I haven't seen copies of the second issue of the Abomination limited series, but from what I'm hearing, an entire page worth of dialogue was dropped out for no discernible reason.
Basically there's an entire page of fight scene between the Abomination and the Hulk, and there's no dialogue. No caption. No nothing. The major problem is that there's now no segue between the dialogue as it ends on the previous page and as it starts on the following page. So...here's the missing dialogue, along with the page description so you can see how it flows:
PANEL A: The Abomination barely manages to roll out of the way as the Hulk crashes down where he’d just been.
CAPTION 1: “I’ll tell you this, Blonsky. Say what you will about the Hulk…and over the years, I’ve said plenty.…
PANEL B: The Abomination, now on his feet, manages to fling his arms wide and shatter the girder that was wrapped around his arms.
CAPTION 2: “He may be many things: The world’s most destructive force, a walking A-Bomb, a tragic figure…
CAPTION 3: “…the whipping boy of the gods…
CAPTION 4: “…whatever.
CAPTION 5: “But you know what he’s not?”
PANEL C: The Abomination throws chunks of debris at the Hulk, who brings up his arms to shield his face from the barrage.
CAPTION 6: “He’s not a hypocrite. He doesn’t change his tune or try to present himself as anything other than he is…
CAPTION 7: “A frustrated beast who just wants to be left alone.”
And the dialogue on the next page continues, with Blonsky, saying, "And yet you don't," to which Ross concedes, "And yet we don't."
That's how it's supposed to read. I've no explanation for why the dialogue isn't there.
PAD
Wow. That's uncool.
No one has been able to explain this?
It read fine to me, but I'm in Canada. Does that matter?
My copy IS missing the captions. Thanks for supplying them.
I figured there was text missing from that page. Of course, I also figured that you'd provide said text on your blog before too long, so I wasn't overly concerned. :)
I'm sure this is another well written book from PAD. But I found the artwork on issue #1 so awful that I couldn't bring myself to buy #2. Sorry Peter, I wish you had more control over the artist you work with.
Okay, I was wondering about that. It ALMOST makes sense without the dialogue on that page. But not quite.
---Dave
Now it all makes sense!
Seriously, I wondered if something was left out when I read the issue. Thanks for giving us the script, PAD.
Matt Hawes
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Marvel's shown this problem before with hardcovers. I'm assuming the balloon are a layer in Photoshop that disappears.
I didn't see any "Whad'ja think?" threads for the miniseries, so I hope it's okay to post a comment on the first issue here.
If we're reading about Emil Blonsky from the time before he transformed into the Abomination (Tales to Astonish #90, True Believers!}, why is Doc Samson in the story? Leonard doesn't get gamma-zapped into a green-haired superfreak until one of the Seventies Hulk issues.
I've never known PAD to neglect Hulk continuity before. This is a radical revision!
Why is Doc Samson in the story? He's there because he's the psychiatrist/phychologist (can't remember which is more accurate a title, sorry) with the most complete understanding of gamma-ray affected individuals. If the government is looking to make use of Blonsky, Samson is one of the people most able to say if he can be trusted or not. The fact that Samson wasn't there at the start of the Abomination's existance doesn't change that.
Ross would be there for much the same reason- he's had more experience with both the Hulk and the Abomination from a military point of view.
Of course, people often ignore those with greater knowledge when the knowledge disagreed with what they wanted to hear. There's a reason yes-man/ toadies never go out of style.
Ah, good, I was hoping you'd post the missing dialogue on here. Thanks, it was really bugging me.
I don't know if this was answered anywhere else, so I'll ask it here, and hopefully there is someone else out there in the same boat as me... Is this mini-series supposed to be a tie in of sorts for the new game that just came out? I just bought it Sat, and started playing it, and the beginning of the game has Blonsky as an NSA rep working with Ross, much the same as the mini does. There are some story differences, but I couldn't help but notice the similarity there. Now I'm not one to complain about Mr. David doing a Hulk comic in any fashion, but Mr. Jenkins would have been a more logical choice in this matter, since he wrote the game as well. I only mention this, because the last Hulk game had two minis with it, both of which were pretty weak by comparrison.
Any thoughts? Canters? Anecdotes? Ideas? Stories? Quips? Ramblings?
Steve
I think the dialog that was ledt out was "How dare you give me a snuggie!"
lol
I'm pretty sure the series is a tie-in to the game, which keeps giving me flashbacks to the Hulk's cross-in with Scott Adams' (no, not that Scott Adams) Questprobe adventure game series.
What I want to know, since I'm not up on my Abomination backstory, is how much of this stuff is flashback, and how much of it is PAD retconning? I don't recall Blonski having two wives before, for instance, nor do I remember his "leading a team to stop the Hulk" mission. Am I getting properly whoosed by Peter?
--R.J.
I personally didn't notice it was missing, but then I didn't know it was supposed to be there. Not enjoying this series as much as I should. The Abomination is the worst rendition since Liam Sharps' one. Isn't he supposed to be green? Where are the spikes on his head?
Some serious discepancies that are bugging me as Iam reading it- yes, I know it's based on a game, but still Iam realing from the last five years on all Hulk being continuity challenged.
Lets' hope change is in the air.
Ian
1I recently bought and read issue one, but haven't had a chance to find issue two yet. Thanks for including the missing text info, PAD. I'm wondering if the mini-series goes to TPB, will that include the corrections? I'm hope you get to do another Abomination L.S. or on-going in the near future.
PAD: Even if this is a game tie-in, it's still very enjoyable. I've been picking up the Hulk while you've been on it, and will most likely stop when you are gone. I introduced my 8 year old to your Aquaman series the other day, and he absolutely loved it. We'll go digging through some back issue bins to try and fill it out. That was one I picked up new, but am not willing to sacrifice to the hands of an 8 year old just yet.
Not to be an ass…
I know, very hard to believe!
I have noticed that there is some similar, if not, exact wording from issue #2 that is also in the game film sequences. Did you work in collaboration with Paul Jenkins or should he be getting some kind of credit?
PAD,
Since there was not a "Whadja Think?" on this yet, I felt this would be a good opportunity to express my opinion.
When I first heard you would be doing an Abomination miniseries, I was happy. You have written the character superbly in the past and thought this would be cool.
Then I read it, and was disappointed for several reasons.
In no particular order:
1.) The parallel - in some of the dialogue/narration - to current events like, oh, Iraq, has all the subtlety of being hit in the face with a 2x4. Usually, you are subtler. But other books are examining the same thing - the military using "people of mass destruction" instead of armies for example, etc. So this alone would not be nearly enough to ruin the story.
2.) But the story just reads very weak to me. Especially with regard to dialogue, which is normally your strength.
3.) Then, I realized that this is based on a game, and instead of just doing a cool story based on the game you decided to revamp/retcon the Abomination's origin.
This, to me, is a terrible mistake. Without going point by point, the fact that Doc Samson is in the story when he didn't appear until much later in Hulk's history really threw me off, especially since you are normally respectful of continuity.
If there were really problems with the Abomination's history, I could understand. But nobody was crying for a revamp/retcon of the character.
Again, I just don't feel this is even close to your best work. Normally, if a Trek novel is $5, it was worth every penny. If a comic written by you is $2.99, it at the very least is worth $2.75.
This, I would find to hard to read if they were giving the rest away, and I've NEVER said that about a book of yours before.
Thank you for the missing dialogue; it was here in time for me, at least, to read the issue properly the first time through.
And let me see if I can answer a couple of Robert Jung's questions. This is a MAJOR retcon of the Abomination's history and origin. I don't necessarily have a problem with that on principle since, like so many "Hulk-verse" characters, Abomb was in need of some retconning (or at least "stetconning", to use the term PAD gave us on here a few months ago) after the Jones run.
Abomination's former origin is the version dismissed as army fiction - and even a comic book, nice touch - here: he was a Communist spy investigating Bruce Banner's gamma secrets, and was transformed by a device of Bannner's. Unlike the "grew into his power" version we have now - which does make some sense, since the Hulk did go through this progression - the Abomination was stronger than the Hulk in their first meeting, and Banner had to syphon off some of his power to have a chance to stop him.
As for Nadia(s) - this was the main thing I hoped Mr. David, or someone, would fix from Jones' take on the Abomination, although he did surprise me with how he did it. PAD, and others, had depicted Blonsky and Nadia, a star ballerina, as being truly in love (she believes him dead, never having found out that he was the Abomination); Jones, I'm told, revealed that Abomb had missed Nadia because he'd missed hitting her. Jones also established Nadia as a spy/pawn who seduced Banner (and was often half-naked, as I've heard Jones did with a lot of his cast, for various, often half-baked reasons). In the "Tempus Fugit" story, PAD established that some of the Hulk's history may be false memories established by Nightmare; I figured that this would be the way out of the Abomination mess. Instead, he's now established that there were two Nadia's, preserving the character of Nadia he'd established (mainly in a couple of issues in the #380's) while actually not stetconning out Jones' quite different Nadia. A retcon; but a creative one, and a rather generous one, really. And, as was mentioned above, Doc Sampson wasn't empowered til forty or more issues after the Abomination was, in old Marvel history; maybe the House of M will actually be changing Marvel continuity, the Marvel version of "Crisis"? Or, maybe we'll get another explanation for this revision. But, yes, both the "Hulk-hunter" - and Ross working for him! - role, and the multiple wives - as well as changing back and forth, and the nature of his exposure - are retcon stuff.
Well, that certainly helps. I was abundantly confused by the dialogue in the panel following the captionless page. Now? I get it. Thanks, PAD.