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In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover the comic character invented as a possible back-up secret identity for the Red Hulk!
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and twenty-fourth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I’ll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
Marvel invented a new character specifically as a back-up secret identity for the Red Hulk.
STATUS:
True
Introduced in 2008’s Hulk #1 by Jeph Loeb, Ed McGuinness and Cam Smith, the whole shtick is that the Red Hulk had all of the power of the classic Hulk, but he was also smart, strategic and more than a little bit nasty.
He didn’t play by the same rules as everyone else. He wasn’t really a villain, per se, but he also had no problem with fighting superheroes if they got in his way or annoyed him in some way, like when he took advantage of another one of the classic “lifting Thor’s hammer” loopholes to beat up Thor.
We later learned that the Red Hulk had the ability to absorb energy from people around him which would then charge himself up. So, say, when he was fighting against Thor, he would be charged up on Thor’s hammer and would then become stronger than expected. When he fought against the Green Hulk, he would absorb some of the Green Hulk’s gamma radiation which, in turn, would weaken the Green Hulk and make him easier to defeat.
Eventually, we learned that the Red Hulk was secretly Thunderbolt Ross, the man who had made it his life’s mission to hunt down the Hulk. Now that he cut a deal with the Leader and a bunch of other smart villains to power himself up with gamma radiation, he became a red version of the Hulk, but he maintained his mind, complete with all his many years of military know-how. It made him a difficult foe for anyone to defeat.
However, while the plan was always for Thunderbolt Ross to become the Red Hulk, Marvel editorial wanted a back-up just in case they changed their minds about using Ross, so enter Jeff Parker, WAY before Hulk #1 ever came out!
You see, while the Red Hulk wouldn’t debut until 2008, Marvel knew that the character would be introduced following World War Hulk, the conclusion to Greg Pak’s run on the Hulk, which wouldn’t launch until 2007 (as Pak’s Planet Hulk storyline was still going on), so plans were being made all the way back in 2006. Jeff Parker told Chris Sims in a Comics Alliance interview in 2010 about Agents of Atlas:
“Way back in the first miniseries is coincidentally, when Secret Marvel (Joe, Jeph [Loeb], [Mark] Paniccia, [Greg] Pak, everyone involved in Hulk, etc.) were talking about the idea of a Red Hulk showing up at the end of World War Hulk. It was well decided that it was going to be Thunderbolt Ross, but I think everybody wanted a back door for the option of going another direction should something come up- which is a good practice in this kind of stuff. And that contingency turned out to be a character named Jake Oh, an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. To help seed Jake Oh, we volunteered to put him in a scene in “Agents of Atlas,” [In August 2006’s issue #1, art by Leonard Kirk and Kris Justice] which turned out to be the scene you probably call Robot Carrying Gorilla With Four Guns.
Of course that’s the biggest moment of issue 1, but while Dum Dum Dugan is trying to stop the Mojave Base infiltration, he kindly yells an order to the only agent who gets a name….
…and then Leonard and I gave him another panel:
Again holding a ridiculously huge gun. I assume he would have ended up on the site when the satellites blast Hulk, get irradiated, etc. So Red Hulk was almost Jake-Effing-Oh. Rock on Jake Oh, you never amounted to anything.”
Amusingly, Pak would then latch on to Agent Oh, featuring him right away in his Phoenix: Warsong miniseries with Tyler Kirkham and Sal Regla just two months after Oh’s debut (I suppose this, too, could still have been about establishing Oh as a character in case he was chosen to be the Red Hulk)…
and then in the excellent (but shortlived) War Machine series that Pak did soon afterwards with Leonard Manco (and then years later in Pak’s Totally Awesome Hulk run, so Jake Oh ended up having quite the Marvel career, really).
Obviously, though, Jake Oh was never needed to fill in for Thunderbolt Ross, and really, by 2008, Jeph Loeb was set on Thunderbolt Ross and I don’t believe Loeb even ultimately used the setup at the end of World War Hulk (where it appears as though a group of people are exposed to radiation from the Hulk) to actually make Ross the Hulk (it was instead a deal he cut with the villainous Intelligentsia), so it was really immaterial.
Thanks to Jeff Parker and Chris Sims for the information! And thanks to Greg Pak for keeping on keeping on with Jake Oh!
SOME OTHER ENTERTAINMENT LEGENDS!
Check out some entertainment legends from Legends Revealed:
1. Did Phil Rizzuto Not Realize What ‘Paradise By the Dashboard Lights’ Was About When He Did His Play-By-Play for the Song?
2. Did the Original Host of Blue’s Clues Leave the Show Because He Was Going Bald?
3. Did CBS Create An Alternate Version of Gilligan’s Island Where The Boat DOESN’T Get Lost to Show How That Was a Better Idea for a Show?
4. What is “That” in the Meatloaf Song “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”?
PART TWO SOON!
Check back soon for part 2 of this installment’s legends!
Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com
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