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World War M’s first issue builds up enemies of the Maestro who may finally give the Hulk the fight he deserves.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Maestro: World War M, available now.
The Hulk is known for his epic battles, and over the course of his history the gamma-irradiated monster squared off against Marvel’s greatest heroes and villains plenty of times. His Future Imperfect iteration as the Maestro combines all the strength the Hulk is known for with the cunning intelligence of the Bruce Banner persona, meaning that in order to put him down once and for all a team of combatants would need to be unimaginably powerful.
And that team may just be assembling in the pages of Maestro: World War M. The new miniseries that will cap off the trilogy of Maestro stories puts all the pieces into place to create the most epic Hulk battle yet. But will they be enough to put the Maestro down?
The Future Imperfect sees the world of Marvel in ruins after a nuclear apocalypse destroys most life on the planet. Maestro survived in order to rule over the ash heap, and in the course of his previous series he saw the first challenges to his authority while swiftly putting each of them down. But the first issue of the latest series sees his enemies begin their conspiracy against him, uniting forces for a partnership between Hulk villains and Marvel heroes that has never been formed before.
The mastermind behind the plot is Doctor Doom, previously outwitted by Maestro in War & Pax. The comic sees Doom reach out to the Hulk’s former partner Rick Jones, an old man by the timeline of the story who is just a shade of his former glory. Doom’s intellect and Jones’ intimate knowledge of Hulk could be a dangerous enough duo, but the comic also assembles the forces of Abomination, Namor, and the original Human Torch, Jim Hammond, as potential allies that together would doubtless be enough to give Maestro the fight of his life.
Abomination is known in the 616 canon as one of Hulk’s primary villains, with the similarly gamma-irradiated behemoth frequently proving a match to Hulk’s own strength. Namor is perhaps one of Hulk’s most classic matchups, with the Atlantean anti-hero frequently battling Hulk over the course of their history. But the real kicker to the assemblage of characters may just be the Human Torch. He has a brief scuffle with Maestro who remarks on Torch’s ability to hurt him, and though a focused nova flame tears Maestro through a chunk of the surrounding city fails to put him down, it’s considerable what that force could do when combined with the power and planning of the others.
But what perhaps build the impending battle up as most interesting of all is that it is not so clear from the outset who will win. Whereas most Hulk fights prove to be a foregone conclusion that the hero will win out in the end, with the only variation being whether or not Hulk is the hero of the particular story, there are no clear heroes where the Maestro and his enemies are concerned. While Maestro wants to rule over the remainder of civilization, Doom wants to occupy the same position. Arguably worse than both is that Namor does not want to see humanity survive at all, still bearing his grudge on behalf of his underwater society so frequently polluted and persecuted by humanity. But if there is no clear hero, then the tension of who will win becomes all the greater.
Of course, there is one looming aspect in the meta-narrative that makes a potential winner likely: The Maestro trilogy takes place before the comics of Future Imperfect where he originally appeared, meaning that the future Hulk at least survives whatever bout he is about to get into. But past installments in the trilogy, showed how Maestro could be overpowered by beings like Hercules while still using his cunning to win the day in the end. Doom, Namor, and the others could similarly survive only to lick their wounds elsewhere in the world.
The end result is that no reader can really be sure how such a fight will go. But if anyone seems to stand a chance of besting the Maestro they seem like the perfect combination of brains and brawns to do so, and getting to see the excitement of such a fight will doubtless give readers everything they ever want in an epic Hulk smackdown.
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