Incredible Hulk headliner deserted
his own book, they extended a frontline franchise that had become an
overnight oddity; with uncommon wit and literally classic chops
they’ve just as quickly made a defiantly marginal concept a
mainstream must-read.
“Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente have
made a defiantly marginal concept a mainstream must-read.”
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The book tracks the uncertain odyssey of strongman Hercules and
supergenius Amadeus Cho, a heart & head match that’s a major
key to the folkloric smarts and storytelling savvy of this book. The
pair first came together when the somewhat uncomplicated
demigod’s sense of right and wrong was offended by the hounding
of the Hulk, and the unsurprisingly skeptical youth’s sense of
paranoia and infallibility was applied to computer-hacking the
Hulk’s government tormentors out of business. Now the impulsive
champion and the too-calculating cyberterrorist are on a dysfunctional
road trip to avoid the authorities and perhaps stumble into genuine
heroism.
In the series’ second-arc opener Herc’s sister Athena
is enlisting the Doric Duo to weather a coming celestial war in which
the Eternals, science-created analogues of the Olympian gods, will
also figure. A font of wise if cranky counsel and a pillar of fair
play, Athena holds forth on the folly of new-agey humans worshipping
the Eternals’ own outer-space deity figures and reminisces about
unjust interventions by her other brother Ares, God of War; Nietzsche
said a god ceases to exist when he stops being worshipped, but in the
resilient character of Athena Pak & Van Lente seem to be
suggesting that an idea – like adherence to stubborn facts and
honorable conflict – can survive no matter how much
self-deluding people and tyrannical nations turn away from it. (This
is one of the Marvel books that shed light on current issues in a much
deeper and more entertaining way than certain pseudo-events that
mostly shine a spotlight on their overworked metaphors.)
There’s an amusing skirmish between the Greek gods and their
Eternal counterparts, cleverly aligning the two camps as stand-ins for
the science/religion debate in a way that explains the Eternals’
narrative reason for being in a universe with well-established
“real” gods at a level of texture that even Neil Gaiman
didn’t quite deal with in his brilliant recent miniseries. The
dueling pantheons also gave me the feeling I was seeing a more
purposeful and archetypally pure take on a JLA/JSA struggle than I
might ever see in those actual groups’ comics.
At one point Herc laments his problematic parentage by the
philandering Zeus to the constitutionally pissed-off Amadeus, who
replies, “Welcome to the human race” – just one of
many perfect-pitched punchlines in this book’s divine comedy.
I’ve just spoiled that one, but Pak & Van Lente – with
suitably grand yet mischievous art from first Khoi Pham and now Rafa
Sandoval – have a canon more where that came from.
—CCdC—
Cover image used without explicit permission in accordance with the "Fair Use" provision of US copyright law.
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