The Immortal Hulk: Flatline #1

The Immortal Hulk: Flatline #1

Marvel Comics 2021

By Declan Shalvey

Lettered by VC’s Cory Petit

Every morning, Bruce Banner wakes up in a new place. The Hulk is trying to tell him something — but Bruce has had enough of his green-veined alters. When a new gamma-powered villain shows up in a small New Mexico town, Bruce is forced to confront the source of his anger…and it’s not what you expect.

Well being a fan of Declan’s made this an easy no-brain decision to pick up. I’m glad that I dd too because while I’ve not always been a fan of the Hulk, despite watching Bill Bixby growing up, Peter David’s current run of Maestro has my interest piqued at the moment. Plus like I said it’s Declan Shalvey so you cannot go wrong there and considering this is a story set in the current timeline of the Marvel Universe it was just a tad more powerful than I was expecting it to be. Now I am a huge fan in the power of characterisation and what Declan manages to do here completely blindsided me with just how strong and in-depth this really is.

I am tremendous fan of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is executed to absolute flawless perfection. From the opening and being privy to the inside joke between Hulk and Bruce set the stage for something outside the box. When we meet Professor Noolan to be perfectly honest I figured her for a figment of his imagination, some kind of fevered gamma dream moment kind of deal. That Declan can use direct misdirection in this manner is incredible. The character development that we see is as powerful as it gets in any kind of medium. The exchanges we see and how having the point of what the Professor is trying to get across it just builds to such an intensity you feel like you are going to burst. The pacing here is superb and as it takes us the pages revealing what we need to see is done with such aplomb.

How we see this being structured and how the layers within the story work together to tie things together so it all fits in one issue shows off some hella skill and talent. The way that everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow is utterly marvellous.

The interiors here are fantastic! The linework that we see is laid down extremely well and with the varying weights being utilised to bring out the detail work is utterly gorgeous. I am kind of happy with the backgrounds that we see being utilised throughout. I say Kind of because there could always be more and with how smartly we see the composition within the panels helps greatly. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show such a remarkable eye for storytelling. I like how the colour work is done here. Just the fact that we see so many of these gorgeous shades of green as the hues and tones within the colours are being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work. I am truly impressed with everything that we are seeing within these pages from the ordinary to the extraordinary.

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What a talent Declan is and if you are like me and only a passing fan of the Hulk’s you are going to need to pick this up. I cannot express to you just how well this book is done from top to bottom and how powerful the story itself has turned out to be. It really is books like this one, that aren’t a part of crossover, or tie-in, that we want to see more of. This really took me to a place I wasn’t prepared for and when it was over it left me wanting to see more.