Jumping back into PAD's Hulk run and man, Dale Keown's art was pretty darn sweet. It's a shame the guy stopped doing sequentials regularly after Pitt.

He and PAD were great together.

Yeah, it was a great teaming of writer and artist... though I suspect Keown's work would improve any writer's material.

That said, while I'm not sure he'd be right for the action scenes, I think Kevin Maguire would be the perfect complement to PAD's dialogue.

It didn't really work for me in that Hulk annual they did, but that may have been because the overall story was a bit weak.

I was going to say that PAD's writing made Keown better! But that is just based on Keown's later work leaving me kind of cold.

When he and PAD teamed up for Hulk/Pitt, it felt like some of the magic was gone, even though it had only been four or five years since their run, so maybe it was just good timing, both creators being at their peak from 1990-1992.

I always thought it sucked that Keown was fired before he could draw the big 400th issue.

Keown seems like Byrne was a heavy influence for him.

After reading Keown's first issue, I was almost convinced that "Dale Keown" was John Byrne's version of Richard Bachman. Like he was trying out a new style, and wanted to use a pseudonym or something.

Yeah, he's always said as much -- he thought Byrne was the ultimate and tried drawing like him for the first several years of his career.

And he's one of the few modern artists Byrne's been complimentary toward. From the JB Modern Masters --

I've never really looked at it.

Maybe it's just the Mark Farmer inks, but his art looks more to me like Alan Davis -- but I seem to be in the minority with that opinion.

I was going to say that I don't particularly appreciate the Hulk...but I don't want to get him angry. He's not likeable when he's angry.

For my money, The Incredible Hulk #372 was one of the best issues ever. I got it at a young age, which likely effects my perception, but I thought it had it all -- an incredibly moving storyline with Bruce and Betty and then the return of the green Hulk in one of the most dramatic transformations ever. And one badass cover.

Yeah, that was a good one.

I liked that run.

That was the issue that made me a regular reader of PAD's Hulk. Within a year or two I had gone back and bought all the PAD issues leading up to that one, and I never missed an issue for the next eight years.

Why hasn't there been a series of PAD Hulk Omnibus books?

From this thread -- viewtopic.php?p=1901595#p1901595


Yeah, I actually just did that -- I was going to just start with PAD because I've read the Byrne run a couple times, but if you skip from #319 to #331, you miss way too much... definitely not a smooth transition. I think the Byrne run is the optimal place to start, despite some of his worst writing ever, because it's where we meet the Hulk at his platonic ideal that even the general public knows and move to the "Hulk Variety Show" that the series becomes.

But man, I thought the Hulkbusters team was brutally bad under Byrne and then just get even more annoying and tedious under Milgrom. That idiot Sam LaRoquette is just exceeding stupid... not sure whatever happens to him but I hope he's killed off or written out ASAP. That said, I thought Milgrom did a pretty good job of wrapping up the separation of Bruce and Hulk storyline Byrne had abandoned -- especially since he introduced the grey Hulk, leading to PAD getting a lot of mileage out of that version of the character.

Or did Milgrom work from Byrne's outlines? I seem to recall someone out there on the Internet saying that the reason Byrne established the grey Hulk as an official part of Hulk continuity --



-- so that he could bring that version of the Hulk back. Up until then, the grey Hulk was ignored as a coloring error, with reprints of The Incredible Hulk #1 being "fixed" so that the Hulk was colored green up to that point. Let me see what the ol' Internet says... here we go.


More about Byrne's Hulk plans here: http://www.delusionalhonesty.com/2011/0 ... een-4.html

So it looks like the grey Hulk was coming back no matter what. Anyway, the Milgrom issues certainly led to some of the most surreal moments in Hulk history...










Unfortunately, the fun doesn't last -- once the grey Hulk is introduced, it seems like Milgrom didn't have anywhere interesting to take the character. I thought the Rick Hulk story was painfully drawn out and uninteresting and Al has the same problem as Byrne, in that he makes characters often feel cold and unsympathetic -- Bruce was a total douche to Betty a lot of the time, while she acted like a frazzled drama queen. I guess it's understandable given the characters' circumstances but it doesn't make me want to read about them. (Though Rick Jones always felt like a cool guy.)

When PAD jumps on, it feels like a breath of fresh air, even with McFarlane's not-so-great art (he would later develop but he was definitely missing the "cool factor" he brought to Spidey in these early Hulk issues, with the inkers not knowing how to handle his unique style). Despite a crappy debut issue with Incredible Hulk #328, his dialogue is terrific and the work feels done by a "real writer" in a way that the Byrne and Milgrom issues didn't.

The bottom line is that you only want to read the Byrne and Milgrom written issues to have context for the PAD run... and because Byrne was still in his prime, with the artwork being absolutely outstanding. I think the Hulk vs Avengers issue in #316 was the best comic fight scene since the days of Kirby and Ditko at Marvel.

I read these as well. I wished Byrne had continued working on this comic. I really think he might've done something interesting with it.

They've been collected via TPB -- there's The Incredible Hulk Visionaries volumes 1-8, with the recent Hulk Epic Collection volumes 19-21 picking up right where those left off -- that would get you everything from The Incredible Hulk #331 - #435.

I'm not sure why they haven't begun collecting them in the Omnibus format, though -- they certainly have enough material remastered and ready to print. Assuming they actually care about finishing what they start, maybe it's because the PAD run is so long? It's 12 years of material, starting with #331 and going through #467... that's a lot of stuff to collect, with a lot of the later run perhaps being undesirable due to inconsistent and often ugly artwork.

Anyway, let's move on to my own personal glory days of the Hulk -- Dale Keown's first 10 issues of the title are just straight-up FIRE and PAD was really on a roll as well. It was fortunate timing that the most significant and game-changing issues were done by his best collaborator (with all due respect to other big talents like Gary Frank, Adam Kubert, Mike Deodato, Todd McFarlane, etc.).

Reading these, I had forgotten how much I really like David's dialogue. In fact, re-reading some of this has convinced me that the man belongs among my favorite writers and is definitely as good (if not better) at his best as the likes of Mark Waid and Kurt Busiek. (Sorry one of these pages got cut off on the bottom.)

This issue had a lot of cool lines. PAD made Namor seem cool as hell, IMO... tons of swagger. I thought that "fisticuffs" line was too cool when I read this as a kid. (Though that "fiber" joke on the last page was awful.)

And man, it's too bad Keown has lost interest in drawing sequentials... I think he'd be dynamite on a Dr. Strange book.

Gawd, I love Namor.