by Charlie Brooks, CMRO Contributing Writer
World War Hulk: Gamma Corps
Issue #1
Written by Frank Tieri, Art by Carlos Ferreira
Published: July 2007
Through the reviews of various World War Hulk crossovers, I’ve talked about the business end of a company-wide crossover. Titles involved in a crossover usually fall into two categories: characters who are important to the story in some way, such as World War Hulk’s crossovers with Iron Man and the X-Men, or characters who need a boost in sales, such as the tie-ins with Ghost Rider, Heroes for Hire, and Ant-Man. World War Hulk: Gamma Corps presents a less frequently used category, but one that can pay big dividends down the road: tie-ins that introduce entirely new characters in the hopes that they become big down the road.
World War Hulk: Gamma Corps #1 introduces us to the titular Gamma Corps, a group of individuals who have been enhanced by the use of government-sponsored gamma radiation experiments. The mastermind behind this project is the Hulk’s enemy General Ryker, who first appeared in the early 2000s during the Dogs of War story-line. That seven-part story had its misses, such as the revelation that Bruce Banner has thousands of different incarnations of the Hulk in his head, including a clown Hulk. It did, though, have its hits, and General Ryker was the big one there. Ryker is essentially an evil version of the Hulk’s biggest nemesis, General Ross. While Ross is a good man at heart who has an unhealthy obsession with the Hulk, Ryker is callous and evil, willing to sacrifice anybody if needed. He captured and tortured the Hulk in an attempt to use the green goliath’s healing abilities to cure his wife Lucy. When that plan fell through, he disappeared and hasn’t been seen since…until Gamma Corps #1.
The first issue of this miniseries reintroduces Ryker, who has gone into hiding since his machinations fell apart. He attends his wife’s funeral from a distance and reflects upon one of his early meetings with Bruce Banner. As the issue proceeds, we get an introduction of the corps that Ryker has established, each borrowing their looks and powers from an existing gamma creature: Griffon, who resembles the Harpy (the winged gamma creature that Bruce Banner’s beloved Betty Ross once turned into), Prodigy, the group’s resident genius whose powers are derived from long-time Hulk antagonist the Leader, Mess, who half-resembles the monstrous Abomination, Mr. Gideon, the most normal of the group with powers derivative of Doc Samson, and Grey, whose form resembles the gray version of the Hulk. To kick things off, the group breaks into a high- security facility and finds Benny Tibbets, aka Flux. Like Ryker, Flux also appeared as an antagonist in Dogs of War, a naïve soldier manipulated by Ryker into becoming a gamma-powered monster. It looks like a Dogs of War reunion is in order, but the group instead kills Flux on Ryker’s behalf. It’s always a shame to see a somewhat decent if obscure character become a crossover casualty, and this time is no different. Flux had some potential as a character that will never get realized now. Sure, you can say, “It’s comics, death is meaningless,” but that rarely applies to the more obscure characters. But c’est la vie…or la morte, as is the case here.
This issue is just a buildup issue, showcasing our new protagonists and revealing a couple of secrets about them. Most notable among those secrets is that Grey’s true identity is Brian Talbot, brother of Major Glenn Talbot, who was a major Hulk adversary in the Silver Age and who died in the 1970s. The mission, naturally, is to take down the Hulk. As readers, we know they’re doomed to failure, because World War Hulk is not going to get wrapped up in an obscure crossover miniseries. But hopefully the ride will be worth it once we learn more about the characters.
Penciler Carlos Ferreira’s art is very good in this series. Writer Frank Tieri’s script is well-done, although he uses continuity quite oddly. He references some obscure bits of the Hulk’s past, but he also seems to have trouble making his character voices consistent with what has been previously established. A flashback to when Bruce Banner was still a science expert working for General Ross has Banner suggesting that the Hulk isn’t evil, for example, when Silver Age Bruce Banner hated his other half more than anything. General Ryker speaks like a “good old boy” military man, for lack of a better term, speaking to his men casually and tossing around a few swears here and there, when he previously was cold, calculating, and very to the point. As to the group themselves, we don’t have much to go on yet, but hopefully by next issue we’ll have something to endear them to the readers. Overall, World War Hulk: Gamma Corps #1 receives an incomplete grade – there’s not enough here to tell whether the book is interesting or not, but there is a lot of promise waiting for future issues.
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