King-Size Hulk #1 - Marvel

This one is a bit tricky. It says that there's a variant cover, but actually . . . they have them both stapled to the same book. The one you see to the right is stapled in underneath the Arthur Adams cover. Oh well! At least I didn't have to spend another $5 to get it. This one was a pretty quick read. The front story, by Jeph Loeb and Art Adams is really only 8 pages long. Actually . . there's three 8 page stories. One by Art, one by Frank Cho and one by Herb Trimpe. And everything leads right in to Hulk #4. Then, behind that, they reprint 3 other . . older . . Hulk stories. They reprint Incredible Hulk #180 and #181 . . . you know . . where we first got introduced to Wolverine. And then they reprint Avengers #83. Now, the first 3 stories were set up to . . kind of fill in some of the gaps from the series. The Art Adams stories shows the Red Hulk . . although I'm not sure if it was supposed to be before or after he killed the Abomination . . as he runs into a Wendigo. Whoever this Red Hulk is, he's aware of the Hulks history. He knows that the Hulk has also been in this position . . so basically it seems like he wants to "one-up" him. But, he's made some pretty powerful enemies in the process. The Frank Cho story fills us in on what happened after the Red Hulk grabbed She-Hulk. I mean, it's not to much different from what we think happened . . or expected. But we do see how scared Jennifer actually was. And finally the Herb Trimpe story gives us a quick run-down of the Abomination's history. His really is a tragic tale. All 3 stories are put together in a narrative form as they're being told by Bruce as he's studying some of the government files. Apparently this all takes place right before the end of issue #3 where the Red Hulk hits the ground so hard it breaks Bruce out of his cell . . 6 miles below the Earth's surface. And then . . in issue #4 . . the two will come face to face. I think Jeph Loeb did a wonderful job of putting this whole thing together, and creating the theme with his stories. I also thought the effort from all 3 artists was fantastic. I don't usually get to excited about these King-Size, or Giant-Size, issues but I have to say that I really enjoyed this one.