Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

With the Hulk movie out, I was thinking of finding a classic Hulk comic to review for this week’s Dusting Off. After all, the Hulk – done right – is one of my favourite characters. While looking through my back issues, I got to this one and stopped without even bothering to check the others – this is easily one of the greats.

There’s a lot to love about the justifiably-classic Incredible Hulk #300. The fact that Hulk runs around entirely in purple underpants for the entire issue, the fact that it features the BLACK SUIT Spider-Man, and, of course, the fact that the cover rather prosaically claims: “Special Abnormally Large Size Issue!” on the front.

The real reason, though, that it’s become a well-loved favourite, is the simple, fun and timeless nature of the story: The Hulk fights pretty much everyone, and he only loses on a technicality. The issue starts with SHIELD bearing down on a rampaging Hulk. Daredevil and Spider-Man are helping out where they can, but the battle between Hulk and SHIELD is causing all kind of damage to the streets, which are full of fleeing pedestrians. Meanwhile, Dr. Strange is at home, lamenting the fact that he caused all of this by helping Bruce mentally decide to become the Hulk, burying his personality forever (this is, of course, not as permanent as it sounds). As the Hulk ploughs through more SHIELD agents, Johnny Storm, Luke Cage and Iron Fist all fail to stop his rampage.

Eventually the Avengers turn up. Unfortunately, at this point in Marvel history, the Avengers are made up of Monica “Captain Marvel” Rambeau, Wasp, Scarlet Witch, Starfox and Vision, all of whom are a load of weaklings compared to the Hulk. He beats the crap out of a few of them, before he starts to fight the one decent Avenger – Thor. While this battle goes on, Dr. Strange is giving all of his evil friends a dimensional phone call, but decides that none of them are trustworthy enough to take care of the Hulk without killing him. Thor and Hulk battle to a stalemate, and the situation looks grim when suddenly, Strange shows up and tricks Hulk into jumping into a dimensional crossroads. Cue a year’s worth of stories about the Hulk’s nomadic, inter-dimensional exile.

Sounds a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it? Well, that’s because it is. Gloriously so. Mantlo – the first writer to introduce the idea that Banner was the victim of child abuse, adding significantly to the character - does his best to make it clear that the Hulk has finally become what everyone thought he was. A beast of pure rage and strength, without any humanity at all, tearing through the city unable to be stopped. The artwork comes from Sal Buscema and Gerry Talaoc, and even compared to today’s high standards, it holds up remarkably, with some brilliant splash images and some dynamic page layouts – be that Hulk smashing a billboard containing the credits, or Starfox being thrown the entire length of the page, top to bottom.

This story is very much a relation of the recent Hulk storylines. For example, Strange decides that the best way to deal with Hulk is to send him somewhere nice and out of the way (in this case it’s dimensional crossroads, not another planet as in Planet Hulk). Prior to that, he’d got everyone on the ropes, destroying the town and generally being unstoppable – much like in World War Hulk. It’s clearly a big influence with today’s creators, and justifiably so.

The occasionally simplistic nature of the character means that it’s fairly hard to find as many truly classic Hulk stories compared to the amount his peers have, but there’s no doubt that Incredible Hulk #300 is one of them.