Indestructible Hulk: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The Hulk is perhaps the most basic, meat-and-potatoes superhero you can imagine, and the Indestructible Hulk series is, in terms of its narrative structure, as basic and meat-and-potatoes a contemporary comic as you’re likely to see.
The frame story has it that Bruce Banner is tired of working in the shadow of such genius benefactors of humanity as Reed Richards and Tony Stark. As he complains to Maria Hill, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
Tony Stark and Reed Richards use their genius to save the world every other week. That’s how they’ll be remembered in history. Meanwhile, I . . . I who, forgive me, have just as much to contribute – will be lucky if my tombstone doesn’t simply say “Hulk smash!”
So here’s his pitch to Hill: if S.H.I.E.L.D. will fund him and set him up in a lab with a team of scientists to work under Bruce Banner, then they can have the use of the Hulk whenever they need him. And it’s a deal.
What follows is a series of comics where Hulk is let loose on baddies like the Mad Thinker, the Quintronic Man (both of these guys are basically evil geniuses operating battlebot suits), and Attuma the Lemurian. There’s nothing subtle about how the Hulk goes about these missions. The bad guys just blast him with everything they’ve got, which they reckon should be more than enough to destroy him, but guess what? He’s the Indestructible Hulk. So he ends up smashing them.
Like I say, meat and potatoes. But what made this a winner for me was the art by Leinil Francis Yu. This guy can really draw, delivering the goods whether it’s two people talking in a diner or a bunch of sea monsters taking out a fleet. And with great art you can never go wrong.
Alex Good 
Yep, the Hulk at his core is a thing of violence. Channel that violence and you have a story. The problem, as I see it, is finding new channels every 5-10 years.
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Yeah, and even though it’s repetitive it’s kind of funny in this comic how there’s always a point where the bad guy says “That’s it, NOTHING can possibly survive . . .” and then the Hulk just comes back and smashes them.
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I do wonder if he’s ever been thrown into the sun?
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I think in the Immortal Hulk he was literally smashing planets. It’s that gamma radiation. That’s the good stuff.
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How many different hulks are there? The Immortal… The Indestructible… The Incredible.. did they get to The Completely Knackered…?
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At some point, when they completely run out of ideas, they’ll go down that road 😦
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😁
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Well there’s a Green Hulk and a Red Hulk and a Grey Hulk. And some of them are brainy and can talk while others are just brutes.
But there’s lots of different Spider-Men and Iron Men too. They keep spinning all the characters off.
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So what is Banner working on in his fancy new lab?
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“Devices for the betterment of all mankind. Clean energies. Environment purifiers. Disease barriers. The like.”
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He should just go with “Hulk smash” — that’s a hell of an awkward tombstone!
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I think we have to imagine something on the scale of the Lincoln Memorial.
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