Colourist: Bryan Valenza. Letterer: Cory Petit
A new era has begun at Marvel as Doctor Doom has taken over the planet after becoming Sorcerer Supreme, and it seems that part of his new rule is locking away people who might be a threat to him. One of those people is General Ross, a man who's not just a high ranking US military figure, but is the sometimes hero Red Hulk, a creature as powerful as the Hulk, but with the mind of a cold, calculating soldier. And whilst the Red Hulk getting his own titular One World Under Doom tie-in around the same time that the character is making his big screen debut does feel like it's likely some MCU synergy going on behind the scenes the book is entertaining enough that I don't really mind.
The issue opens with a sequence that shows how this Hulk is in many ways more frightening that the green one, as we see General Ross aboard a commercial flight above North Korea. Ross changes into the Red Hulk, destroys the flight mid-air, and uses it as cover to attack a North Korean facility below; all of this part of a carefully calculated scheme to make it appear like North Korea destroyed a civilian target as the first step to conflict across east Asia. Thankfully, it turns out that the entire scenario was one conjured up by magic. It appears that Doom not only captured Ross to take him off the board, but to use his military mind to help him test out scenarios and plans.
We soon learn that Ross isn't the only 'asset' that Doom has locked away like this, as several others, including Deathlok and Machine Man, begin communicating with each other using morse code. Thus begins a long, careful scheme to break out of the prison that Doom is keeping them in. And this is the main conceit of the book, Doom has captured a number of people and they're breaking out of prison, and Red Hulk is leading that charge. It's a set-up that I like, one that I don't feel like we've really seen too many times before, and with an interesting assortment of characters thrown into the mix too.
It would have been easy to fill these cells with some bigger name characters, for Doom to have somehow captured key heroes from various teams across the world, with people like Captain America or Spider-Man there to be a big name draw. They could even have done a bit of a Secret Invasion twist on things, like having a character such as Iron Man in one of the cells saying he's been there for months, raising questions as to if the Iron Man in the other titles has been replaced with a Doom-bot.
But Benjamin Percy has chosen to take a different route, to make the book feel smaller and more self-contained by keeping Red Hulk as the biggest name and having him team up with some characters who don't get used that often. It leave the book feeling like it's not going to be a huge part of the One World Under Doom story, and as such is going to be freer to do its own thing. It feels like there's a lot of promise here, that the book can go in many different directions, and a big part of the excitement for the next issue is in seeing where that's going to be.
Geoff Shaw and Bryan Valenza do a great job on the art, and there's some really visually fantastic moments to be found in a book that's largely just several people locked in almost empty rooms. The opening sequence is fantastic, and showcases the destructive power of Red Hulk in a horrifying way.
Red Hulk #1 was a book that I wasn't sure I wanted to read, it felt like it was likely being done because the character was on the big screen, and that it would end up being a tie-in that I'd think little of and not care to finish. However, it's the best thing with the One World Under Doom banner that I've read so far, and I'm genuinely looking forward to the next issue.
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