Savage Hulk

            Being a Marvel fan, I was quickly drawn to the new “Savage Hulk” series by Alan Davis, Mark Farmer, and Matt Hollingsworth. This series is currently on its fourth issue. I obtained the first issue as well to have a background to the series.

            “Savage Hulk” plays with intertextuality by including both Marvel hits The Hulk and X-Men. Although a small background story is included before the first page of panels, a personal knowledge of both Marvel creations is needed to fully understand the ideas behind the series. In the first issue, it is established that the X-Men help to control and maintain The Hulk’s rage and outbursts while also protecting him from a military team devoted to capturing him. This alliance was created due to Dr. Bruce Banner’s and Professor Xavier’s newly formed collaboration with gamma energy. Already it can be seen that this complex intertextuality would not be well understood by readers who do not have a personal knowledge of these Marvel characters. For those readers who do, this use of intertextuality is interesting and should be well accepted.

            Now focusing on the fourth issue which came out this September, it tells of The Leader’s attempt to steal The Hulk’s gamma energy for himself. In a complex plot involving the X-Men, it leads to The Hulk gaining new superpowers beyond unimaginable strength.

            I believe this comic’s best quality is the creators’ placement of panels and page layout. The creators do not use a standard, regularized panel layout. Instead, they play with many techniques discussed in class. One technique is the use of vertical and horizontal panels. As seen in Matt Madden’s “99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style”, the shape of panels affects how the audience reads the comic. Because our eyes read left to right, then downwards, horizontal panels seem to take up more time in the context of the plot. This is seen when The Hulk and X-Men are trapped by The Leader. Lengthening this time frame with horizontal panels allows the reader to develop suspense and wonder what will happen next, much like watching a movie. In contrast, vertical panels are used for scenes of explosions and when The Hulk is terrorizing the laboratory. Because our eyes scan so quickly from left to right in vertical panels, this makes time seem to pass quicker. This is effective for these situations because instead of a build-up of suspense, the reader automatically takes in the explosion and damage to the laboratory, much like a real-life situation.  

            Adding on to page layout, there is a spread where two pages only have two panels, both stretching from the left of the first page to the right of the second page. This is an effective layout because it shocks the reader. The reader is used to taking in the action one page at a time. When confronted with this setup, the reader is taken back. This effect puts emphasis on the event taking place. It makes the event seem more important and in this case it is because it is the first time the reader learns of The Hulk’s new power. This can also be related to Douglas Wolk’s idea of the pregnant moment described in his work “Pictures, Words, and the Space Between Them”. This is a pregnant moment because the audience is faced with new, story-changing information that causes them to look back and see how this happened. I flipped back to the previous page to re-examine how this event came to be. In addition, it pushes the story forward by making the audience wonder how this new power is going to change the rest of the comic. Overall, this page, in my opinion, is the most effective for these reasons.

            The next issue will be released in October, where I hope to touch on choice of colour palette and further analyze this worthwhile comic.  

-         - Stephanie Taylor