Comics I Bought: April 9, 2009

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic plus a hard cover collection:

Echo - 11

Hulk - Red Hulk Volume 1

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

Giant Size Hulk by Various People

Giant Size Hulk is a hardcover collection of a few Hulk specials that came out in 2008. This book is tinged with nostalgia for me. Besides a bunch of new stories there are some older stories from the 1970's. The whole thing is clearly supposed to bring back memories of the giant sized comics of the 1960's and 1970's.

Much like those comics this one is a mixed bag. The stories are all self contained but link together thematically. We get a Thundra story as she takes on the Hulk and a Thundra story from the 1970's as she takes on the Fantastic Four.

There were two stories that stood out to me. A John Byrne drawn Hulk annual from the 1970's and the last story in the book. A Hulk versus Hercules story from last year. The rest of the stuff was alright but not spectacular. But that's okay.

Part of the fun of annuals was variety and volume . You never knew what you were get but you knew you were going to get a lot of it. An annual with one good story a mediocre one and some reprints was always a lot of fun.

This fun was taken out of annuals sometime in the 1980's when the variety was taken away. Instead of many stories you got just one and odds were it was going to be mediocre. It was the end of an era.

So that is why this Giant Size Hulk book is tinged with nostalgia for me. It harkens back to a fun format of a bygone era. So even if it wasn't a collection of great comics it was still a fun collection. Some good stories, some mediocre ones, and some solid reprints. For some reason that recipe still works for me.