For those of you who haven’t read a Hulk comic in the last few years, the green giant has spent some time abroad, thanks to Nick Fury and the Illuminati who blasted him across the universe to a savage planet called Sakaar, where he kicked a lot of ass, made a bunch of multi-cultural friends and pumped a pale warrior woman full of gamma infused sperm the size of barracuda.  Then everybody but the Hulk got nuked.After that, Hulk hopped aboard a big floating rock bound for our the post Civil War Marvel Universe proper, mad as shit and hell-bent on smashing the Illuminati into jelly, which all went down in World War Hulk – which I’m only part way through but it’s really damn good so far.  After that I guess Jeph Loeb turned him red or something and now you’re up to speed.

So back on the planet of Sakaar (where Planet Hulk went down), Hulk’s radioactive jism slathered his mate’s warrior eggsack turning it into a diamond hard pupa which shot from his dead wife’s uterus into a  boiling lake of piss and out popped Glen Danzig, aka Skaar Son of Hulk, not to be confused with the name of his home planet: Sakaar.

Shockingly, this is all (mostly) accurate.

Planet Hulk wasn’t bad, but the setup and payoff here on planet earth was always more exciting to me, so returning to Sakaar (Planet Hulk) wasn’t a journey I was necessarily looking forward to. The problem with Skaar Son of Hulk is mainly it’s setting, on the most bad ass rough and tumble savage planet in the universe full of giant killer bugs, baby killing warlords and  lava monsters, it’s hard to guage exactly what tough is.  To me, the thing that always made the Hulk interesting and exciting, was that he was such a danger to himself and everyone around him whenever things went sour, he walked this delicate tightrope in a fragile world. Skaar Son of Hulk inherited none of those charms.

I’m a little amazed that the book was hyped so much.  It’s not terrible, just a bit of a disappointment, but it is issue 1, so we’ll see where it goes, but in my estimation, unless they bring in some characters from the classic Marvel Universe, the outlook is grim.  I don’t think I can swallow the planet of Sakaar on it’s own.

I must admit, I am a big fan of Ron Garney and he does some really good work in this book – mostly just aping Dale Keown, but at least he does it well.

It should also be noted for anyone with a retarded sibling or a pet monkey who is amused by shiny objects, that Julie Bell painted a variant cover for this issue.