The Shut-In Laughs Last

It struck me this evening, how much time I spend avoiding other people.

I'm generally not a buddy-buddy kind of guy, rarely have an interest in other men. Which is funny, because I grew up idolizing men. My car mechanic grandfather raised me, and I was referred to as his "shadow." Everywhere he went, I went. We ate together, slept together, even urinated at the same time together. After Rufus Lee Carter died, I really sought a father figure, needed one, but there wasn't a man half as good or decent or respected as my grandfather. So that search came up snake eyes. I idolized heroes, Indiana Jones and R.J. MacReady and the Incredible Hulk, who reeked of fierce individual manliness. But fictional heroes couldn't give me advice on how to deal with bullies and talk to girls. So eventually even they turned away from a needful teenager.

Every kid needs a dad and a hero. If they get both in the same dude, they should forever be grateful.

At some point, post high school, I realized the extreme and crippling shyness I had suffered most of my life was becoming full-blown pathology. I had shut down the kind of receptors to social behavior I'd once been taught, while yearning painfully not to be alone any longer. Obviously girls were out of the question.

In later life, I overcame a lot of the severity of the social phobia, finally becoming a man who could display intellect and sexuality and physicality even. This effort was mostly due to the administrations of close, singular friends, and the love of beautiful women who, like casting agents, recognized my potential. And also I needed a little blue pill to calm whatever evil lurked in the treetops of my brain. But I like to believe it was at least somewhat force of will, to rid myself of childhood devils.

Today, I spend prodigious amounts of time alone, in a room, trying to be a writer. I'm there now. It isn't easy, and no one pats me on the back for making the effort. Unlike pathology, there's no quantifiable means to assess creative endeavor. Cavemen probably had no idea scratching at a wall was meant to do anything but be a warning to others not to get caught in the open with a Sabretooth tiger.

The reason I idolize the Hulk: he's angry a lot, he's lonely a lot, and all he ever wanted was to be left alone. Particularly by stupid puny humans. 

But what I know for sure is how repelled I am by most people. Not those familar and adored few, so important to me, but the mass of human beings. Their insidious presences are not welcome. The bar trolls in their heels and the street people with their plastic bags, the college students in their fluffy boots and the lawyers waiting for the jury with vodka tonic in hand, the black teens in ass-bag pants and the Chinese delivery drivers. They are diverse only in that they smell different, one to the other, like spices, and as a whole they are a cloying brimstone of unease. Their subliminal message is an invitation, a dramatic overture of possibility, one could even say "adventure awaits." I've lived long enough to know how arresting other people are, how destructive, how submissive and mesmerizing. But only for very short periods of time, and only in the awkward moments before tedium sets in.

I fear people, generally, not for what they might do to me, but for what they expect me to do. You, me, all of us. To perform, to amuse, to satiate, to hurt. We all consist of magnetic fields and electric charges, and universes die when we make contact. I do not wish to be a "shut-in" as it's now called, but nothing in the vapid whirlpool of drama people represent calls to me. They are, in short, strangers. Not because I do not know them, but because I am stranger than they will ever be. And I enjoy it.

Frankenstein's Kissing Cousin: the Hulk

Jack Kirby's Hulk shared a pile of similarities to Frankenstein's Monster. The Hulk wouldn't tap into that "misunderstood monster" angle for a few years after his first appearance (above.) Mostly the Hulk was a very socially-phobic monster. People really got under his skin, even if they weren't soldiers shooting at him. His girlfriend--or rather the Hulk's alter ego Bruce Banner's girlfriend--Betty Ross, basically gets told she's just another scummy human by the cranked-up Hulk.

Another literary feature for Kirby's Hulk: the early Hulk is a handsome dude. He wears a ripped puffy shirt and has deep circles around his eyes, just like poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in the early 1800s. Shelley also happened to be Mary Wollstonecraft's main squeeze, and she just happened to write the novel about Frankenstein.

The Hulk is philosophical as well as sexy-brooding.

In the years since 1962, Hulk's origin, and now, he's barely recognizable, or rather rarely has had any consistencency to his persona or physical nature. I prefer the early Hulk, just after the Hulk's "puffy shirt" phase and into his little purple panties phase, where he talked like a longshoreman and had a flat Boris Karloff as Frankenstein head.

Awesome. Simply awesome.

Hardman and Parker and the Green Goliath

I can say with authority that I hate every Marvel comic produced today except ATLAS, which is hands-down my favorite ongoing series.

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/07/it-may-not-be-official-but-parker-and-hardman-are-the-new-hulk-team/

Gabriel Hardman is a "new" favorite artist of mine. He's done nothing but impress since he began with short jabs on filler-type material for ATLAS, graduated to the main artist, and handled the Hulk in a very old-school way during writer Jeff Parker's Avengers crossover. I never thought Hardman's Hulk would ever be the kind of Hulk the awful Suits at Marvel would gravitate toward. I can only assume that hot-ticket Parker convinced somebody up at the top of Hardman's acumen.

And now, I can say I'm actually excited about who's working on probably my favorite Marvel character ever. As you can see by Hardman's sketch, instead of drawing the Hulk like a steroidal psychopath, he goes back to the Kirby roots of density as the core of strength. This actually looks like the Hulk to me.

So I guess the fact is, in this world, if you live long enough, something good is bound to happen. And I thought the return of the 3D Man was great. This is balls-deep news, folks.

Characters I Want to Write: THE INCREDIBLE HULK!

One of the greatest things I ever read growing up was this (click on it, of course):

In the late 1970s, nothing and nobody was bigger than the Hulk. THE INCREDIBLE HULK television show was a smash hit, punnily put, and Marvel Comics (never one to look a gift horse) jumped in with both feet to promote the Hulk in every possible way. I mean, the way comics companies used to do, instead of timing their "death" of Batman in the comics to coincide with the astronomical success of the Batman movie from last year, ridding Batman's comic of, you guessed it, Batman.

No, Marvel in the 1970s went the other way. They had the Hulk shilling everything, in ads, on shirts, on Slurpee cups. And you need a sales boost? Slap the Hulk on the cover. He was better than a gorilla (which in the pulp days used to guarantee sales spikes)...the Hulk was green gold.



There's no doubt the pre-teen me identified with the Hulk of all the superheroes ever. And nothing caught the eye quicker than that brilliant combination of emerald and purple pants on a cover in a spinner rack. The Hulk was instantly accessible and understandable: he wanted only to be the most powerful bum to ever walk the Earth. He took food when he saw it, he jumped down on people's property leaving giant craters from his weight, and if he even saw a puny human he shouted and raged at them to go away. Sociable and the Hulk did not mix. I understood, down to my marrow.


So when I say the Hulk needs to be saved, right now, as a viable character with pathos and meaning, I mean I'm ready for the job. I've had a lifetime of Hulk comics. In my head, I have been the Hulk all my life. I know what it means to Hulk out. In fact, we all do, which is why the character had such lasting appeal.

"Had" is the operative word. The Hulk hasn't been the Hulk in years. Years and years. I'm talking pre-Peter David (the last notable Hulk writer), and certainly not since Sal Buscema (the most prolific Hulk artist) left Jade Jaws behind.

The only blip would have been John Byrne's truncated run in the mid-1980s, one of those vivid redefinitions of the character that we can only speculate on. Byrne departed the title to become the spearhead for DC Comics' revitalization of their Superman franchise, right around Superman's 50th publishing anniversary. We truly will never know what John Byrne might have accomplished, or how the Hulk comic might have altered his life as well. A true mystery.

Going back to John Byrne's take, though, is worthy of attention. Because the one thing Mr. Byrne understood very well: the Hulk is not a man colored green. The Hulk is not human. He's decidedly cro-magnon in appearance (dating back to the master Jack Kirby's "Frankenstein Monster" design for the beast, with prognathous brow, long ape arms, flat anvil head.)

To say the Hulk is not human is cruel, I know, considering how essentially human the Hulk's desires are. Core desires, to eat, to sleep, to be at peace, to not think too much, to enjoy nature. And even to feel grander emotions, of love. Bruce Banner, the scientist the Hulk emerged from, is a repressed guy. He's timid, withdrawn, brilliantly awkward. He's a man who doesn't "belong" in the real world, but he's a genius unparalleled whose work could benefit Mankind. When he transforms into the Hulk, all of his inhibitions are gone, replaced by animal instincts, the kind of instincts that enabled man to survive long enough to evolve and climb out of the trees. To become the dominant life on the planet.

The Hulk is not a psychological construct of Banner's id. The unfortunate process of updating the character has led to this fractured psyche element that never existed in the first place. The Hulk is a common denominator for all of us, a missing link one might say to a primitive yet necessary evolutionary path. The Hulk is not "just" Banner, he's Mankind itself, the core basis for the beast who walks upright, capable of using both brawn and brain to survive any situation. To survive, and to become more.

So I feel like the current writers have missed the point of the Hulk. The rage is but one aspect of a primitive reaction. Banner's anger, his emotional stress, his panic, brings forth the Hulk. He becomes the Hulk to survive. It's a symbolic survival, a scientific version of a warrior's spear and a bear skin to protect against the elements. Banner becomes the most advanced form of Man, as the Hulk...a creature which heralds the primitive instincts while Banner's intellect tames the savagery. The Hulk is actually more evolved, not less.

So the way to fix the Hulk is simple. You get him back to his Kirby look, because as much as I adore Sal Buscema's take, I think the Hulk works better the less human he seems. Right now he looks like a psychopathic steroidal Dolph Lundgren. He's also way too big; the Hulk isn't fifteen feet tall. The purpose of the Hulk, in Kirby's hands, was to show the incredible strength of an ape-like anthropoid. Deceiving strength, in a beast man about as large as a very large human male (seven feet, as noted). When Superman displayed his strength and good looks, he was beloved. When the Hulk, with his bruiser's hairy barrel chest and slouch throws a car, people flee in terror.

Also, erase all indications that the Hulk is a manifestation of Banner's psyche. Ditch that. Not only is it cliche, but it's been used to create more Hulks, Hulks of different colors to indicate different personas. You're de-uniquing the character, Marvel. Cut that out. All you're doing is confusing readers looking for the actual Hulk, who is green and burly and misanthropic, and smashes people who try to capture and kill him. The formula is simple and effective, even now.

Lastly, cap the Hulk's strength. For decades now, the Hulk has been one of the strongest beings on Earth. That's fine, but to have his strength increase proportional to his anger, that really takes the suspense out of a Hulk story. He needs to escape the death trap? He gets angrier, he breaks free of the unbreakable bonds. He is down for the count? Ditto, big knockout punch driven by his Gamma Ray-spawned steroids. The Hulk doesn't need this articulation. It's like Superman always having a super power ready to deal with whatever he needs to deal with. Super-memory, Super-friction, Super-whatever. The Hulk is this strong, and that's it. Anybody stronger than the Hulk is stronger than the Hulk. The cool thing is, when you reach that point, it makes it even more imperative that the Banner part of the Hulk come forward to help Greenskin figure out a physical way around the stronger opponent. A way the Hulk can understand, if you see my meaning, since Banner isn't a football coach inside the Hulk's mind...the two beings are one. The Hulk has to summon Banner's intellect from his subconscious, and Banner has to face his fears and repulsion of the Hulk. To survive. See what I'm getting at?

Anyway, it'll rain tiny Selma Hayeks before I ever get a chance to write the Hulk, but it would be fulfilling. All the way back to some primal origin point only my genetics can recognize.