A book that shows Marcelo Frusin standing out again in dark horror, he had already achieved prominence in Sacrament, by AWA.

Haven't heard of it.

If you're a fan of The Exorcist, and also Ridley Scott's Alien, you absolutely must read Sacrament, which came at the perfect time for me; I think it's the best material ever published by AWA Studios.

Okay. I do love those movies.

I have never encouraged the purchase of unworthy comics, like those seen on various YouTubers' websites, and even if I were paid to do so, I wouldn't. I always analyze the quality of the material to see if it's worth spending money on, which would obviously help these artists by motivating them, but I've never been one of those who buys just anything to have in their collection. Here, I would actually spend a money on this miniseries.

Well… I’d argue that whether a comic is worthwhile is a highly subjective matter. You’ve recommended several comics to me in the past, that honestly looked like trash to me. 😆 If you enjoy them, great. But no series is for everybody.

Once, in a podcast, Sal Buscema said that he left the comics industry because he couldn't do anything else to attract the attention of a reader by bringing something good. Today, seeing how Cloak and Dagger are more expressionless than they ever were after creator Bill Mantlo, Sal's words couldn't be more true.

I'm not sure it's the readers not being able to recognize quality. Cloak and Dagger would probably have done great at a small, independent publisher, but Marvel expected bigger sales for a book to have a long run back in the day. Today they all have short runs, so maybe that's the reason for them to give C&D another try.

The mistake IMHO is to link C&D with the X-titles. Although they had a great crossover with the New Mutants about a hundred years ago and were regarded as mutants themselves for a short while, Tandy and Ty have always worked best on a street level, fighting drug lords and helping lost souls in need. Although I'm not Christian, I always thought that they vibed perfectly with Christian themes such as sin, redemption, grace and hope.

I've always seen Cloak and Dagger as urban characters, very different from other superheroes. That's why I always wanted to know what was going on in those stories; it was, in a way, dark, outside the comfort zone. If they were at an independent publisher, it would certainly be the best thing. I'll always use Conan as an example of success when he left Marvel and went to Titan. I even like The New Mutants; it was dark back then too, but today I would never know what's going on, because is bad.

Moving Conan to another publisher is different though. Although there have been crossovers with the Marvel universe (I think?), he's really not a part of it, unlike C&D.

In fact, Conan's interactions in Titan with other characters are precisely with Robert E. Howard's characters, in a more adult setting, the opposite of what Marvel did in their last attempt at a revival, placing him alongside the Avengers. Shuma-Gorath appears in the Titan Conan, but in a much more grounded way.

Ah yes, I forgot that lame Ancient Avengers title, or whatever it was called. I didn’t read it, The idea was just too ridiculous, even for superhero comics.

There's a page from Conan, in that event called No Road Home (which attempts to reintroduce Conan to the 616 Universe), where Conan's flirtation with the Scarlet Witch is prevented because of their past loves. Damn, they were isolated, what harm would there be in them sleeping together? And women would hardly resist Conan.

Jim Zub tried to give this event some importance, but it didn't work. I only liked the part where Conan sees the Immortal Hulk as Crom's creature; it would make for good stories, not for Marvel, but for independent comics, like Titan.

I’m not a fan of different universes crossing over. It’s cheap sensationalism and usually diminishes both creations.

They prostituted Peter Parker since they messed with his childhood by turning him into a thief who stole pornographic magazines.

I must have missed that. I started reading Spider-Man again because of Pepe Larraz. I never expected to not like a book Larraz has drawn, but that's exactly what's happening with this series.

The bizarre change in origin, if I'm not mistaken, happened in the first issues. Larraz draws well, but here it's clear he's unmotivated. It's like seeing Romita Jr.'s art (which I personally like) not making a difference because the script is so weak.

I think Larraz's art still looks amazing. Romita is his complete opposite - not fluid and dynamic at all. The bodies look clunky, flat and robotic. He's a solid storyteller, but I have never really liked his art.

I liked Romita Jr. in World War Hulk #1; he portrays the Hulk's fight with the Hulkbuster in a very realistic way, referencing the attack on the Twin Towers.

The only time I liked Larraz's art was when The Hand resurrected the Hulk, and Brother Voodoo conjured a spell to try and save Banner from The Hand's corruption.

I love all his stuff, even his early Star Wars issues, that looked quite different. I literally can’t think of any other artist at Marvel who’s on his level right now.

I've never read anything about Star Wars, and my vague memory of the movie starring Harrison Ford isn't good. I remember the Atari game more; I played that one a lot.

OMG, that’s blasphemy! 😂

She’s been depicted as slightly darker skinned for a while now. To me the change isn’t that dramatic. Some Roma are indeed as dark as African and Indian people, but she doesn’t even come close to them. I think she looks more southern European now.

It's clearly a way of making her more relatable to Afro-descendants, and in woke culture, most of them are portrayed as ragged, unless their hair is a mess with braids and they're dressed like a homeless person. It's the same as making Fury black, since the original was white, or Valkyrie simply becoming an Afro-descendant in the MCU.

It never occurred to me that it would make her more relatable to black people, and frankly, I find the thought strange, since she is still not African-American looking. It IS obviously a diversification move though. So what... I almost have the same skin color after a longer summer holiday, and I'm a blond, middle-European white guy.

What bothers me more are the African MCU Valkyrie and Heimdall. It just doesn't make much sense to add black people to the pantheon of a Northern European ethnicity. Or any recent fantasy realm based on European mythology for that matter. I find it pretty offensive, to people of Germanic heritage, but even more so to black people, who have their own traditional cultures and mythologies, that deserve more stories based on them.

Those were the good old days when Black people and other races were more reserved. They truly had something to contribute to the culture and didn't need to show that they needed to be accepted.

Yeah, I thought we were already pretty good at creating a diverse society where race and sexuality didn’t matter that much. Then came the woke with their inverse racism and sexual stereotypes…

And unbelievably, this was planted little by little, and before we knew it, it had spread to every possible corner.

Yup. There’s a plan behind it.

They don't learn that the intention was for her to get rid of her cousin, therefore, she has to be more of a She-Hulk with her feet on the ground in her profession as a lawyer, and not an exaggerated version of her cousin. This writer wrote good things for indies, but here she is winning to strengthen feminism.

I support feminism, as long as it doesn't mean "hating all men", which is not the impression I'm getting from this book. I guess I'm just not that into the Planet Hulk setting and Stephanie Phillips in general. She-Hulk works best when she doesn't cross over with her cousin's books.

I'm not following that, I refused to, but I know Stephanie emphasizes feminism in her stories, and when she started in indie comics, she created good stories. But honestly, Planet Hulk is a brutal arc that revitalized the Hulk, made him respected on a planet where he freed the oppressed from the tyranny of a dictator, and he was extremely angry and consequently stronger as the story progressed. I don't see Jen at that level; it's not part of her.

It's unacceptable that the sensual and sweet/touching side of a woman, especially a comic book character, is simply taken away to reinforce the tough, absurdly muscular woman with a straight body—in short, the woman who is actually a man—and men now become poorly made caricatures of women, trying to be sensual, doing everything possible to achieve this when in reality they are men. It's the height of bizarreness; comics should never reinforce this.

In the original Planet Hulk, the character who bonds with the Hulk is a strong-willed yet gentle woman who tries to make the Hulk understand that he has finally found his home on the planet. Jen is also docile; she has always felt obligated to help her cousin. It's unacceptable that she's put in a position where she could do the same as the Hulk. This makes it increasingly clear that the best portrayal of Jen came with John Byrne.

Definitely! He really created the personality we know her for today, when he added her to the FF. This series doesn't show much of it.

I remember when I lost interest in reading Hulk in the nineties (well, I still read it, but it wasn't like before), Byrne definitely established his own concept for Jen, and she was very sexy, she drove men crazy.

Hahaha. Well, I’m gay, but I always appreciate a strong, sexy woman.

It's impossible for a woman, man, or any other gender not to feel attracted to Jen from John Byrne, and the good thing is that she could sleep with whomever she wanted without following a schedule.

What don’t you like about it?

It's not that I dislike it, I just don't find it that interesting. What do you like about it?

In general I like how tom Taylor writes Batman, and I’m not even a Tom Taylor fan. I like that there is a new villain, and like the back story linked to an early appearance of Batman. Because the past is never done with you. I like the use of Bruce Wayne as part of the investigation and the use of Superman and Lois. I think the story does a good job of creating stakes, even though we know he wont die like the people on the boat in the first issue of the arc. And yes the art is awesome.

Okay, that’s interesting. I think I like Tom Taylor’s Batman too, there’s nothing that doesn’t feel like Batman. The other aspects you pointed out - the villain, Bruce Wayne investigating and Lois Lane - are the ones that don’t feel that intriguing to me. It’s all very European spy movie, a genre I’m not very fond of. But if it works for you, awesome. It’s just normal that not every story is for everyone.

The guest artists were a deliberate editorial decision, the opposite of Immortal Hulk, where the guest artists didn't cause as much concern with the quality of their art, which we know would never match Joe Bennett's...

But what I REALLY miss about Immortal Hulk, besides its overwhelmingly rich story in content and complex approach, is that great talents like Lee Garbett, Martin Simmonds, etc., were there to reinforce the obscurity of the run...

... Here, these artists are only there to fulfill an agenda and sabotage the quality of what, according to what they say (although I completely disagree), would be the strong point of this Hulk: Nic Klein's art. But what good is Klein if everything there is cartoonish, with horrible lettering by Cory Petit and childish colors by Matthew Wilson? It's already started to sabotage itself; from now on, it might not even reach two printings.

I don't quite see the difference to Immortal Hulk, however, I have only read a few issues here and there - some of them I liked, some I didn't, which is why I never read the whole series. I agree that it often looks like Marvel is sabotaging itself, mostly by doubling down on the woke shit in, say, the X-titles.

When it comes to the lack of content, I guess that's just how comics are done nowadays. In the good old days you got a full story with a beginning, a middle and an ending in one issue. Now sometimes you get one scene in a book!

I agree on the cartoonish characters (although I do like the coloring). Nic Klein was excellent on Drifter a few years ago, while this is much more middle-of-the-road, despite some great panels here and there.

I have to confess, I'm not that familiar with Joe Bennett, but you really seem to like him a lot.

The division of opinions regarding Immortal Hulk continues to this day. Many complained that the retcon of the Hulk's origin was unnecessary, and that there are some forced moments, such as the Gray Hulk sympathizing with trans people, a Black character replacing General Ross in the hunt for the Hulk, and a Black journalist wanting to understand why the white man has so much support and she doesn't. This is what caused some complaints...

......but when I revisited the run, I wasn't bothered, because not only does the script become intense, but the art and creative team behind it do too, and the psychological aspect, which Bill Mantlo established in the eighties and Paul Jenkins in the 2000s, becomes even stronger and more intense...

......and then we move towards violence, scatological gore that can't be replicated, it's no use, Klein isn't qualified for that, and after seeing what he did with Thor, I see that he's actually not capable of presenting a page or double page on the level of Immortal Hulk. And then we have Matthew Wilson, who isn't Ruy José or Belardino Brabo, and not even the designer of this current run helps...

......even when the Hulk wasn't the focus of the issue, Betty, with her new version of the Harpy, delivered a level of violence and horror that Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Klein with Wilson could never have achieved. In the issue where the Hulk and Betty begin to converse inside that soundproof hotel room, you notice their facial expressions, and how the art and creative team shine in a unique way.

Comics are like this nowadays because woke culture is empty, everything in it is empty and uninteresting, and for these people, comics should be like that, a festival of fast food and nothing more.

If Klein were held to a higher standard by the editorial team, perhaps he could shine in Hulk, but they simply leave him there so that the praise he receives monthly is guaranteed, even if he does nothing but more of the same.

Joe Bennett is a kind soul, a rare sight these days. As a human being, he is enlightened, as is his profession as an artist. Seeing the Hulk without him continuing what he built is incredibly sad.

I should probably mention I’m not a huge Hulk fan. I’ve read him a while in the eighties and one or two issues in the 90s, before I checked out Immortal Hulk just a few months ago, mostly because I liked the art (and good art is hard to find at Marvel these days).

For the same reason I started reading the new Captain America series. Since the X-books have become so terrible, I’ve been looking for other Marvel books that might interest me. But I really don’t know much about the history of these characters or the people who worked on them over the years.

I‘m now at a point where I might drop all Marvel titles. There are still a few decent issues here and there, but nothing that really excites me as much as Geiger or G.I. Joe.

Bennett's art, along with the creative team (who shine alongside him), is something Bennett has refined. His work in 2000 was already very good (he portrayed Professor Hulk very well) for a script with a psychological approach (Paul Jenkins, the same one who created Sentry and wrote a very good Inhumans miniseries). Immortal Hulk is directly a sequel to that complex approach from 2000 (life after death, God and Devil, the serpent, etc..).

The original concept of the Devil Hulk wasn't a monstrous serpent like we saw in Immortal Hulk, but rather a serpent trapped in Banner's fractured psyche in an ice cave (a solution taken from the movie Fight Club). The Devil wants to use the body of the Savage Green Hulk, the most powerful Hulk in his primitive form os acting, to kill everyone, including everyone Banner loves.

In Immortal Hulk, the Devil is articulate (the Devil is articulate and extremely manipulative), he agrees with Banner on the end of the world, the extinction of human scum, the end of capitalism for a better world, cleansed of all plague. Devil is Banner's protector against the scientist's abusive father. Although the Devil is the protective persona, he only wants Banner's agreement, and he himself created this persona as a result of depression and a degenerative disease he suffered.

There are good Captain America stories, there are those urban adventures from the eighties from Marvel Team-Up (which Phillip Kennedy Johnson distorts trying to infuse the crap that is progressivism and all its culture) in which he and Spider-Man joined forces, and there's a very good run in the nineties when Steve Rogers lost the uniform and Johnny Walker (who led the West Coast Avengers) takes his place.

Titles I recommend you pick up: Dick Tracy (Mad Cave), Gun Honey (Titan Comics), Heat Seeker (Titan Comics), Scarlett Couture (Titan Comics), Conan the Barbarian and The Savage Sword Of Conan (Titan Comics).

Thanks for the recommendations. I think I flipped through one of the new Dick Tracy issues, but found the art not very good. Conan is very unsteady. I like De la Torre's art, but none of the other artists are on his level. I'll have a look at the other books!

Dick Tracy, Gun Honey, Heat Seeker, Scarlett Couture... nah, don't like the art. Plus, I'm not a fan of the agent/spy genre.

I'm going to recommend some Hulk-related things; the list includes what made me a fan of the character: The Hulk Magazine (black and white, it's somewhat rare, but worth finding and owning physically; these are stories that pay homage to the TV series (which increased the Hulk's popularity) and portray the Hulk respectfully within his mythology...

Hulk run by Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema: begins in issue #245 of Incredible Hulk and ends in issue #313, when it reaches a crossroads. It's perfect! There are no forced elements, and the Hulk finds himself in a man/monster characterization in his savage/primitive version that made him a classic in the eighties. It's a continuation of what Len Wen had done previously, and the savage version, with art by Sal Buscema, adds an extra touch to what Herb Trimpe, Marie Severin, and other great artists.

Take the post-Peter David Hulk era, starting with the John Byrne/Ron Garney omnibus run, and finally everything from the Paul Jenkins/Ron Garney run, and then the Bruce Jones run. That's what you need to read to see how monstrously the Hulk evolved during that period in the 2000s. If it weren't for that, Immortal Hulk wouldn't be the success it is today. The suspense/horror approach, started with Bruce Jones, doesn't disappoint.

I don't recommend Peter David's Hulk; he creates an approach that's acceptable, but saturated, and whose quality plummets absurdly as the issues progress. Incredibly, this guy spent a decade writing Hulk until Marvel figured out what could be done with it to truly revive it, and then we had the 1999 approach and the 2000s with more brutal stories, a darker aspect, and psychology for adult readers.

I recently read the first issue of Devil On My Shoulder from Dark Horse; it has the potential for the next ones to be even better, but it's only worthwhile if you're a fan of movies like I Spit On Your Grave (which was remade in 2010).

I'm really enjoying Terminator (Dynamite) with Declan Shalvey, both in the Terminator series and the new Terminator Metal: Metal. It's honoring the concept of the original 1984 film (focused on science fiction/horror). You might dismiss it because of the art style, but the script with its elaborate solutions has really caught my attention. The latest issue of Metal has some things that I found phenomenal.

Shalvey is a guy I'd love to see on Hulk in that horror vein of Immortal Hulk, but I'm probably asking too much. But Shalvey wrote a really good Immortal Hulk one-shot, and he's even good at the art (he wrote and did the art).

There's a really good comic book called Somna, it's from DSTLRY, the illustrations are fantastic. It was the only good thing I saw from that publisher.

I enjoyed Ryan North's Hulk Smash Everything, and I hope issue 2 onwards is even more dynamic. It evoked a sense of nostalgia, blending several promising decades for the character with something current. A Hulk that hasn't been presented in many years before its complex approaches. North is clearly having fun here with Vincenzo Carratù and the creative team. It reminded me of the second volume of Alan Davis' Savage Hulk, which is also very good.

Alan Davis is the best! He's not as good as he used to be, but that's probably age-related. I think I read his Savage Hulk series when it came out. The Hulk run that really burned itself into my mind, was Mantlo/Buscema. Those were the books that came out in Germany when I discovered MarvelComics in the 80s, but somewhere along the road I lost my interest in the Hulk.

I'm gonna check out your recommendations, but I suspect we have very different tastes when it comes to art and genres.

Mantlo and Buscema were what led me to read Hulk. Before that, I had only been introduced to the TV show, which, by the way, was the first time I saw Banner's transformation (they try to bury him alive by throwing cement on top of him) in an episode of the third season. I realized that this character wasn't just a hero like Spidey, Captain America, etc.. My first story from the Mantlo era was with Hulk in Jarella's world (a two-part arc), Incredible Hulk #247 and #248.

Regarding the recommendations, you might actually dislike some of them. But all the reviews I've done here are based on the quality of those books, which I believe range from the best to the worst. Nowadays, I only buy books that are truly worthwhile, and I'm even lucky that, despite some despicable material appearing, there are good things I want to have on my bookshelf.

“My first story from the Mantlo era was with Hulk in Jarella's world (a two-part arc), Incredible Hulk #247 and #248.” I think that story was in the first German Hulk collected edition that I read too!

I review the books I read for some reason. I’d love to say that all the books I read I read because I like them, but unfortunately I’m invested in some books, especially the X-books, that have been really bad for a few years now. I still want to know what happens to some of the characters. I know it’s silly, because each author changes the characters to fit their needs, but they still feel like old friends to me.

I don't see this woke generation as understanding these characters the way we've learned to understand them. I've never seen a generation so poor; nothing they want becomes a phenomenon, and any industry that aims to meet their needs goes down the drain, to the detriment of its own.

Well said. It's weird indeed. Their individuation doesn't seem to come from being part of a music subculture or any art for that matter, but solely from made-up gender identities and weird politics.

What disgusts me even more is how a writer who proudly proclaims on social media that he served his country simply abandons that honor to cater to a victimized population. That's betraying himself, betraying everything he achieved through principles and moral values. It's unacceptable that the army divides races to favor one in particular; that's not how you make a man. I would never indoctrinate my son or make him read anything related to an agenda.

I‘m so glad I’m not on X. I’ve heard about the whining of some writers.

This writer on X is a complete idiot; he spends most of his time trying to get followers to read what he writes, and when he answers questions he gets defensive. And the most impressive thing is that his followers have figured out that what he writes isn't going anywhere. This guy is a real jerk, the kind I only think saw in memes, but he's actually a butt spewing crap everywhere.

LOL Yeah... I'm not getting involved with those woke fuckwits.