Infernal Hulk #1 [Review]
Philip Kennedy Johnson has made a career out of taking familiar heroes and dragging them into the deep end, and Infernal Hulk #1 is another banger of an opening salvo. This issue wastes no time in establishing a new tone for Marvel’s green goliath, one that leans into cosmic horror and mythic dread without losing the raw, bruising energy a Hulk book needs to thrive. What PKJ, Nic Klein, and Matthew Wilson pull off here feels at once classic and completely deranged in the best possible way.
The issue opens on a military response that already feels too late. Klein’s rain-soaked staging sets an anxious rhythm as soldiers watch something massive approaching across the water. Neon-green reflections smear across the panels, giving everything a sickly, radioactive sheen. The dialogue paints Bruce Banner as almost mythological, a figure these troops have only seen “on TV with the Avengers,” which makes the reveal of the monster lumbering out of the darkness hit even harder.
Because this thing is not Banner. And Johnson makes sure the script hammers that home.
The creative team quickly moves past familiar Hulk rampage imagery and into straight nightmare fuel. Klein’s linework becomes jagged and grotesque as the Hulk’s body warps, bulges, and reconfigures itself. One soldier’s terrified, “Wh-wh-what do you want?” is answered with a stunning coldness: “From you? Nothing.” What follows is a sequence that would fit comfortably in an R-rated horror comic, skulls pulped like overripe fruit and blood misting across the page. Wilson’s colors do heavy lifting here, blending lurid pinks, sulfuric greens, and deep shadow to create a palette that feels hellish but alive.
When “The Hulk” invokes a more sorcerous threat, the book swerves again, diving into the cosmic-occult corner of Marvel lore. We see infernal realms blooming into existence, colossal flesh-towers and terrible god-corpses forming a landscape that feels pulled straight from a fever dream. Klein’s splash pages are breathtaking, each panel exploding with scale and texture. The moment Hulk sits on a throne of bones inside a skull-shaped palace is pure metal, and the kind of image that reminds you how far the character can stretch outside traditional superheroics.
Johnson’s script carries a confident momentum, grounded in mystery and menace. He loves writing characters who are larger than life, and this Hulk is exactly that, a force of nature pushed beyond the edge into myth. But there’s still enough familiarity in the cadence of the dialogue and the pacing of the action that it feels like a Hulk comic, not a total reinvention.
If Infernal Hulk #1 has a mission statement, it’s this: the Hulk is more than a monster, he is a gateway to places humanity was never meant to see…and readers are about to follow him there.
