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rickjones 's review for:

Hulk: Gray by Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale
4.0

Ironically, I discovered this series because it was mentioned in a video I was listening to in order to fall asleep, but the writing was so incredible that I read the entire volume non-stop while writing down notes even though I'm exhausted and have serious trouble paying attention to almost anything.

While this comic drastically changes original canon, and there are pieces of it that have been changed by further backstory since it was written, I really enjoyed this different and more emotional view of who Hulk was and how his relationships between both those he cared about and hated played out.

The revelations Bruce has while speaking felt organic and written with thought, and unfortunately while the last conclusion he comes to is not a pleasant one, it was built up to and flowed smoothly with the rest of the plot instead of being dropped like a second gamma bomb. 

I tend to care about media I'm interested in for the characters much more than the events surrounding them, so reading something that focused on psychology rather than action was refreshing. The narrative between Bruce and Leonard that layered over the rest of the story was executed effectively, when it could have easily come off as shallow. 

While there's really nothing in this series that is joyful, it was created so well that it's still enjoyable and I will probably read it again even though I now have an entire eleven pages of details I've written down about it to refer to.