"What? They're just trying to beat him up, right?"

So, let's see, it's 1980, I'm 5...

...it's October, so...Empire Strikes Back had been out for a awhile...I (strains memory) thiiink the "laugh it up fuzzball", story happened the same year...

And then..."The Hulk", issue 23 comes out.



The Hulk TV show was a hit, I was a fully fledged little Hulkamaniac, and my folks did their best to get me anything Hulk that wasn't nailed down.

Thanks, Mom & Dad, BTW.

I dunno what possessed the old man to grab this, I mean, look, it was a buck fiddy!
I had to beg for the 65 cents every month for the regular Hulk comic.

65 cents I was begrudged!

A buck fiddy!!

Now, little did any of us know, this was the "mature readers", line of Marvel magazine titles.

Hey, it had reference to the TV show, and pics of Ferrigno and Bixby in it, and no warning on the cover.
Who knew?
Who knew?

Well, I'll cut right to it, here's the (now infamous) scene we're gonna be discussing here...







..sss..yyyyeah...

Now, remember, I'm 5.
I can hardly read, I don't know what sex is, what rape is, or what gay is.
I just think these guys are threatening to beat Banner up, and it just happened to be at a really bad time.

It is carved into my memory, that my folks showed that scene to the neighbor lady (from the "laugh it up fuzzball", story BTW) and her letting out a cackle, and exclaiming "wow!! Comics have gotten really raunchy!!".

I didn't know what that meant, but I filed it away for later.

I also faintly remember Ma asking me what I thought was going on there, and I was like "....What? They're just trying to beat him up, right?".

I seem to remember an "are you sure?", in there, maybe a couple.

Pretty sure my response must have been "what else would they be doing?".

Wowsers.

It really was completely over my head, honest.

Anyhoo, that was one little incident in a larger story, but the rest of the book had some edgy stuff too.

Drug addiction, domestic abuse, divorce, adultery, this was...yeah, something.

Now, the domestic abuse, I did click into.

Well, here....



Yeah, that wifebeater burnt into my memory.
I dunno, Alfredo Alcala really had an eerie knack for drawing bedraggled human filth.

Now, at 5, 6, all I knew for sure about this book, was it was extra big, extra expensive, and the art was more beautiful than the usual issue.

Gradient painted colors, and such.
And, Buscema and Alcala.

So, it was prized.

Well, as much as a dumb little kid could prize something.

I loved the thing, but I didn't keep it in a baggie with a backing board or nothin.

Somehow, I can't remember the exact circumstances, but it got destroyed.
Left in the rain, or something.

I know I didn't have it anymore at 7 and 8.

If I still had the book then, I would've known what was going on in that YMCA shower scene, and...I dunno, laughed? Recoiled in horror? I dunno.

Anyway, over the years, the memories faded, and all I could remember was a fuzzier and fuzzier vision of the cover, that creepy wife beater, something about a shower, and that wifebeater.
Did I mention the wifebeater?

And, the odd reaction from my parents, and neighbor.
And "...raunchy".

Well, lately, I've become a daily reader of the Jim Shooter blog.

It's been an absolute joy to read this thing, since he was the Editor In Chief at Marvel during the late 70's, all of the 80's, and a little bit of the 90's.

Essentially, all of my childhood/teenhood years of collecting.

So, he remembers EVERYTHING from those years.

Oh, and did I mention he WROTE "a very personal hell", in issue 23?

Yeah.

Course, I didn't know this until a couple days ago.

Well, someone brings this up in one of the comment sections, and I do some Googling, and I find all kinds of blogs about it, and I'll be goddamned if that ain't the issue!!!

My jaw hits the floor.

And then ALL the memories come back.
It's like I read it yesterday.
And I literally see it through new eyes.
And my socks are knocked off.
Holy shit!

And then, I dug up Jim's comment on the issue in another comment section, so here's that...

My inspiration to write the story was a real life situation I had knowledge of -- a self-righteous, manipulative, control freak woman who had tried to wrest her daughter's child away from her. Anger brings out the mighty, raging fury in Banner, and to me, it seemed that situation would inspire his anger bigtime.

There is a theme of drug abuse, prescription and otherwise, woven throughout the story, also based on real life situations I was aware of.

The attack at the "Y" was likewise based on an actual incident. A friend of mine at the age of 15 -- maybe 16, not sure -- had been attacked in exactly the same way at the McBurney "Y," and escaped, as Banner did. That scene was a small bit, not by a longshot the focus of the story.

I was a charter subscriber to New Woman Magazine, which had run a series of articles about rape, and in particular one about "Post Rape Syndrome." Many rape victims are in shock during the actual attack, almost numb and disbelieving. Their reactions -- anger, horror, humiliation, the whole emotional gamut, often do not set in until afterward. I thought, what if, for once, Banner did not turn into the Hulk when it was convenient, but only afterwards, when the reactions set in, when it wasn't convenient.

The bad guys, to me, were just that -- bad guys. Marvel was an equal opportunity employer. Anyone could be a bad guy. It never occurred to me that a couple of bad guys could be interpreted as a sweeping indictment of gay people.

As far as I know, we received a total of six letters regarding that issue, two positive, two neutral and two negative. I believe we printed all of them. I wrote personal replies to the negative ones.

The comment I received that meant the most to me was Stan's. He was worried when he heard about the story. In particular, he was worried that it might offend the producers of the Hulk TV show. Then he read it. He called me (he was in LA) and said it was the best comics story he ever read. Stan, as you know, is prone to hyperbole, but clearly, he liked it. He also told me not to worry about the reactions, if any. He said he would stand by the story. So do I.

There was spillover into a second issue's lettercol, comments on the comments.

A reporter from the Advocate came to interview me. The first thing he asked was why Marvel was anti-gay. I said we weren't. Why then, he asked, didn't we have any gay characters? I said we had lots of them. He asked which ones. I said, "You can't tell, can you?" He folded up his notebook and left. And wrote the story he always intended to write anyway.


And there, the story is complete, and the missing bits are filled in.

And it's a hoot to know the whole story.
And it's really a buzz to reconstruct old memories like that.

As for the story within issue 23, um, I've seen the whole thing..ahem by other means...and I love it.

I get the controversy, but...it's really cool to see a character I loved as a kid in this gritty edgy experimental story that was way ahead of its time.
Before Dark Knight Returns, before Vertigo, Marvel was pushing the edge.

Set aside what you think of the whole "dropping the soap", scene, it was a damned good Hulk story.

And it was cool just to dig one of those up.
Marvel has seen better days.

So, yeah, there's that whole memory that was 30 years in the making.

Well, I focus this story more on me, and my life, cuz the content of the book has been dissected endlessly on other blogs, and as I said, it was these other blogs that helped me unearth this thing.

Why repeat what they did?

So, here's a couple of those...

Link.

Other link.
(This one gives you a complete plot rundown, but the dude didn't like it)

I leave the issue of Jim Shooter's homophobia or lack thereof up to the reader.

I...really don't want to wade into it, I personally don't think so, and the complainers by their tone tend to be driven more by a political axe than genuine offense.

IMHO.

But yeah....

Anyhoo, if you want to see this story, it's not lost to history, or Ebay after all, it can be purchased as part of the "Essenial Rampaging Hulk vol 2", collection.

In 33 little pages, I think Mr. Shooter pretty much wrote the Dark Knight Returns of Hulk.

I struggle to think of anything that compares.
Even anything from the Peter David era.

And hey, even Stan loved it.
Stan The Man can't be wrong.