Banner; A Hardcore Review

Banner, written by the great crime comic book scribe, Brian "100 Bullets" Azzarello and drawn by the incomparable Richard Corben is a book dealing with the duality of Bruce Banner's existence with the Hulk. And it works more like a psyche profile than anything else, simply because it handles that duality aspect better than I have ever seen previously. There is equal time given to both Hulk's massive rage, and Bruce Banner's meekness and inner hostility. The only portion it does not answer is where all this boundless and often uncontainable anger originates from. What we are to gather from this, which is actually a dialog between Doc Sampson and General Ross is that Banner is really an angry guy. From his heart he wants to be over with the whole thing. Especially given the closing scene where Ross has a "Final Solution" to the Hulk's legacy of destruction. Sampson relents that simply erasing Hulk would prevent any of the positive things that physicist Bruce Banner could bring to the world as a whole.
We are taught through medical intervention and the use of treatments and drugs, that the possible positive outcome is decidedly worth the risk of possible negative side effects. And in a lot of cases it is true. Think about the people who may appear far beyond the scope of help, in their psychosis or dementia. I have seen dementia patients. It's not a pretty picture. And I have seen people who have to take regular doses of tranquilizers. And I wonder how bad someone's life might be that they HAVE to take these medications. And I look inward and think I have undergone some of the same things. Maybe not in the scale that these other patients have, but still, it's recordable. And I look at the quality of my life now versus how it was before the drugs. Comparably it is a much better quality of life.
So, Banner is on the loose, and continues to elude Sampson and Ross across the Southwest. Massacring towns and killing people. Sampson, has gained some notable power in the government or possibly worse, the media, that he has the ability to put spin coverage on the Hulk's rampages. A devastating attack by the Hulk gets turned into a freak tornado or earthquake. And as per usual, Azzarello spins a yarn like few others can. He turns the whole thing into something eerily "common" in that the government for all we know is constantly spin doctoring things from the truth we deserve. But would it really make you feel better to know there was a huge, pissed off, completely uncontrollable, monosyllabic green monster tearing through your back yard, or that it was merely a freak tornado?
Corben's line work is legendary. This story was not your usual hero fare, it called for something gritty and dark. Corben is your man for the job. But for some reason, I honestly almost hated the artwork. It seemed sloppy in a lot of ways. The rubble and destruction was beautifully rendered in it's sheer dirtiness. But I did not dig the way the characters were rendered. The use of stippling was something you don't see every day in comics. But I felt with the advent of all things possible in the digital aspect you could have just as effectively used a filter or better shading.
Overall, Banner was a top notch psychological mind fuck. Something I think would blend beautifully well into the movie franchise. Although Marvel fucked that up by shitting all over Edward Norton and his search for perfection. Recently Kevin Feige stated that Norton was hard to work with and would not do well in an ensemble cast like the upcoming Avengers movie. Tell me, what was the Incredible Hulk but an ensemble cast. Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, William Hurt, Tim Roth, Tim Blake Nelson and Ty Burrell. That's a FUCKING ensemble cast. Why won't Marvel just say, "hey we don't want someone changing our vision of the story. We want someone to just come in, recite the lines we wrote, collect their paycheck and fucking leave." Cause let's face it, Marvel comic movies are by no means Shakespeare or even a del Toro or Luc Besson flick. Marvel tries to produce fare that is going to make them back their investment in the box office. And no matter what happens, comic book fans are always going to be unhappy with the result. Marvel just wants everything in their universe to read the way they want to be perceived. Just like in this story. Cause nobody wants to be seen as the badguy. Well, most people don't. I'm not so sure Marvel hasn't burned a very talented bridge and then pissed all over the ashes.
So for the grade of this, I am going with a wrestling match that fuels my vision of this story. A match that was not by any stretch of the imagination pretty or a thing of beauty, but it was effective storytelling. Sort of like that Amsterdam Kung Fu kick to the chest in the World Cup final by De Jong. Pretty much anything featuring one of my favorite train wrecks in pro wrestling Mick Foley would do the trick. The match I think of that tells a great story about Mick, as Cactus Jack in WCW in the early 90's. Cactus took on the then World Heavyweight Champion, Vader. Mick has stated that this has been called one of the most blatantly brutal matches of his career. WCW's policy at the time, and pretty much unless it was a pay per view in the late 90's was not to involve any blood. So Cactus suggests to Vader (pre match) that he produce some swelling under Mick's eye. Vader took it upon himself to produce a lot more than swelling when he began pummeling Mick in the face, and broke his nose. And for those of you who have ever had nose trauma, it's kind of hard to not see blood when you've broken your nose. The rest of the match was a lot of abuse that Cactus took from Vader, including being squashed under the total body weight of Vader as he dropped to the floor with Cactus on his back. Cactus even performed a front somersault from the apron into Vader after Vader had already injured his ribs crashing into a protective guardrail only moments before. After the aerial assault, Cactus rolled back into the ring to get the count out victory.