In Wizard Magazine, David has said the reason he killed Betty off was because he was having a difficult time with his marriage. He said that he often felt that Betty and Bruce were reflections to him and his own wife. When David’s wife left him, he killed Betty off.

Also, in another issue of Wizard, David said that he also wrote his final issue with the intention of showing how Marvel blew away years’ worth of stories.

I thought Thunderbolts -1 was fantastic. It does a lot in the way of making Baron Zemo II more than a Red Skull wannabe. Of course, Thunderbolts as a whole did that, especially when Fabian Nicieza came to the title.

Greg, I have really enjoyed your writeups of the Peter David Hulk. It’s one of my favorite runs of anything ever, and you really did it justice. Kudos.

He’s said that he left the book because of the way Marvel wanted him to handle the book *after* her death, though (they wanted the Hulk to go on a berserk rampage, and he didn’t).

Post-David, some writers got off to good starts (Jones & Jenkins in particular) but either ran out of ideas or couldn’t execute their ideas in a satisfactory manner. I confess to enjoying the first 12 issues of Loeb’s Hulk (haven’t bought any since the terrible issue 600, haven’t missed it), but it’s more of a Marvel Universe story than a Hulk story. I haven’t read Skaar or the latest Pak issues, but I do know they’re not about the traditional Hulk. The Hulk is one of my favorite concepts, but really difficult to make interesting.

I believe Rick appeared in…what was it…the Loners? Whatever book convinced people that Katie Power was a lesbian. He also showed up at Captain America’s wake. Then he showed up in World War Hulk, and tried to talk Hulk out of beating up the heroes.

Now he’s a blue armadillo. Really.

Probably still sulking, pissed off that none of the Avengers bothered to invite him to the post-Disassembled Wake thing. He only is the person who brought the team into being, after all. I know I’d view that as a direct personal insult in his place…

Note that at the end of PAD’s “Tempest Fugit” arc, Betty shows up alive AGAIN. It was a very weird appearance that punctuated a very weird story, so it’s not clear whether Betty is alive via either Jones, PAD, or Superboy punch.

(Quick rant: during the “Offenders” arc on Loeb’s Hulk, Hulk was told that if his team beat Red Hulk’s, he could have Jarella alive again. However, Red Hulk won that fight. I’d REALLY hoped that Red Hulk would have been granted the wish to have someone be alive again, with his choice being Betty and further fueling the mystery of who Red Hulk is. That would have effectively brought back Betty, while making the PAD/Jones question irrelevant. But instead, we got Red Hulk on a surfboard. Sigh.)

I read Jones’s run, and I don’t remember them changing it back when he was writing it.

I don’t blame PAD, because it clearly was editorially mandated, but during a short stint by PAD he effectively retconned Jones’ run as a dream.

Adam: Good points about the Hulk feeling out of sorts without Banner. I suppose I should read the Heroes Reborn mini-series – I have the first issue, but I’m not sure why I never got the rest.

The issues just prior to these, with the Hulk taking over the Florida Key, aren’t bad, but I chose not to include them because they seem to suffer from the same thing that the rest of the post-426, pre-454 issues suffer from: David would get a good idea, and then simply abandon it. “Ghosts of the Future” is a classic example of this – there’s a lot he brings up, but then he never follows through. Again, I assume it’s because of Marvel editorial interference, but that means that, as entertaining as some of the issues are, they’re just not great.

Hmmm. I didn’t realize that Betty was still dead. I read Jones’s run, and I don’t remember them changing it back when he was writing it. That’s kind of amazing that Marvel has kept Betty dead, considering that it feels like David only did it to piss them off because he was leaving the book.

And I might be a minority of one in this opinion, but I;’d count Jeff Purves as one of the great hulk artists. He actually made the Hulk look like an UGLY, very large man, like he was intended to in the early Kirby issues. Not 12 feet tall, just a ridiculously huge dude. It worked well in the context of those stories.