Maestro Hulk Begins

[Music] what's up my comic comrad we've been getting a solid dose of awesome comic story since new comics started hitting shelves again back in may and while marvel hasn't been publishing as many titles or issues as dc they've had some great stuff dropped that is really starting to reshape the marvel universe in various ways a great example of that is what donnie case has been doing with his thor in venom titles but a few months back marvel announced that prolific hulk writer peter david was returning to finally give maestro hulk an official origin story which is a character that he created in the 1993 future imperfect story well they were true to their word and maestro won the first of a five part mini-series officially dropped on august 19th artist and co-creator george perez even came by to add a variant cover for issue one and it's pretty dope i must say so today we're going to highlight all the major beats from issue one to see how bruce banner's journey to becoming the jaded and villainous maestro hulk began but before we dive in we want to thank raikkon for sponsoring today's episode more and more people are talking about the quality of these raycon's everyday e25 earbuds and for good reason we've been using them ourselves for the past few months and they're pretty freaking awesome they sound just as good as other top audio brands but half the price on top of the e25 earbuds having powerful bass and noise isolation they are so comfortable to wear that you easily forget you have them on which as we've seen leads to people accidentally ignoring you when you're trying to give them an amazing idea well i still have an awesome idea for an ad you and me we're going to steal helicopters doesn't matter that we don't know how to fly said helicopters we're gonna figure it out [Music] [Applause] [Music] raycon's latest model the e25 is the best version yet with six hours of play time seamless bluetooth pairing more bass more color options and an even more compact design which makes them great for working out listening to the latest episode of the variant podcast or you know maybe listening to music while bungie jumping out of a helicopter i don't even care that's a fantastic idea on top of all that if you go to dot com forward slash variant or click the link in the description below you can get an awesome deal on your own e25 earbuds right now it's amazing quality that's crazy affordable so again go to buyrecon.com forward slash variant and get the hookup for yourself but now it's time for maestro issue one and in case it wasn't obvious we're about to spoil the crap out of the first issue so there's your spoiler warning ready roll bumper first and foremost let's run through a brief overview of who maestro hulk is as mentioned in the open the character was created by peter david and george perez in 1993 for the incredible hulk future in perfect storyline in that story we are taken to the post-apocalyptic alternate reality of earth 9200 or 9200 where maestro is introduced as an older but tyrannical and evil version of the hulk we learned that in this world and timeline at some point in the past there was a nuclear war that completely destroyed the planet along with nearly all of its inhabitants including all the superheroes leaving it all wasteland full of radioactive fallout and rubble hulk of course survives due to his connection to gamma radiation and was even made stronger by the high levels of radiation everywhere but the constant exposure also drove him completely insane this now ruthless hulk declared himself ruler of what was left of the world and named his kingdom dystopia to give you an idea of the level of crazy we're talking about here one of the things he is known for is his trophy room full of broken items that each belong to various heroes in the marvel universe we're talking cap shield silver surfer's board mjolnir magneto's helmet and dr doom's mask just to name a few all implying that he may have had a hand in some of their deaths which leads us back to how powerful maestro hulk is as i mentioned maestro was made stronger by absorbing the radiation from the nuclear fallout like a lot stronger in fact up until the creation of greg pox world breaker hulk in the world war hulk story maestro hulk was the most powerful hulk we had ever seen for example at one point in the future and perfect story we see maestro demonstrate that crazy strength by breaking the main hulk's neck yes he fights the regular hulk who had been brought forward in time to help a group of rebels bring down the big green dictator but that's for another episode on another day the point is maestro hulk is terrifyingly strong and crazy he then went on to appear in several other origin stories since its creation including the exiles run in the early 2000s but we never really got the full official origin of how the earth ended up that way that is until now maestro one opens up with something of a surreal setting with professor hull completely destroying a sentinel while reminiscing about how good life currently is for him and how happy he betty and their sons are together which is interesting right out the gate because he and betty never had kids we then see cap thor and wolverine show up just to praise the hulk for taking down the sentinel single-handedly followed by another off moment with betty showing up to reiterate how perfect everything is we then jump to the avengers mansion where the hulk and betty are now sitting for dinner while their two sons thaddeus and rick run around playing the hulk continues to reflect to himself about how his days of dealing with his identity disorder are long behind him and that he's better but as he's saying these things to himself betty tells their sons to stop playing and eat but one of the boys responds to her by saying we don't have to do what you say and when betty asks why he answers because you're dead you know the saying if it seems too good to be true it probably is yeah that applies here anyway his son's answer obviously gets the hulk's attention and he asks betty what is he talking about but she basically ignores him and continues to talk about dinner while the sun starts saying she's dead rick's dead thaddeus ross is dead dead dead dead this freaks hulk out even more as he starts demanding answers from betty at which point she starts repeating http 404 bad command or file name like some kind of glitching computer program then suddenly vanishes along with everything else leaving the hulk standing in darkness captain america then shows up out of nowhere and tells him that everything is fine and that mysterio was toying with his mind causing him to see and hear things that weren't really happening but the hulk senses something is off and says no none of this makes any sense and tries to leave the house but when he walks through a door he finds himself in a room that looks like the inside of a computer and says if this is mysterio he's managed to raise himself up to doctor strange levels of illusion then just as suddenly the inside of the house reappeared around him and he found himself face to face with several members of the avengers including black widow who starts to say the hulk lullaby from the mcu to calm him down saying the sun's getting real low but the hulk just responds abruptly saying what are you talking about widow overall that's a pretty funny crossover reference for the marvel cinematic universe and notice that black widow who appears here even resembles scarlett johansson black widow so that's pretty interesting as well multiverse anyway the hulk isn't interested in whatever game was being played here and once again tries to leave only to have thor try to stop him by grabbing his arm but the frustrated and increasingly impatient hulk backhands thor across the room while simultaneously thinking to himself this feels like a dream all of the avengers then try to charge him at once but he just hits them with a thunderclap which sends them offline all but the vision that is who was unaffected by the vibrations due to his phasing abilities we then see vision approach the hulk and say i apologize for this dr banner it's the only way as he begins to phase his hand into the hulk's mind as a last ditch attempt to make him calm down but the hulk somehow manages to focus his mind grabs vision's arm and screams get out of my head and when he does we see him break free of the matrix and wake up in the real world hooked to all sorts of tubes and sensors that look straight out of the weapon x program the now completely disoriented hulk begins to look around and asks where am i and how long have i been here at which point a strange woman and a small boy walk up wearing futuristic protective bodysuits and hulk confuses the identity of the boy automatically thinking it's his matrix son rick but after a brief back and forth with the woman and uh you're not my daddy moment with a boy a group of aim soldiers come flying in wearing what looks like new type of stormtrooper armor and they start yelling for the hulk to freeze for those of you who aren't familiar with aim it stands for advanced idea mechanics they were originally created as a scientific research arm of hydra but later broke off on their own their group also made its first mcu appearance in iron man 3. but let's get back to the story the aim soldiers threaten to use their weapons on the hulk which doesn't phase him one bit he just walks straight up to them and dares them to shoot by saying come on let's see what you've got don't keep me waiting it turns out however that their weapons are highly advanced and more powerful than he thought so when the soldiers opened fire the hulk got launched into the back wall but just before he blacked out he hammer punches his way through the floor and drops to the lower level he then finds himself in yet another room similar to the one he woke up in with other tanks with people being kept in suspended animation like he was including abomination but just as he began to analyze the situation the aim soldiers cap up to him and come rushing in now fed up with all of it the hulk attempts to rush them but runs right into a force field immediately followed by another single laser blast that launches him backward the hulk then hears someone say that's enough of that and he looks up to see that the blast came from none other than a much older modoc as a side note i just have to mention that this is a really cool and interesting addition for an underused villain by peter david but if you have no idea who modoc is it's actually an acronym that stands for mental organism designed only for killing once just the man and average technician for aim named george tarleton he was selected by hydra to be mutated and bioengineered into a living computer in order to explore the mysteries and test the capabilities of the cosmic cube but instead the cube drove him insane and he became a homicidal maniac machine seems legit with that understood modoc says to the hulk i assume you remember me doctor and when the hulk looks up and he sees modoc he says to himself my god he looks like he's aged 100 years although the issue doesn't specifically clarify how much time has passed or exactly how long hulk was kept in suspended animation the hulk goes on to ask what's going on where's betty where's rick jones to which modoc answers their dead doctor long dead this understandably sends the hulk into a rage as his immediate assumption is that modoc is responsible for whatever happened to them and everything that's going on in general so he attacks modok screaming what did you do tackling him to the ground but when he does modoc begins to say what are you going to do doctor kill me go ahead end my life if you call this a life you'd be doing me a favor come on the hulk then pulls his fist back to smash him but sees the seriousness in modoc's face and stops himself so modoc uses his doomsday chair to stand himself back up and says to be honest i had forgotten you were down here my circuitry is failing i fear credit it to age the hulk then asks you said they were dead how did they die who was it the leader dr doom you and modoc answers they did a confused hulk responds by asking they who hydra and modoc angrily responds no you idiot the great they whenever you complain about the awful things they are doing to the world because of their stupid decisions your leaders your governments the great unwashed they then anger turns to sadness in his eyes as he says world war three modoch then goes on to explain that many years ago a terrorist group sets off nuclear weapons in both the united states and russia and then hacked the computer systems of the two countries to make each of them believe that the other was responsible for the attack this led to a full-blown nuclear war holocaust which wiped out 60 percent of humanity as if that wasn't horrific enough years later another psychotic group who called themselves the black scythe had decided that humankind's time on earth was at an end and determined to kill all remaining human beings on the planet as modok goes on to explain the murderous black scythe members unleashed a toxic gas on hundreds of cities throughout the world and as modok puts it it was most efficient and now to press hulk asks why don't i remember any of this and modoc explains that when the first missiles fell he and his group of aim soldiers gathered the hulk and others seemingly benefited from any kind of radiation like gamma and cosmic rays and brought them to their secret underground bunker below the streets of los angeles placing them in a controlled state of suspended animation until things improved the hulk growing increasingly jaded and angry with every passing word decides that he needs proof he needs to see for himself if it's all really gone and as he smashes his way into the elevator shaft that leads to the surface he considers whether it could be all a lie he says to himself wouldn't the heroes have stopped it somehow but his hope quickly fades as he says to himself the fact is you can't save a world that's determined to destroy itself and that pessimism is immediately validated as he leaps straight through the top of the shaft and breaks through to the surface where he finds that completely bombed out and destroyed los angeles staring in disbelief the hulk says my god he wasn't lying they really did it they blew themselves to hell all the adventures we heroes had everything we did to protect them from the bad guys but we couldn't protect them from themselves hulk then wanders up to the hollywood sign which oddly survived when modok catches up to him modok basically asked him to come back with him and be part of rebuilding humanity but the hulk responds by saying why so that humanity can regenerate thrive and blow itself up again and as modoc attempts to answer by saying one would hope the same end wouldn't result the hulk then just begins to walk away saying no thanks modok tries to plead with him saying come with me dr banner you could have friends but the hulk cuts them off again by responding i don't need them friends die and stop calling me dr banner that's not me anymore moroccan then asks so you're the hulk full time now are you and the hulk responds for now we'll see what the future brings and as the issue ends he leaps away and we see that he's changed what's left of the hollywood sign to say hulk and that my friends is maestro issue 1. it's a fun and really interesting way to kick off the origin miniseries for one of the most compelling and mysterious versions of the hulk ever created and one of the big standouts for us is the direct references to the mcu are we gonna have multiverse stuff going on here here on the show and especially on our podcast we've talked extensively about the shifts and comics towards servicing the film side and this definitely seems to be in that vein and when you consider the fact that the mcu has already introduced aim in iron man 3 as i previously mentioned it really makes you wonder if marvel's setting up the stage to introduce modoc it could absolutely line up with the expansion of the multiverse as a side story of its own or even as a reset of some kind somewhere down the line regardless the title is off to a good start and i'm really curious to see where peter david takes it and as always we highly recommend that you pick this issue up for yourself so you can catch all the little beats and nuances but also let us know what you think of maestro issue 1 in the comments below and just like that my comment comrades that brings today's episode to a close but if you like this hulk themed episode be sure to check out this one right here and if you like our channel be sure to subscribe like and comment it always helps us out but i will see your lovely faces next time when i talk about what all things comics

Channel: Variant Comics

Views: 578,327

Keywords: Maestro, Hulk, Bruce Banner, MODOK, AIM, Marvel, Peter David, Future Imperfect, Avengers, Abomination, geek, nerd, variant, comics, comic books

Id: tX7UJmfkubk

Length: 13min 51sec (831 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 05 2020