With a title like And Now… the Wolverine, you would pretty much assume that the star of this collection is the furry, diminutive Canadian mutant. But the big green guy on the cover would beg to differ, as the new Incredible Hulk Epic Collection features not only the first appearance of Wolverine, but a whole host of familiar, and not so familiar, slugfests involving the Jade Giant.
Incredible Hulk: And Now…the Wolverine is composed of Incredible Hulk issues #179-203 and stories from Giant-Size Hulk #1 and Marvel Treasury Edition #5. All of the stories are written by Len Wein (other than Gary Friedrich’s work in Giant-Size Hulk #1), with art by long-time Hulk artists Herb Trimpe (with inks by Jack Abel, Marie Severin, and Joe Staton) and Sal Buscema (who took over for Trimpe starting with issue #194).
While this collection obviously includes the first appearance of Wolverine, the rest of the collection serves as a perfect time capsule for what Bruce Banner was up to from 1974 to 1976, which was primarily battling a host of muscle-bound villains and monsters each and every month.
Some of the Hulk’s opponents include the familiar, such as The Mole Man, Doc Samson, Man-Thing, The Collector, and The Abomination, and the not so familiar, like the Gremlin, the Shaper of Worlds, Psyklop, Kronak the Barbarian, The Locust, Hammer and Anvil, Zzzax, The Living Shadow, and the Devastator, in the collection.
The face-filled cover from issue #200 by Rich Buckler and John Romita Sr. graces the cover of the Epic collection, which will be in stores on October 19. The Hulk-sized volume (472 pages) retails for a suggested price of $44.99.
Check out the famous cover below and be sure to keep coming back to Conskipper for all of your vintage comic needs.
Great recap! Looking forward to this. Wendigo’s first appearance was Hulk 162.