John Romita Jr. Avengers cover with Red Hulk plus Tom Brevoort & Axel Alonso chime in

News

Marvel Vice President Executive Editor Tom Brevoort and Editor Axel Alonso talk Rulk in the Avengers following the announcement at San Diego Comic Con 2010.

What was heard:

There tend to be periods where certain books kind of go off and do their own thing, and then eventually kind of braid back into the spine of whatever’s going on in the Marvel Universe. Certainly over the last two years or so, Hulk and the various Hulk titles have been off doing their own thing, and it feels in some intangible way that it’s time to bring the Hulk back towards the center of the Marvel Universe.

Everything that you’re saying in terms of the Hulk is correct and accurate, but the caveat I’d put on it is that we’re not dealing with the traditional Hulk in this case. We’re dealing with the Red Hulk, who is a different character, who will be motivated by different things and be in a different place by the end of the current “World War Hulks” arc and by the end of the following arc Jeff Parker is writing on “Hulk.” Hopefully, he’ll be an interesting addition to the Avengers that’ll be just as volatile, but in different ways than the Bruce Banner Hulk was, and who will create interesting friction and an interesting dynamic amongst all the characters in that book. On top of everything else, for all that people have sworn up and down about him or disparaged him, this is a character that’s gotten a ton of attention and gotten a lot of people emotionally invested – even if that emotion is pure, unbridled hate. [Laughs] We’d like to harness that emotion. Any character that’s gotten that kind of a reaction is intrinsically valuable to us, and as you say, in the Avengers line as a whole, they’re pretty much the central trading post of the Marvel Universe. Stuff from all the rest of the Marvel publishing line will congregate and pass through the Avengers books in one way, shape or form. So it feels like time for the Hulk, who’s been off for a little while, to come back home and be a little more connected with everything else that’s going on.

And the real story here is that Jeph and Brian had a conversation at one of our retreats, off to the side, and Jeph said, “I’m going to be finishing my arc on ‘Hulk’ and I’m going to leave the Red Hulk here” and Brian said, “That’s interesting. I’d like to do stuff with that.” So they pitched it back out to the rest of the group, and everyone said, “Sounds neat. Let’s do that.” That’s typically how stories tend to evolve over here. It wasn’t a case of us sitting and going “What are we going to do with Red Hulk now?” It was a natural outgrowth of two guys talking about their plans and finding that there was a natural touch point where a character could segue from one place to another place and have some added value across the boards.

Pretty picture:

Source: CBR

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John is a long-time pop culture fan, comics historian, and blogger. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief at Comics Nexus. Prior to being EIC he has produced several column series including DEMYTHIFY, NEAR MINT MEMORIES and the ONE FAN'S TRIALS at the Nexus plus a stint at Bleeding Cool producing the COMICS REALISM column. As BabosScribe, John is active on his twitter account, his facebook page, his instagram feed and welcomes any and all feedback. Bring it on!