The final issue of the Warbound arc takes place before, during, and slightly after the events of World War Hulk #5. There’s a small amount of danger in this, because going into it, we can already feel like it was largely irrelevant in the main story, but fair enough – this arc has always been the “Behind the Scenes” part of WWH.

The bulk of the issue features Cho, Wong and the Hulk-supporting renegades tracking down the demon Zom, who after being expunged from Strange after his defeat, has transferred his essence to Iron Man’s discarded Hulkbuster armour. Er, okay, sounds a bit strange, but I can deal with it. After clearing that mess up, they arrive just in time for the climax of WWH which honestly isn’t improved much by being shown from a different angle.

The high point of this issue certainly isn’t the plot, which is fairly generic background-filler for WWH, skirting around the main story but not actually interacting with it. Instead, the best stuff is the character interaction. A heavy focus obviously goes on Hercules and Cho, but Angel and Namora also get plenty of good material. In fact it’s quite damning to the X-Books that my favourite appearances for Angel – in this arc, and the time his guest-starred in Thunderbolts – didn’t even come out of the X-Office.

Ultimately, the Warbound arc is a fun one with great writing and art (Kirk’s pencils remind me of Mark Bagley, circa Thunderbolts, which is a good thing.) even if the sense of irrelevance permeates it all. Cho has been an interesting character to me since his introduction in Amazing Fantasy #15 (er, not that one) so it’s nice to see Pak making use of him. However, it’s not entirely nice to see how he’s going to in the future…

When I started this blog, I promised it would be about the comics, not about industry drama and celebrity. I got about 350 words into the entry for this issue before I realised I’d barely talked about the actual story at all, so I decided to be fair to the comic and to the creators, and I wrote the above review. If you’re actually interested in seeing what I have to say about comics marketing and politics, concerning the re-titling and re-casting of this series, click more to read it.

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Now, I’ve been a fairly big supporter of Pak’s Hulk run ever since the early days of it. I think he’s done the most interesting work with the character since Peter David’s original run. However (and you could probably see that word coming) it’s very hard not to view this, essentially the final issue of his stint on Hulk, without getting the opinion that the last arc, Warbound, has all been a bit of a joke on the supporters of the title.

While the main action moved to the World War Hulk miniseries, the title has followed the adventures of Armadeus Cho (the new ”Mastermind Excello”) and his group of Hulk supporters. This makes sense, because during Planet Hulk, Cho’s plot thread would occasionally weave into the title, so while the real action happens elsewhere, this is an appropriate place to tie it all up. Except it doesn’t tie it up. Next issue, the title becomes “Incredible Hercules,” and will permanently be about the titular demi-God and his new sidekick, Cho. That’s right! Warbound has been acting as a big back-door pilot arc to try and soft-launch a series about a character that probably wouldn’t stand a chance if launched with a new issue one.

While the rational part of my brain knows that I can just drop this title and go straight to the new Hulk #1 that’ll be released, the fanboy in me feels like this is an attempt to take advantage of those people so obsessed with numbering and continuity that they’ll buy something they wouldn’t otherwise give a second look. Something that punishes, rather than rewards the long-term fans of the title. The last time anything similar (but admittedly, not identical) happened, it was the Thunderbolts relaunch (wow, how many times can I mention Thunderbolts in an otherwise unrelated Hulk review?!) and we all know how well that turned out. While I bear no ill will against anyone or anything associated with the title, I can’t help but say I hope it doesn’t work out, because this isn’t the kind of marketing I’d like to see on a regular basis.