Monday, March 17, 2008

See, Adamantium is a resin!
Ah, I want a life-sized Awesome Android for my office! Lucky.
Sometimes, the fun thing about remembering trivia from old comics, is going back and finding stories that are almost forgotten. From The Incredible Hulk #469, "Adaptive Audience" Written by Joe Casey, pencils by Javier Pulido, inks by Larry Mahlstedt. Like just about everyone else, I think I dropped Hulk after #467, when Peter David left the book. I did pick up Casey's issues later, marked down when a local store closed. To my surprise, they were pretty good, and have held up since then.

Reportedly, David left the book since he was getting pressure from editorial to dial back the Hulk's status quo to the savage, "Hulk smash!" version. Casey doesn't take it there, but Banner and the Hulk seem like separate personas, but working fairly well together. After the recent death of his wife Betty, Bruce is kidnapped and put to work by Devlin Deangelo, a supplier for super-villains. Devlin offers him info on who was responsible for Betty's death, in exchange for Bruce repairing the Super-Adaptoid. Unfortunately, just because he has to see the look on Bruce's face, he plays his card too early...

All the powers of Captain America, Iron Man, Giant-man...yeah, Hawkeye too.
Why the Super-Adaptoid doesn't have an action figure, I have no idea: evil robot with the powers of dozens of heroes, looks like he's made out of green plastic and cobbled-together parts. Even though the Hulk and the Adaptoid throw down, Banner's the one that makes the save: reprogramming the Adaptoid to go back and kick Devlin's ass.

Glad I dug this one out. We might look at Casey's last issue, the last of the series, later.

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