Hulk #2

Jeph Loeb takes a lot of bashing, and -- I'll be  honest -- most of it is deserved. And while I dropped Loeb's book, The Ultimates 3, this week, I picked up the second issue of  Hulk because I was fairly intrigued by the mystery of the first issue.

I'll say this about Loeb: the man knows spectacle. Hulk #2 is filled with big moments. Big twists, big mysteries, big revelations. I won't go into spoilers here because this book is essentially nothing but spoilers. Suffice it to say, questions are answered and new questions are posed. One red herring is exposed in an unexpected twist.

This "bigness" is also matched by Ed McGuiness' fine art which is well-suited for this tale. The art is definitely the best part of this book. Loeb certainly gets to work with some of the industry's best artists.

This book's -- and Loeb's -- downfall comes in the details and the smaller moments. Details like, oh say, the dialogue? Loeb actually has Iron Man say the cringe-inducing phrase "Oh, the humanity." In Loeb's script, Tony Stark, Maria Hill, General Ross and the others all lose the subtlety and nuance that has been added to them by some of Marvel's more accomplished scribes. And that's where this book fails. I see Loeb as the Jerry Bruckheimer of comics -- he knows how to produce big spectacle but skimps on the meat of the storytelling sandwich.