PeterDavid.net

PAD, seriously, that opera house gag was worth the price of the issue alone. Awesome, awesome gag - great job. I hope X-Factor & FNSM has that level of funny, cuz that was pretty great.

Nothing against your writing, but the House of M crossovers have all (and I mean every crossover title, not just Hulk) been horrible. In the good old days, you could pick up all crossover titles of a series and get by even if you weren't a regular reader. Now, however, I pick up titles I don't regularly read, and I have no clue how they interract with House of M. Cable & Deadpool is a good example... can anyone tell me what this had to do with House of M? These crossovers are meant to increase sales of the other titles by bringing in new readers, but that's not going to happen when the new reader has no clue whatsoever as to what's going on in the book.

I enjoyed your first Hulk storyline as well as the House of M story. I am walking away from the experience a bit disappointed at the feeling that I never saw what felt like your return to the Hulk. Yes, both stories were solid and enjoyable, but neither fel truly like Incredible Hulk stories to me.

Looking forward to your future work on whatever character.

Fred

I thought it was great. My favourite part was at the end when he threatened Magneto. Thats the way I like to see the Hulk standing tall and in charge.

Loved the line "most of all Hulk hates personal pronouns"

Havn't picked up any Houe of M outside of yours - waiting for the eventual TPB's - but I love your Hulk man, and I wish you were staying on the book.

stay groovy

Have to agree with Mike. Apart from Hulk (and the first issue of the Spidey book) I haven't touched the House of M storyline. I think Bendis is a great writer, but I got the feeling that Marvel may be putting too much trust in him.

Not since Stan Lee has one man been responsible for writing so many of Marvel's output, and eventually, I think somethings gotta give.

I'm looking forward to the fallout though, the return of Excalibur and X Factor expecially. But what would happen to "The house of ideas" when their idea's man decides to take a vacation.

The art really turned me off. I think the individual artists probably aren't so bad, but the line-art clashed with the coloring and the result was muddy and amateurish....a real let-down after Lee Weeks and Jae Lee.

The story was well-written, but it seemed more like one of those "best of a bad situation", um...situations. To my mind, a good chunk of your new Hulk run "wasted" on a crossover....one based on yet another cliched alternate reality storyline. The inclusion of the Amazing Fantasy characters is kind-of a minus, too.

But you made it work in the end. I still enjoyed reading them, just not as much as the issues before.

I haven't read any other "House of M"- related stories (nor do I have any interest in doing so), so I've viewed these last few issues of _Hulk_ as if we (and Banner/Hulk) are in an _It's a Wonderful Life_ situation. We're seeing how the world would have been had certain events played out differently. In this "would have been" world, Banner and the Hulk are spending time in Australia, and mutants rule the world. Still leaves some unanswered questions about who some of the other characters might be, but I'm able to get by.

Certainly having that text summary at the beginning of every issue was helpful. DC should have done that with some of the tie ins to _DC Countdown_, which, in turn, are leading up to _Infinite Crisis_.

Point of clarification, PAD: is #86 your last issue of _Hulk_, or do you have a few more to go before you depart the book? If the latter, and #87 returns everything to the "normal" Marvel Universe, will Banner (or the Hulk) get all excited about "Zuzu's petals"; or will things just continue on, with nary a reference to "House of M" and the events surrounding it?

By the way, just curious about the Hulk's current personality. He obviously isn't the dumb green, "Hulk smash puny Humans" Hulk with the very limited vocabulary; nor does he have the loquaciousness of the merged Hulk. So, is he analoguous to the grey Hulk (described once in _Starlog_ as "classic grey and incredibly cunning") in terms of his personality, intelligence level, outlook and attitude?

Perhaps he's the Gary Cooper Hulk? He obviously can talk in complete sentences, but prefers the more laconic approach similar to Cooper's "yup" and "nope."

Rick

Good but not great. I am one of those that felt it would have been better to have four more issues of your Hulk in the regular Marvel Universe than in this House of M storyline. The art could have been better, too.

By the way, I really got a kick out of the latest issue of Soulsearchers. The series always brings a smile to my face. I will be sorry to see John H. leave the book as I really enjoyed his artwork.
One question, though. Why is the issue dated July when it comes out in September?

If y'all are disappointed with PAD writing a HoM tie-in story, remember, we still got "Destruction" which takes place in the regular old Marvel U. Heck, it even has Doc Samson to boot.

> Point of clarification, PAD: is #86 your last issue of _Hulk_, or do you have a few more to go before you depart the book? If the latter, and #87 returns everything to the "normal" Marvel Universe, will Banner (or the Hulk) get all excited about "Zuzu's petals"; or will things just continue on, with nary a reference to "House of M" and the events surrounding it?

He's got one more issue (#87, with Adam Kubert art), back in the MU dealing with the Scorpion.

>>If y'all are disappointed with PAD writing a HoM tie-in story, remember, we still got "Destruction" which takes place in the regular old Marvel U. Heck, it even has Doc Samson to boot.

Destruction comes off a a video game tie-in. While I like the video game play itself, the storyline for it was horrible. Devil Hulk and a 40 ft. abomination? Please...

as far as the new issue, I have to agree with the other posters who would rather see more reguler Hulk stories than this HOM stuff.

Sorry PAD, I usually love your Hulk stuff but I cant get into Destruction and felt very underwhelmed with House of M.

Destruction comes off a a video game tie-in. While I like the video game play itself, the storyline for it was horrible. Devil Hulk and a 40 ft. abomination? Please...

Do you know this to be true, or are you just assuming that Hulk:Destruction (the comic) and The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (the game) are related?

Cause it sure doesn't read like it has any connection whatsoever to the game. It's set in the Marvel Universe, from what I can tell, and is a pretty much straight abomination story. Even if it is tied to the game, it's a great story, with good art. I'd recommend checking it out.

I've been quite enjoying The Hulk but if you read my article (follow the link on my name) Seven Ways to Kill the Comic Industry you may understand why I consider publisher-wide crossover events to be a great jumping-off point.

Apologies for the blatant plug but it is relevent and it was inspired by a post you did a few days ago about why people aren't reading comics anymore.

A Pyro-maniac friend of mine was disappointed that Pyro only got a single line of resolution. :)

>>Do you know this to be true, or are you just assuming that Hulk:Destruction (the comic) and The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (the game) are related?

I take it you havn't played the video game yet? Cause if you did, the answer is pretty ovious that the comic is a tie in concidering what they did with Blonsky.

I've avoided all HoM titles because I can't pull together the additional scratch ($$) for a dizzy and complex crossover. I DO appreciate that HoM wasn't published in the regular titles, that was damn considerate of the suits at the House of Cash. But come on, an extra $30/mo is tough for some folks. OKOK, asside from crossover-angst, I'm pro-PAD and I vote!

PAD,

I am sorry the arc is over in some ways. I especially wanted to see the "epic battle" between the two figures at the end. No question, Hulk would win.

Iowa Jim

I thought this issue was a bit of a mixed bag. There were certainly some nice character moments, particularly the line about personal pronouns. And given that this is an alternate reality story heading for the reset button, it occured to me that you could actually kill Banner off in the middle of this issue, which did add a bit of extra suspense to the flamethrower scene.

On the downside, I didn't really care much about the whole cyborg plot, and I'm not sure that the giant one made sense. I'm not talking about cube/square laws or anything like that - I can cheerfully accept a giant robot, and even a giant [meta]human for that matter. But since the basic premise was that AIM were grabbing people off the street, does that mean that they nobbled some huge guy and turned him into a cyborg? If they could generate the human parts themselves (and there seemed to be a fair quantity of blood coming out), then why did they need to kidnap people? I guess it's possible (if somewhat gory) that they'd basically flayed their subjects and sewn all their skins together to make a patchwork top layer for the big guy, and similarly that the blood had been drained, but that wouldn't explain the internal organs. I'm sorry to nitpick about this, but I remember an old BID article where PAD said (paraphrasing from memory) "I'm not going to tell people to turn their brains off when they read one of my stories, because that would be incredibly insulting", so I do try to think these things through.

All in all, though, I think that this arc made good use of the "House of M" event. I don't think that you needed to read the central comic in order to understand this (since the premise was explained in prose before the story), and conversely you don't need to read this to understand the core comic. In one sense, stories like this don't matter, since everything will be undone, but the characters don't know that, so it's nice to see they react. And it's also good to see an open-ended ending (I'm sure there's a better way of phrasing that), rather than saying "Well, this is the final issue, so everyone dies".

By the way, I see that Hulk Visionaries: Peter David Vol. 2 is out in two weeks, so that might be something to publicise nearer to the time (for people who only read the main entries and not comments).

I plan to read it "sometime this week". Oh that mythical sometime, it is always some other time than right now.

But I do want to say I enjoyed your contribution to Moonstone's Kolchak Tales: Black & White & Read All Over. You certainly got the comedic aspects of the series down perfectly. I'm looking forward to the anthology you contributed to as well. Excellent work.

I enjoyed it, and liked the hint that Magneto probably thinks it's wisest to leave The Hulk alone.

I'm sorry you're leaving the title again, Peter. If nothing else, I was hoping you might be able to fix what's happening to Hulk in the DEFENDERS mini-series right now.

You've left Hulk, and nobodyelse seems to know how to write him without mucking up what has gone before. So issue 87 will be my last.

Ian

Kim Metzger said:

I'm sorry you're leaving the title again, Peter. If nothing else, I was hoping you might be able to fix what's happening to Hulk in the DEFENDERS mini-series right now.

The only disappointing thing about Defenders is that it isn't quite as funny 'I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League' or 'Hero Squared'. What's happening to Hulk is funny, though not as funny as the Silver Surfer stuff. Giffen/Dematies is the only team other than PAD that I would read Hulk for.

Is it a done deal...

Are you finished writing the Hulk? I thought it was going to be based on the fans reaction?

That sucks.

Regards:
Warren S. Jones III

As a whole I enjoyed the HoM issues. Mostly because they were basically stand alone from the main story but dealt with the same world. As an "alternate reality" thing there was a lot of potential for interesting stories not directly related to the conception and resolution of the universe. I think as that sort of story the hulk issues excelled.
My only complaint is that the ending was a bit anti-climatic and the build up to it seemed to happen too fast. What I really enjoyed was the self-deprecation. It's been established that grey hulk and banner hulk have a sense of humor but i think this is the first we've seen the standard green hulk make jokes and that's awesome. This was some of the funniest hulk stuff you've done simply because it was so self-directed.
All in all it is unfortunate to see you leave the hulk again but it's refreshing to see you go to new pastures while some writers of my youth seem to refuse to acknowledge that they are simply ruining that which they once made great (not you).

Scott Bland asks what does any of this have to do with House of M.

It's what's happening elsewhere. Hulk is about Austrailia's status (& the Hulk, naturaly) in the House Of M reality. Cable/Deadpool was basicly what's Mr. Sinister's status in the House Of M...taking advantage of it's reality warp to tie in to Cable/Deadpool's own jumping realites storyline.
Uncanny X-Men is showing the cosmic ramifications of the reality distortion, and dealing with the member of the House of M that no one thought about.

The tie-ins are showing elements of the world that Bendis can't get around to showing, basicly because it would take him a year of issues to write himself out of a paper bag.

By HOM#6, they've only just started to confront Magneto, and the big surprise that he's not responsible for all of this hasn't happened yet (assuming Bendis doesn't just go for the cheap, yes he is responsible, bleh). In 4 issues, PAD had the Hulk all happy with life...have that get wrecked, have him take over Austrailia, have him betrayed, and have him set up a new status quo.

I enjoyed the tie-in merely for the fact that it served as a great platform for PAD to stretch the Hulk's/Bruce's character, even if it "doesn't count." Bruce using the Hulk as his enforcer to run a freakin country! It's a better concept than the Maestro even.

Lucas' art took some getting used to. His most recent effort with the Colossus mini is better.

I liked this storyline a lot, way more than "Tempest Fugit" actually. I haven't been following House of M at all, but I thought this stood on its own just fine.

1I loved it. I wasn't really into the whole House of M crossover thing, because I don't really like Marvel crossovers. But I did like the Hulk end of it.
Marvel Crossovers always seem to center around an X-Man villian like Magnito, Sinister, etc. Just once I'd like a crossover to center around Dr. Doom, the Green Goblin, Hydra, or best of all the Leader. Now that last one, I'd buy every issue, esp if Peter was heading it up. Josh Pritchett, Jr.

I actually found the House of M tie-in very entaining. Honestly, I think it would have been a cool story for him in the regular universe. Imagine Hulk being a ruler like Doom who is both loved and feared by his people because he keeps the peace like no other.

> 2. Write for the trade - make it so that even if a casual reader does by some chance locate a comic they will invariably find themselves with a small part of a longer story which will make little sense on its own

Marionette - That's a big part of why I love BABYLON 5 as much as I do. As good as many of the individual episodes are, and many are truly outstanding, the overall story is even better. They complement each other very nicely.

>"I especially wanted to see the "epic battle" between the two figures at the end. No question, Hulk would win."

Not a hope. What we know of Magneto's powers show there's a very good reason why he's ruling the planet in HOUSE OF M. Hulk may be "strongest one there is", but that's not much use if the building he's in get tossed off into space from the other side of the continent. And we know that M's powers can work from a hideous distance away. Hulk couldn't get a mitt on him before the fight was over.

I always expect excellence in your writing and am never disappointed so, when I win the $250M Big Game drawing tonight, I will put up the money for Peter David Comics and then back off. I loved the last panel. Most writers can begin a story well enough but to end it like that was just perfect.

By far the weakest Hulk House of M story to date.
I can't believe you actually used the line, "HULK... HATES... ..PERSONAL... PRONOUNS." Another nice touch was the 25ft. cyborg! Where did they get a person that big to mold giant cybernetics? Did A.I.M. capture Galactus while he was seeking refuge from the Mutant menace?

Weak, weak, weak...

Right because, y'know, based on your bitching from months ago, and your attempts to stir up anger toward me on the Hulk board, I really expected a fair reading from you...

PAD

I know many of you will not care, most notably you Mr. David, but this will be my final post regarding Peter David.

Mr. David you have provide me with many, many years of fantastic stories and I thank you. I came at you pretty tough because of my perception that you bailed on many of us Hulk fans. You made statements that your plate was too full and you needed to pursue other endeavors to reach a broader audience. Kudos! However, I am reminded of statement that you made that had the response to your return been "over the top" maybe that would have changed something for you. But it wasn't and you felt it best to move on.

That statement struck a nerve with many of us fans because we had been banging Marvel for years to get you back on the book. Finally, it happened. I spoke with a very good friend of mine who is the owner of Samurai Comics in Phoenix (shameless plug) and he doubled his orders for Hulk #77 because of your return. I purchased seven copies (5 regular, 1 CGC and one signed by you) and purchased five of each subsequent book thereafter. I can honestly say I did my part in pushing the title.

Marvel failed you and us by not giving your return the marketing push that was needed. If anything called for a re-launch of this book, your return did! It was a perfect opportunity to start with a #1 issue because of the long four month break between issue #76 and #77 coupled with the Hard Knocks mini by Jones. Issue #1 would have sent this book up the charts not to mention giving Marvel the opportunity to suck more money from buyers by releasing variant covers form 20 different artists.

Whether you think I can give you a fair read or not is beside the point. I am and have been one of your biggest supporters for many, many years. I have been harsh and outright rude over the last several months regarding your exit. So, from here on out I will refrain from commenting on anything that you have your named attached. I am sure that won't hurt you in the least bit, hey I am only one fan!!!
* Posted at www.comicboards.com

And here I thought "Hulk...hates...personal...pronouns" was damn funny. I'm damn sorry you'll be leaving the book, as it's one of the few Marvel books I read. When is Fallen Angel coming out from IDW again?

I bought each of these issues as they came out, then put off reading them until I had all of the HoM tie ins.

It's an interesting story, and this, merged with your Fallen Angel series along with your other novels has made me a fair weather fan of your writing. Kinda strange though, cause for a long time I couldn't stand anything but your Trek novels.

Now I'm gonna hafta find the storyline BEFORE the HoM crossover!

O/T...sorta - Soooo...Planet Hulk....wuzzat all about, hmmm?

I just picked up my comics a couple of days ago - Hulk's on my pull list, of course (at least for now) - wanted to drop a quick comment.

I've very much enjoyed your House of M four- parter, PAD; at least as much as Tempus Fugit, in fact. I've found myself regretting that the events will (presumably) disappear, since I've liked some of the characters and concepts - including Banner meditating with the True People - and NICE touch working Gateway in - which have been introduced here. The humor was probably the highlight of #86 for me: the Opera House demolition was very funny; "And MOST of all ... Hulk ... HATES ... personal ... pronouns," was HILARIOUS!!!!!!! I had to stop reading and just savor that for a few minutes.

Anyway, overall a very interesting read, and not at all the fill-in space waster some tie-in issues can be. ...And by the way, Comic Shop News #951 says Hulk #84 has sold out and is getting a second printing? Congratulations!