Radiant Comics

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got two new comics plus a paperback collection:

And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

”Hulk: Son of Hulk – Dark Son Rising” by Paul Jenkins and Andres Guinaldo

Here is a book left over from my recent “I feel like reading some Hulk” phase. This is volume three of the “Hulk: Son of Hulk” except it’s not about Skaar the son of Hulk but about yet another son. It’s about Hiro: Son of Hulk and not only has a different creative team but is very different in tone that the first two volumes.

All these “Son of Hulk” stuff comes out of the “Planet Hulk” storyline of a few years ago. A bunch of super-heroes shot the Hulk into space to get rid of him and he ended up on a planet named Sakarr where he became this barbarian type hero. He had time to father some children too before he left for Earth and they grew up extra fast.

This volume moves us from the previous barbarian super-hero storyline into a new sci-fi super-hero sort of storyline. Sakaar (Planet Hulk) was eaten by the world-devouring Galactus at the end of the last volume and this one picks up with the survivors who managed to get off-planet on a bunch of old space ships that the don’t know how to use. One of the survivors is Hiro the son of Hulk. He inherits some super-powers and wants his revenge on Galactus. Of course it’s not easy getting revenge on Galactus.

The story was generally alright if a little thin. It was mostly about battles between the ragtag group of Sakaar survivors and the people of a new planet that Hiro lead them to. The reader knows Hiro has a plan but what that plan is isn’t clear until the end of the story. Until then watch the fighting.

The artwork was very illustrative and pretty well done. The storytelling is about as good as you could expect from such an illustrative approach. Nothing was confusing but nor was it always as involving as it could have been. I’d give it a superhero “B”.

I shouldn’t have said nothing is confusing though. There was one weird thing. The natives of the planet the people of Sakaar invaded have three legs instead of two. I note this because I could hardly tell. It wasn’t until the second issue they were on the planet that the writer mentioned the inhabitants had three legs. I was confused so I flipped back to the previous issue where it never was mentioned and tried to find some drawings of three legged people. There were none. The three legged people were almost always drawn from the waist up. Sometimes there was a hint of a third leg. Even in the issue that mentioned that they had three legs it wasn’t shown well. So why bother with it at all? Strange.

Anyway, ”Hulk: Son of Hulk – Dark Son Rising” was an okay book. It’s a solid sci-fi/super-hero story. It’s not a Hulk story so if that’s what you’re looking for stick with the first two volumes. Otherwise it’s an decent read.