World’s End?

Book: Marvel Super-Heroes

Issue No.: 71

Published: February 2, 1978

Title: “World’s End?” (reprint of The Incredible Hulk no. 117)

In the late 1970s if you wanted to read old issues of comic books, you couldn’t just go download them to Comixology on your iPad or stream them via the Marvel Unlimited app. I don’t even remember seeing trade paperback collections of comics in those days. But Marvel published a few reprint books every month. As of February of ’78, Marvel Super-Heroes was a Hulk reprint book. This issue is reprinting Hulk no. 117 from 1969. If I had read this book when it came out in 1978, I wouldn’t have realized the story was almost a decade old at the time — I would have just seen it was a reprint and noticed the art style looked older. Also I might have picked up on the fact that Stan Lee was the writer, which I knew was something he had done a lot in the early days of Marvel, but by the late ’70s I think he was just doing editor-in-chief stuff and writing the “Bullpen Bulletins” column that appeared in the back of most Marvel books of the era.

Actually, I might have noticed that stuff by the early 1980s. If I read this in 1978, it would have been one of the first comics I ever read, so I probably didn’t even know what “reprint” meant at that point.

Anyway, the plot of this book has Hulk’s green-skinned, big-brained arch-enemy the Leader plotting to start World War III. To keep Hulk out of the way, the Leader teleports him and a big robot (called the Super-Humanoid) to a far-away volcanic island. This doesn’t do much to deter the Hulk — after a short fight with the Super-Humanoid, Hulk throws the robot into a volcano, and then he hits the ground so hard that the force of his blow causes the volcano to erupt, presumably melting the Super-Humanoid. I liked the Incredible Hulk TV show that was on the air in ’78, but I never saw an episode of the TV show that featured anything as badass as the Hulk killing a giant robot with a volcano. The Leader’s crazy plan to start WWIII is foiled by Hulk (with the help of his girlfriend Betty Ross), but the Leader does manage to escape Hulk’s wrath, so the good guys’ victory is only a partial one.

Next time — World War II super-heroics with the Invaders!