Hulk Chronicles: WWH #1

July 12, 2008

Hulk Chronicles #1 (Marvel Comics)
By Greg Pak, Peter David, Gary Frank & John Romita, Jr.

With Civil War Chronicles finished, it looks like Marvel is going to continue the format with Hulk Chronicles, collecting the World War Hulk-related titles. Conceptually, I think this is a pretty decent idea — one problem that every crossover has is figuring out which chapters are most important and in what order everything goes. These reprint volumes theoretically will solve that problem, especially for people who didn’t read the books the first time and want to jump in without having to flip through a dozen trade paperbacks in various orders. This book collects the World War Hulk Prologue and Incredible Hulk #106, which were both pretty good issues in their own right. There is one sizeable mistake, however — the stories are out-of-order. The prologue story actually references past events from Incredible Hulk #106 which don’t happen for another 20 pages. It actually takes away from the point of this series a bit. It’s not a killer, but the editors need to keep on top of things like that.
Rating: 7/10