Ultimate Human

My love of the Hulk really started with the excellent 90's cartoon series and slightly more hazily the Lou Ferrigno/Bill Bixby days and this story conjures up warm memories of both those series. This story collects all 4 issues of Ultimate Human and starts with a haunted Bruce coming in desperation to Tony Stark for a possible cure to his quite literal inner monster, and it even has that glorious finite feeling that each episode of the above TV series have, with the Hulk bouncing away at the end to who knows where.... I also love Hulk stories that play up the dichotomy of Banner and Hulk and that's why I love the Ultimate incarnation of Hulk, with the weasely Bruce Banner in direct opposition to the truly monstrous Hulk.

This story is of course not all about the Hulk and Warren Ellis writes a bloody good Tony Stark, smooth, suave, funny, and again wonderfully different from the quite pathetic Banner. The third star in this story is Ellis' brilliant re-interpretation of the Leader. In this version the leader is one of Britain's finest, an MI6 agent who believes so strongly that Britain should have its own super soldier program and so desperate for quick results to prove this premise to his superiors that he tests the serum on himself. The British government is swaying more towards a European super soldier program, which would no doubt be exceedingly close to the mark. Upon application of the serum he still has the massive head you'd expect but his body is unable to support it and so he's wheelchair bound. Desperate to now get his hands on a working sample of super soldier serum he decides to get himself some Hulk blood. I really can't overstate how great the leader and his back story is. Anyway I won't drop any spoilers but needless to say all hell ensues as expected, and it definitely doesn't disappoint.

A massive two flippers up.