Planet Hulk #5 Comic Recap/Review

Planet Hulk #5 Recap/Review – Never look back.

 

Planet Hulk #5 Comic Recap

Devil Dinosaur rampages against the Tribal Hulks.  Inside the Red Keep, the Captain holds Bucky’s arm.  The Red King mocks Steve, who says that Barnes could not be dissuaded from his assassination.  And from there, it became a matter of survival of the fittest.  The King asks if the Captain has not read God Doom’s Origins of Species, and that he should have expected this to happen to those who are weak.

[Related: Marvel’s Secret Wars 2015 Complete Reading Order Checklist]

Steven is furious, but the Red King says this is all Doom’s fault, for giving Bucky a hopeless mission.  Doom ensures that his subjects focus on killing one another.  But the King controls the vibranium, and an army of Hulks.  He offers Steve to join him, and strike back against God Doom.  He begins to talk of a weakness Doom has, that only he knows about, but the Captain isn’t interested in silly plot devices, and attacks.

This drives the Red King into a fury, and he threatens to smash his foe into pieces, but the Captain knocks the king down.  He killed Bucky.  He was Steve’s best friend.  He saved the Captain’s life a hundred times.  And now… now he’s failed.  As the Captain collects his brother’s arm, he is congratulated by Doc Green.  However, Steve is not in the mood for his companion’s ramblings.  All the same, the Doc is pleased that his gladiatorial partner has finally embraced the Hulk within.  Doc Green even says that he knew Bucky was dead, but lying was the only way to get The Captain to co-operate.  This infuriates Steve, who says he is nothing like the Hulks, and has not embraced a thing about Greenland.

Doc Green laughs, calling his travelling companion a pompous idiot, while reverting to human form.  Turns out these two men aren’t so different from one another.  They led very similar lives… up until a point.  But when Doc Green joined the Super Soldier Program, he was infused with Gamma instead, and found the truth of the world.  He mocks the Captain and says that knowing Bucky made him weak, but Steve says his alternate counterpart is wrong.  Bucky made him better than strong.  He made him brave.  Brave enough to do what must be done.

Outside, Devil Dinosaur cries in pain, but the Hulks are also faltering against the mighty beast.  Suddenly, a voice calls out to them.  The Captain presents the people with their King.  He drops the head in front of them, and the tribes wonder what they will do now.  The Captain has no answer to this, and goes to Devil, showing him what has happened.  All is lost.  The dinosaur roars in anguish.  They came to save their warbound.  Now there is nothing worth preserving.  The Captain has done something he can’t repent for.  All is lost.  There is no future.  Bucky gave them hope.  Now there is nothing left for them but blood and violence.  The brothers leave, and Devil is told not to look back.  Never look back.

Planet Hulk #5 Comic Review

Hello and welcome to Comic Island!  My name is Arden, and this is my recap, and review, of Planet Hulk #5.

Now I have been hard on this series, so I expected that this was going to be a rough comic to review.  But… I liked it!  It was great.  The art, which I’ve maintained has been perfect for the entire run of Planet Hulk, consistently impresses me.  Facial expressions are well drawn and the character design really is excellent.

[Related: Marvel’s Secret Wars 2015 Complete Reading Order Checklist]

And the writing finally gives me something cool I can really sink my teeth into.  This twist really surprised and impressed me.  It adds a lot of context to a good amount of dialogue in the previous issues, and I really like how after all of this The Captain just kills Doc Green.  That’s… perfect.  And really great.  Once again the potential for some great fight scenes are discarded in favour of pages and pages of dialogue, flashback, and exposition, but hey, at least this time that stuff was interesting.

So on the whole I recommend this comic.  Sure, it’s flawed, like having the ultimate McGuffin when the Red King reveals he and only he knows about a weakness in Doom, who is an outright God in this story that shouldn’t have some easily exploitable vulnerability.  That moment really reveals how weak this tie-in is because I guarantee you that weakness is not going to be mentioned in any other title and series.  Devil Dinosaur also has practically nothing to do in the entire tie-in to the extent that his appearance in this comic is pointless.  Luckily, Mr. Dinosaur is getting his own solo series and hopefully that will prove both fun and exciting.

Still, the flaws of issue five are easy to overlook considering the parts of the comic I did like.  If you’ve been following this series, this comic really is worth your time and money.  It doesn’t really fix the tie-in as a whole, and I think given the fact I like the first and last issue, this series would have really worked a lot better as a three issue story to allow for the middle three issues to be condensed into a tighter, more action packed story.  If they had done that, I think I would have really liked this series as a whole.  But for now, issues one and five are the only ones that really stuck with me as good comics.  Against three middle issues that felt quite mediocre at best, that doesn’t really hold up when we consider the series as a whole.

[Related: Marvel’s Secret Wars 2015 Complete Reading Order Checklist]