Written by Don Glut, Art by Sal Buscema
Inked by Bill Black colours by Roussos
I’ve never been that big a fan of Rick Jones in the past, but damned if he isn’t the hardest working sidekick in the superhero comic medium. This comic is so rich with incident I needed a score card to keep track of things.
Even Uatu knows that 35 pages ain't enough to let any part of this story breathe for more than a second, so he gets RIGHT TO IT; kicking things off with where things change; in this case, like in the original story, Gamma-Ray Scientist Bruce Banner sees hapless teenage idiot Rick Jones playing harmonica in the middle of a nuclear weapon testing site, and tries to get him to safety before he can be vaporized. Key difference this time is that Bruce makes it back to the safety trench before Rick can and he's the one who gets a hearty dosage of Gamma Ray.
For a few hours, Rick and Bruce thinks he's fine, and the Gamma Bomb was a failure since it left him completely unharmed, then the sun goes down and Rick suddenly turns green, huge, and starts talking like a Beatnik Caveman;
Instead of Rick Smashing Puny Army, Rick jumps to the desert where he can smash rocks instead; and he reverts back to his human form when the sun comes up (as was the style of the time).
Bruce tracks Rick down (not difficult, given the trail of destruction, amazing that nobody in the army ever managed it), and quickly deduces that Rick transforms into an invulnerable nuclear rage-monster when the sun goes down, and suggests that the kid stay in a fallout shelter built to withstand atomic strikes when going to bed while he works on a cure. Furthermore, this also means that General Ross really never sees or hears about The Hulk after that first outburst so he never becomes obsessed with hunting him down, and he quietly lives out the rest of his life in an uninteresting desk job.
And this arrangement works well for... about a quarter of a page when things change gears completely and Loki appears, looking for something on Earth strong enough to beat up his brother, sees a big green guy and says "Him, probably!", and uses his magic to make Rick want to leave the shelter and trick him into wrecking a bridge when he transforms, leading to the assembling of The Avengers to stop him, and then he joins te Avengers in order to beat up other guys like Loki instead once everything is cleared up. And almost immediately quitting the team because of Space Phantom chicanery.
Which, again, is basically exactly how the comics work out anyway; but this time, Bruce Banner finishes work on a prototype anti-Hulk weapon and blasts Rick with it before he can do much more than say he's cutting out of these low-life chickens and do his own solo-gig; and unlike pretty much every other instance of Hulk being cured in Marvel history; this actually works! Well, mostly; it made it so that Ricks no longer a nuclear rage monster whenever the sun goes down; just whenever he gets suitably stressed out. And he's Rick Jones, the most unflappable person in the entire Marvel universe, so that plainly isn't happening anytime soon.
So Rick sulks away, before anyone can say "Hey, why is the Hulk a teenager?" or "You okay Rick? You're an orphan who was just punched in the head a whole bunch by a Space-Phantom controlled Iron Man" or "Who is this random ass scientist who shot our friend, The Hulk?", where he happens upon a back-alley that JUST SO HAPPENS to contain Captain America who is fighting an assembly of HYDRA soldiers.
Which I call shenanigans on, since Cap was still frozen in ice when Hulk left the Avengers, and HYDRA didn't show up until long after that; that's how I can tell Roy didn't write this one.
Rick helps Captain America beat up fascists (because who wouldn't?) and Cap thanks him, decides he reminds him a lot of Bucky, and decides to make Rick The New Bucky; making him put on the old costume and everything!
Which, again, is basically exactly how Ricks life went back then; it... it was weird. This was weird behavior from Cap. Only real difference is that Rick si already weirdly strong as a result of being The Hulk so often
Anyway, it doesn't last long, because while Captain America and RANDOM TEENAGER HE JUST MET storm a secret HYDRA base, Rick manages to get sufficiently riled up beating the crap out of henchmen that he activates his transformation into The Hulk; and starts doing a MUCH more thorough job of beating up Hydra Goons; thorough enough that even Cap is concerned for their continued well-being, and he talks Rick down back into his human form; and Rick is so upset about all the murders he very nearly committed, that he decides to leave Cap behind and go wander in the desert.
If they weren't HYDRA, I could sympathize with Rick here, but... y'know... I'm okay with splattering those guys. They made their bed.
Anyway, Rick doesn't have time to process the ethics of using excessive force on nazis, when he sees a ghostly image of Captain America in the desert, beckoning him to an ancient cave, containing a set of Nega Band bracelets, which he dons and is suddenly confronted by Captain Mar-Vell!
Mar Vell quickly explains the situation; Marvel is trapped in the Negative Zone, but he and Rick are now bonded because of the Nega Bands, Rick can summon Marv by clinking them together, and then they swap places and Marv can't spend too much time on Earth because of Weird Space Wizard reasons.
None of this is an invention of the What If timeline; Captain Marvel was just a
wild-ass comic.
This quickly becomes another bad situation for Rick because the Negative Zone is also the domain of everyone (or at least my) favorite screaming bug-man; ANNIHILUS and boy oh boy does Annihilus hate Earthlings. Presumably he's indifferent to Kree super-soldiers since he didn't care about Mar-Vell.
Also; I love Sal Buscemas art in general, and he's going a great job with this comic in particular, but his Annihilus looks awful.
This is the other real diversion form the main continuity, since if Annihilus came a-callin' every time Captain Mar-Vell and Rick swapped places in the Captain Marvel comics, he kept it to himself.
This all comes to a head as, on one of his adventures, Cap gets a dose of nerve gas that makes him pass out, and leaves Rick stranded in the Negative Zone when Annihilus comes. And Rick is so laid back that he takes a weirdly long time to get stressed out by AN OUTERSPACE BUG-DRACULA STRANGLING HIM TO DEATH, but he eventually manages it and turns into the Hulk, at which point the tables turn pretty drastically;
It also leads to my other favorite part of the comic, besides BEATNIK HULK SPEAK; as Annihilus quickly realizes his "strangle a teenager to death" plan has backfired;
"In all the Universe, all which comes my way must PERISH! And in your death, I shall take exceptional delight! So continue to squirm, strain to break free of my grasp! Even now, as my fingers tighten around your throat, you struggle to survive, and even now... you begin to... grow and turn
emerald?"
"DON'T JIVE HULK WITH FANCY LINGO, BUG-MAN! HULK DOESN'T DIG IT!"
And Hulk starts beating the absolutey GARBAGE out of Annihilus to the thunderous applause of everyone else in the Negative Zone (he's not popular there, either), and this becomes relevant on Earth, where the scene shifts, as it turns out that while Rick was off helping... every single superhero at one point or another, Bruce was working on a final revisions of his Hulk cure, and needed Reed Richards' help to finish it and track down Rick, and, as it turns out, the combination of the intensity of Hulk and Annihilus pounding one another and the entire Negative Zone cheering Hulk on is audible through the Negative Zone Barrier Reed keeps in his lab.
This lets Reed and Banner pinpoint Ricks exact location in the Negative Zone, and gives them a clear enough shot with the Anti-Gamma Beam to turn Hulk back into Rick permanently.
Which you would think they'd be slightly hesitant to do since Hulk is presently in a fight against Annihilus so intense that an entire sub-universe is keenly aware of it, so he should probably stay hulked out for at least a few more minutes, but NOPE; the possible usefulness of having the Strongest There Is around to fight an omnicidal grasshopper doesn't enter anyones heads, and they blast him anyway.
Luckily, Negative Zone physics are
weird, so it doesn't work as expected; and instead of turning Hulk into Rick; it just makes Rick pop out of Hulk so now there's two of him; and the retrieve Rick safely, while Hulk remains behind to resume beating up Annihilus; eventually killing him by knocking him clean into the anti-matter barrier that keeps the Negative Zone apart from the rest of the Universe.
And so, Rick is free to resume his normal (ish) life, and spend some time with his girlfriend (who he met on one of his myriad adventures, and which wasn't otherwise relevant to this story), Mar-Vell gets to stay on Earth because... I'unno... complicated space wizard reasons, and Hulk gets to be the celebrated and beloved ruler of the Negative Zone, or having saved it from Annihilus' tyranny.
Pretty good day for everyone, really!
BUT DID IT HAPPEN?!?!
Heck yes it did; you don't spend as much time hanging out with Hulk as Rick Jones does without getting a pretty commendable dosage of Gamma Radiation; and wound up becoming Hulk, A-Bomb and Whisperer at various points in his career. They left the Green Door unlocked for him. Presently he's an upside down vestigial head on a glow-in-the-dark skeleton man so... y'know... he's had better days. Also, the Planet Hulk storyline is about Hulk becoming a celebrated societal leader after throwing off the tyranny of a brutal alien dictator.
NEXT TIME: This Comic Kills Space Fascists