I’m going to be honest. After the Incredible Hulk became the Incredible Hercules, I dropped the title before I really even gave the book a chance. I have never been a huge Hercules fan. I always enjoyed him when he was with the Avengers, but as a solo character he was just never one who particularly interested me. Thus, the reason for dropping the book when the title changed. Over the last few months I have been hearing many people talking about how good the new book is. Well, curiosity finally got the best of me and I can totally see what everybody was talking about! This book was just pure comic book fun! The writing team of Fred Van Lente and Greg Pak deliver an off-the-wall fun ride that was a blast from beginning to end. I love the bits with Amadeus Cho here! World War Hulk kinda left me with a sour taste in my mouth for the character with the whole seventh smartest person in the world line thrown in our face every other panel. But here, he was was a great supporting character with some really funny dialog. The story as a whole, I just really had a good time with. There were great moments of action, a funny historic flashback, a few lessons in speaking ancient Greek and some hot, hormonally charged Amazons with guns! What more could you ask for?
How about some absolutely gorgeous art from Clayton Henry (Wolverine: First Class)! I absolutely loved the art in this book! Henry has a very clean line style that I thought was an excellent fit for this book. There was one scene in particular involving the Titan Atlas that I thought was just amazing! I think Guru-Efx should also get mentioned for their coloring work that helped make that scene so impressive.
In my opinion, this was a really great issue all around! I may have to go do a little back issue bin diving (oh, darn) and try and pull out some of the issues I’ve missed. I give this book two big thumbs up!
COVER BY:ARTHUR SUDYAM
WRITER: FRED VAN LENTE & GREG PAK
PENCILS: CLAYTON HENRY
INKS: CLAYTON HENRY
COLORED BY: GURU-EFX
LETTERED BY: VC – JOE CARAMAGNA
EDITOR: MARK PANICCIA
Rated A …$2.99