RRP £14.99 Lowest New Price £8.67

Panini (UK) Ltd. Number of pages: 384 Language: English (Unknown) Language: English (Original Language)

RRP: £14.99
Brilliant
Review date: 2008-09-06 Rating: 10 out of 10

This is truly a brilliant graphic novel.
First off the setting. The Hulk went on a rampage in Las Vegas after being sent crazy by another gamma bomb and only the intervention of The Thing and The Human Torch of The Fantastic Four managed to stop him. Next Nick Fury of SHIELD sent the Hulk into space to destroy a space station called Godseye which could destroy any position on the Earth if it wished, what Nick Fury hadn't told The Hulk was that the space station was built by SHIELD. After The Hulk had defeated Godseye he was extracted from the Moon by SHIELD but he wasn't going in the direction of Earth...

This leads us to the beginning of Planet Hulk where a secret group, formed by; Black Bolt of the Inhumans, Mr Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, Tony Stark AKA Iron Man, Stephen Strange AKA Dr Strange, Professor Charles Xavier of the X-Men and Namor The Sub-Mariner, called The Illuminati. Only Black Bolt, Iron Man, Mr Fantastic and Dr Strange are behind the plot to send The Hulk away, though because of the events of House of M, Charles Xavier is unavailiable and The Sub-Mariner doesn't agree with the plot.
The four remaining Illuminati explain to The Hulk that he has constantly threatened the Earth with his power and they can't have that any more so they have sent him away to a "lush planet. Full of vegetation and game. But no intelligent life forms." so The Hulk can "finally find peace". But of course that plan doesn't work and the ship in knocked off course and sent through a wormhole to the planet Sakaar. What follows is the epic Planet Hulk storyline.

I have tried to avoid giving away any big plot developments within Planet Hulk and can understand why it is an epic story. Not only because of the length (14 comics in total) but because of the quality of the story as well. There are too many comics nowadays who claim to be great simply because of the length but this graphic novel can boast a brilliant story to go along with its length that doesn't make it seem as if the story is monotonous and never-ending.
The events within the graphci novel are so earth-shatteringly (or Sakaar-shatteringly) inportant to future storylines that it grows in quality as it goes on.
I do have one criticism though. I felt a bit cheated by the ending and that it could have gone on for a bit longer but in this graphic novel the inclusion of the, epic in it's own right, 49 page "Gladiator's Guidebook" makes up for the quickly brought on ending. With an incredibly comprehensive study of all the fictional characters in the graphic novel ,that you would only normally get from an encyclopedia printed on its own, is very well done and only adds to the atmosphere of the comics.

Because this comic spans over the Civil War storyline (and everything that follows from it), that occurs in The Hulks absence, World War Hulk sees The Hulk returning to a very different world. The time difference isn't brilliantly explained in Planet Hulk or World War Hulk but this lack of exposition makes it seem even more realistic.

I recommend listening to "Jeff Wayne's Warr of the Worlds" whilst reading this graphic novel. It really set an atmosphere for me that complemented the story.

Brilliant story and impressive length I'm sure that Planet Hulk will soon be included in the sentence "There's loads of great graphic novels; The Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns and Maus."