“Hulked Out.” Or, “Hulk Duly Smashed.”

I like to think that I am a man who can concentrate sufficiently to understand basic texts and even to a degree complex ones. Post-war philosophy has long been my achilles heel but I believe I can cope with this shortcoming manfully. I have managed to cover it up magnificently in my day-to-day dealings with other people. 

Is it that contemporary “continental” philosophy is especially complex, or is it that it is routinely boring, poorly written and willfully introverted? I further wonder aloud, Is it a coincidence that the foremost readers and espousers of theory at university were also proud members of the juggling society?

I used to sit in the postgraduate methodology seminars, batting my bottom lip absently, listening to –– no, listening around –– the voice of Richard Robinson as he spoke of Deleuze and Guattari and their eccentric but nevertheless thrilling “rhizomes,” and I used to think, “In less than an hour I can be drinking hard cider and shooting pool and we can forget this flimsy pretense for being here.”

Given my proven excellences as a reader, however, I have nevertheless come to doubt my certified “powers” as I attempt to make sense of the recent Hulk storyline.

A MacArthur “genius award” to the first person who can explain the thing to me.     

It’s hard to work out any of what’s going on in the Marvel Universe right now. The Hulk comics are especially mind-bending, and not in a particularly good way. I don’t know who’s where when and I definitely do not know why.    

“Riddle me this, me Trinity scholar”:    

The Red Hulk was a double-agent shuttled between MODOK’s grisly crowd of misfits and maniacs on one side and Bruce Banner on the other. Fine. Hulk’s son “Skaar”, meanwhile, wants to kill Bruce Banner but only once he turns into the Hulk – which Dr. Banner shan’t do. He simply refuses to comply. His resolve is marvelous to behold.

Skaar and Dr. Banner are also popping up and cross-overing in the Wolverine titles at the moment with Skaar double-crossing Wolverine with Wolverine’s grandfather Romulus. Are you following this rubbish?     

Doctor Doom was kidnapped and knocked “the fuck” out with what amounted to a “stupid bomb” (their words) so that he couldn't think straight. I know the feeling. The eminent Herr fon Doom is, in his turn, appearing “simultaneously” in titles across the board with a marked knack to be in a dozen places at once almost equal to Deadpool’s. 

Then, in the Hulk titles, every major superhero gets turned into a “Hulked-out” version of themselves. They really are called the “Hulked-Out Heroes.” I think that “Hulked-Out” should enter the common parlance, because it describes my condition quite remarkably. I am wholly hulked-out.

Regardless of me and my refined sensibilities, Deadpool-as-Hulk (yklept “Hulkpool”) disappeared into the time-space continuum, there for to kill Deadpool. That is, to go back in time and kill himself before he became “hulked-out.” 

Why any person would suddenly conceive of this powerful drive is not explained by the excellent craftsmen at MARVEL COMICS; but we keep on buying right along. It is a time paradox: accept it and stare out of the window, as if you are in the postgraduate seminar again and letting the venerable Richard Robinson’s paper pass over your head like gamma rays on a balmy afternoon.

Hulkpool Adrift Thru Time was actually a good story but what it added to the larger narrative escapes me. What it did for the furtherance of human civilization eludes me. More Deadpool money for the Marvel coffers.    

Deadpool is in twenty titles any given month – even Marvel is making embarrassed jokes about this, even as they scoop up my money into their bulging pockets using a large trowel.

At this moment in my life I don’t know if the denouement of the Hulk arc has even happened or not. Has that story finished? Nobody seems quite sure.     

Now you're up-to-date and will have a witty thing to say if you ever have the excellent fortune to be in a drawing room with those interesting personages Tinsley Mortimer or Paul Johnson Calderon.