The colors by Paul Mounts are muted, ominous greens and ambers. Menace is well directed the first issue knows to show a frightened face reacting to a loaded gun before the gun itself. Bennett and Jose’s art tends to focus on wide eyes, open mouths, and a kind of bubbling hysteria that’d suit an old issue of Eerie. This Hulk is a different beast again: one that seeks revenge with a sadistic leer. Ewing has fun with the last when one witness refuses to believe the Hulk’s all that bad. He has transformation in his gamma-infused DNA: man into monster, yeah, but also grey to green, dumb to smart, lone force of destruction to cuddly, collectable superhero. The Hulk’s status quo suits these kind of shifts. Continuity that’s mostly dismissed here, with Banner’s casual narration saying “It was a complex situation. It’s a canny take on the required immortality of corporate superheroes, making sense of all the deaths that never stick in ongoing continuity.

The Hulk will just rise again when the sun sets, and Banner will be back the next morning. Sure, you can kill his “puny” alter ego, Bruce Banner. (What would Batman – whose villains must return, time and time again – make of his oath never to kill if he knew it was driven by market forces more than morality?) In The Immortal Hulk, writer Al Ewing, penciller Joe Bennett and inker Ruy José take this problem as their premise: their Hulk cannot die. Valuable intellectual property is functionally immortal. I mean, neither can Spider-Man or Superman or Iron Man.

Immortal Hulk, Vol. 7 by Al Ewing