Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

Hulk #14Hulk #14
Marvel Comics
Loeb & Churchill

Hulk finds himself gathering up a team to find Domino and kill her. This issue is a straight forward story that involves lots of guests. It’s an interesting set up of a story that provides a launch for a good fight in the next issue. Sure there are uses of characters that might not line up but there are also some fairly funny parts to the comic as well. It’s a decent enough story.

Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle ReviewsDomino is staking out a place and sees a meeting with some people, one of whom seems to be Doc Samson, outside of the building. Once all the parties leave, she tracks one of them who happens to turn into the red Hulk. No, we don’t figure out the identity of the red Hulk, but Domino does and this sends red Hulk into a frenzy.

Domino escapes and red Hulk’s handlers decide he must find her in the next 24 hours. They hand red Hulk a list of names to track down in order to help him find Domino. He’s armed with some form of payment catered to each of those he is seeking. You might ask how he finds six people that could be anywhere in the city faster than he could find one, but just go with it.

The remainder of the issue is spent with him recruiting two of those on his list while the others join up off panel. Red Hulk’s group finds Domino and she’s with X-Force, which sets the stage for the battle next issue.

The issue is a good one because it utilizes Deadpool very well. Red Hulk and Deadpool have a nice flow of dialogue mixed with threats and humor. It seems to be a good match of characters and its obvious red Hulk has no real reason to keep Deadpool around other than this one task.

The issue also highlights the Punisher. In some ways it’s done very well because of the amount of respect red Hulk has for the Punisher. On the other hand, why would red Hulk care at all about the Punisher and his motives? What have we seen from the red Hulk that would make you think he is even willing to respect anything at all? This issue illustrates just how undeveloped the red Hulk character actually is. Lucky for him he doesn’t need to be any more than a narrator in the issue.

The artwork is fun and actually has tons of details in the background as much as the focused characters of the panels. The issue doesn’t have a lot in the way of fighting but it still makes the action feel big without flooding the issue with splash pages.

Red Hulk may have its problems as a character but this is a tight issue. The Punisher’s behavior is a little cartoonish but it makes sense when you play off of how Deadpool and red Hulk had been acting in the previous scene. I’ll assume it’s all supposed to be a little funny. We’ll see how next issue is, but I’m willing to guess it will have more guest stars and we still probably won’t learn much about what Domino actually knows. This was a pretty good read. It’s up to you if you want to drop four bucks on it.

3 out of 5 geek goggles