An Unlikely Team-up... Batman & the Incredible Hulk (DC Special Series,Vol. 5, No. 27)

Reviewed by Dan

 

If memory serves, I think this is the last tabloid/treasury edition that DC released.  It is also the last DC/Marvel team-up of that era.  I remember going to my first comic convention in Toronto in the early 1980s.  The guest of honour was George Perez who was supposed to be drawing the next cross-over featuring the JLA and the Avengers. Apparently he had done a lot of the artwork, but the project was scuttled for various reasons. One fan asked him about it and he said those pages would never see the light of day.  I think that after I got out of buying new comics that a JLA/Avengers book did eventually come out, but I have no idea if it was the Perez book or not. I'm sure others of you out there who are more knowledgeable about the post-bronze age era will know. 

 

This copy of Batman vs. the Incredible Hulk is from my personal collection and was the copy I bought off the newsstand when it was released. You can see it was well-read! It was cover-dated Sept 1981, so this would have been available at the beginning of the summer I turned eleven.  It was a much anticipated item.  DC/Marvel cross-overs were a big deal in those days!  But what a strange pairing!  Wouldn't Batman and Captain America or Batman and Daredevil have been a bit more natural?  I suppose that those were the days when the Hulk was a fairly hot TV property, and the Batman TV series was still seen fairly regularly in re-runs in those days. Maybe DC and Marvel thought that they would be the biggest draw after Superman and Spiderman due to their television exposure.  Even more bizarre though, is the choice of Hulk villain. Okay, using the Joker goes without saying; but teaming up the Joker with the Shaper of Worlds ?!?!  Having said that, the story is pretty darned good.  It is written by Len Wein, who was the regular Batman writer during this period, and Darryl and I both feel that Wein's run on Batman was one of the best of the era. It is one of the unsung Batman runs, as far as we are concerned.  He turns in a really good story here, in spite of the strange pairing of both the heroes and villains.
 

 

I won't run through the entire story... you should definitely track this one down.  It is a lot of fun.  Instead, I want to run through a few of the key features of the book that makes it one of the best DC tabloids featuring original non-reprinted work.

A nice touch on the inside cover is the origins of both our main characters.  Is there actually anyone out there who doesn't know these origins?  Still, it's always fun to read these sorts of synopses.

 

 

The artwork is by Jose-Luis Garcia Lopez.  To my mind, he is one of DC's best late-bronze age artists.  The great Dick Giordano was the inker for the issue and his work is up to his usual excellent standard.

 

 

Garcia Lopez sure did a great Joker.  Here he illustrates a classic bronze-age Joker moment in which one of Joker's henchmen, "Kenny", questions the Joker on his plan.  Poor Kenny.  Readers of this era knew what he had coming.  In this era the Joker routinely knocked of a henchman or two just to show how nasty he was.  This was pretty gripping stuff in those days.  I suppose it seems mild in comparison to what the Joker does today.  I just don't get comics these days. This is the classic Joker portrayal for us here at DC Digests and Tabloids...

 

The next few images demonstrate just how suited Garcia Lopez's art was for the tabloid genre.  The book is filled with layouts such as these, in which small panels are broken up by large partial splashes. Garcia Lopez is one of the true masters of the heroic physical form. He work is truly stunning.  It works so nicely for a DC/Marvel crossover, too, drawing on the house styles of both companies.  To my mind, the tabloid/treasury from has reached its height in his illustrative prowess in this issue.  Too bad this was the last one they published!

 

Enjoy these sample pages that illustrate my point!

 

 

 

 

 

I want to add a funny little personal anecdote about this next page.  The Shaper of the Worlds created this strange creature, which the Hulk called "Blob-thing" to capture the Hulk.  When my younger brother and I were staying at my grandmother's house the following winter, we would always horse around and talk and wrestle when we should have been sleeping.  We had two sleeping bags zipped together and we acted out this scene, with my brother Tim pretending he was the Hulk, I was Batman, and the big sleeping bag was the "blob-thing" that trapped the Hulk. I still remember the fun we had with that, and my father calling upstairs, "You boys settle down and get to sleep!"  Ah the fun memories of childhood!

 

 

What follows is a fun little scene in which Batman and the Joker have to team up to win over the Hulk.  Batman uses his mastery of disguise and has apparently just re-watched the Universal film "The Bride of Frankenstein" as this scene seems to be a direct lift from the part of the movie in which the old blind man calms the monster!  Again, another example of Batman knowing his classics!

 

 

For several pages Batman and Hulk get caught in a dream world created by the Joker (with powers bestowed on him by the Shaper). This allows Garcia Lopez to pull out all the stops again and evoke Dali.

 

 

And finally, the inside back cover is also a treat.  It shows how Garcia Lopez evolved the cover with input from Al Milgrom and Dick Giordano.

 

 

This remains one of my favourite tabloids and it was great to revisit it after all these years.  Do others of you remember this one?  Write a comment and offer your own recollections!