While I'm certainly enjoying the Hulk by Bruce Jones and the artists currently on the title, for me the definitive version remains that created by Peter David, and my favorite segment of the David run was illustrated by Dale Keown. This reunion was therefore something of a treat to me as a fan. It's also the start of something new from Marvel, a neat idea to tell not the origin stories of the heroes, but rather their last stories, putting a capstone on the tales, something akin to what Frank Miller did for Batman with Dark Knight Returns. The End is not on the level of Dark Knight Returns, but it is a solid read, an intriguing tale mostly of philosophical exploration and the theme of man vs. nature, a conflict rarely seen in comic books.
For this story to work, David has to convey the utter desolation and loneliness that Banner would feel. It's next to impossible to imagine being the last man on Earth, and how anyone could be that and remain at all sane, but David really brings the feeling to the reader with strong narration from Banner. Hearing that he has walked across the entire North American continent, and hearing him talk about his toughened body or lack of need for clothing really drives home that he is totally and utterly alone.
Of course, much of this comes from the imagery of Dale Keown, someone whose work I haven't sampled in quite some time. Keown's Pitt didn't do much for me, but his work on the Hulk remains a favorite, and his work here is pretty incredible. There's some rather warped stuff in this script, including a scene of the Hulk being eviscerated and knitting himself back together as well as the horrifying imagery of nuclear war, and Keown captures the brutality and ugliness of that while still making the art aesthetically beautiful.
This is not an action story, or even a super-hero story; it's a horror story. The horror of being alone, the horror of being surrounded by monsters, the horror of a world that has been destroyed, David and Keown take the reader through this, using the Hulk as a perfect vehicle for this type of tale. Though there is an action scene, an impressive and terrifying swarm of mutant cockroaches attacking the Hulk, the conflict in this book is all about Bruce Banner and the Hulk coming to terms with themselves. It's a quieter sort of book than you'd expect from a Hulk story, but it still feels like a Hulk story, rather than a post-apocalypse story with the Hulk shoe-horned in.
The only competition this story had for me was in Peter David's previous "last Hulk story," the one that closed off his run on the title, and The End can't live up to that, as it was one of my favorite Peter David tales ever. However, this is an entirely different kind of tale, both from David's previous stories and from what Jones is doing on the title, and it is a beautiful and engaging read.
