Writer: Roy Thomas
Illustrator: Herb Trimpe
Inker: Tom Sutton
Colorist: Glynis Wein
Review: Madman
I don’t know how many What If…? books I’ve reviewed but know it’s more than a few. I’m also not sure how many total issues there are in the multiple volumes, but if a complete volume of books is ever to be reviewed, one book at a time, there is a good chance it’ll be What If…?.
I may or may not have officially made it a personal mission of mine. Hey, what can I say, most of these books are entertaining as hell, and I’d be a chump to not snatch them out of the dollar boxes when I come across them, now wouldn’t I?
That being said, this is my favorite issue of the volume I’ve had the pleasure to sink in my eyeballs. The artwork Trimpe gifts us with is what you would expect from a Marvel book from the ‘70s. I’m not complaining at all. I love Trimpe’s work both here and in the proper Incredible Hulk book, as well as on his many other titles. What really stood out to me though, as for this issues’ art department, was Wein’s color work. Even now, forty one years after publication, the pages still pop in all the right ways. I was truly surprised how vibrant the colors saturate each and every page.
Roy Thomas must have had a blast writing this issue. There are so many A-list characters with their own little parts, every couple of pages Thomas adds a couple and gives them their own little story for three or four pages with the Hulk and Banner being the constant.
We are, of course, given a crash course on the Hulk’s gamma-powered origin and then Thomas gets things rolling with the Gargoyle himself and, of course, Thunderbolt Ross has his part.
Then things get weird. Really weird.
The Hulk ends up accepting an invitation from the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards to help science the Thing out of Ben. They actually succeed, and Ben is returned to his human form. Now, without the Thing’s super-strength and Johnny Storm deciding to go to college, the Fantastic Four decides to break up.
Banner ends up moving into the Baxter Building with Reed and Sue and they continue to science the shit out of stuff. Around this point, Thomas turns up the weird even more as Prof. X knocks on the door. The three proceed to science the shit out of more stuff and in the process create Cerebro, which in turn shines like a beacon and catches the attention on Galactus himself.
Galactus does what Galactus does and forces Marvel’s nerd trinity to take desperate measures. The three heroes science the shit out of yet more stuff and create a machine that effectively melds all three super brains into one being called the X-Man.
The X-man makes short work of Galactus, but not before the super X-Nerd inadvertently zaps Ben Grimm with something that not only reverts him back to his rocky self but puts the essence of Hulk into him as well…making him an orange, rocky rage monster.
Soon thereafter the X-Man reverts back into the heroes three and, as a side effect of turning into the X-Man, once separated, they have lost all of their individual super powers…
Yup, that all happened in one single issue. These days Marvel could turn this one issue into two mega events and 974 spinoffs/tie-ins.
God bless the 1970s. And God bless a second senses-shattering adventure in the paradox-plagued cosmos of parallel worlds.
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