Random Happenstance

A very surprising dollar bin find from Entertainmart: from 1988, Incredible Hulk #340, "Vicious Circle" Written by Peter David, art by Todd McFarlane. It wasn't a completely mint copy, but not bad. Maybe better than the one I've had for thirty years!

This is the grey Hulk's rematch with Wolverine, but there was more going on here: for instance, Dallas is hit by a snow storm, and the X-Men are on their way there possibly to die, in the Fall of the Mutants. The Leader asks a hypnotized U.S. general where the country's newly minted gamma bombs are being kept, and Betty Ross compares her and Bruce to "two ships passing in the night" and wonders if she can break the cycle. And David writes a pretty solid Wolverine: he was trying so hard to restrain his berserker rages, but man they came in handy sometimes.

The new rules for the grey Hulk are largely set up here as well: although smaller and less strong than the green Hulk had been, Wolvie realizes the Hulk had a healing factor not unlike his own. But made of cancer. That was novel at the time: aside from Wolvie, not everybody had a healing factor back then. I don't think this was the first time we see the Hulk's blood as green, but we see a lot of it this issue. (Presumably because it's gamma-irradiated, not copper-based like Spock's!)

I bought this off the spinner rack, but didn't start reading Hulk regularly until #345, McFarlane's last issue. And I would keep reading, up until Peter David's last issue.