A quick flip-through of the slim, 48-page volume, offering panel after panel and page after page of Rude's sleek, beautiful pencil art inked by Al Milgrom sold me: This was a comic book that a comic book reader needed to have standing on his bookshelf, even one as young, inexperienced and as Marvel ambivalent as me (At the time, DC Versus Marvel and All-Access were among the only Marvel-related comics I had ever bought*).
Re-reading it about 25 years later near the very end of the DC Versus Marvel Omnibus, I was pleased to find that it still held up quite well, and I'm as happy to recommend it to anyone now as I would have been back when I was still in college.
Much of that is due to the work of Rude, whose work I've seen far too little of in the years since, but, along with a handful of other artists, I've always considered to be an ideal superhero artist. Like, when I close my eyes and imagine a comic book superhero, I'm quite likely to see a figure as drawn by Rude.
Rude's lay-outs for the book consist of many six-panel pages, with regular breaks from the format to keep it from becoming monotonous, but nothing too radical. There's a stately, classic look and feel to the pages of the book.
I've used the word "ideal" more than once to describe his work already, but that's really what his Superman looked like to me—and continues to look like, even if now I can see more specific influences in it.
While Rude is very much working in his own particular style here, he, more than any other artist in this collection, also seems to be inspired and influenced by the work of the two characters' creators and, in Superman's case, later artists (and non-comics portrayals), to give us classic, original takes on the characters, characters that were, like all superhero comics characters, in constant flux and which, by the end of the '90s, didn't really resemble their original iterations all that strongly.
The script, by Roger Stern, rather cleverly anchors the book in the modern day of 1999, while setting the majority of the story in some nebulous past, which I guess would probably be somewhere in the early 1960s or so, based on the looks of the fashions, cars and settings...and on the particular statuses of the featured characters.
Stern builds in a framing sequence that is set in the apparent "now" (or the now of 1999, anyway), with Lois Lane sitting on a couch watching a documentary about "Doctor Robert Bruce Banner-- --and the curse of the Incredible Hulk."
"Hi, Honey! I'm home..." Superman calls and, after entering through the window, the pair kiss and chat briefly, before the Man of Steel notices what she's watching.
This leads to a bit of reflection, as Superman notes that both he and Banner have lead double lives ("Double Lives" is actually the title of the story) and he briefly re-tells their origins mostly for the benefit of the readers.
He then says, "I can't begin to imagine what life must have been like for Banner..." as a series of three panels zooms closer and closer to the Hulk's face, and, in the last panel in the sequence it looms large over the silhouette of a sleeping figure, crying "No! No!!" The words "...ALL THOSE YEARS AGO", apparently the end of Superman's sentence, run like a bridge beneath the panels and draw the reader into the story that will fill most of the book's pages.
At the end of that story, we return to Lois and Clark's living room in the present, where they reflect on the "ending" of Bruce's story, with his marriage to Betty Ross, his identity becoming public, and her death. They note how troubled Banner and Betty's life was, and how lucky they themselves are, and then, when Superman wonders where Bruce is now, the scene shifts to a row of television sets in storefront window, with Banner's reflection watching the final scenes of the documentary about his life, before turning and walking off, an image of the Hulk in the sky above his tiny figure.
In between? Well, in that vague past that Stern sets his crossover in, Banner awakens from a nightmare—he was the sleeping figure in the abovementioned sequence, of course—in a hidden lab, and transforms into The Hulk, to the surprise of his friend and confidante, Rick Jones.
Hulk storms off, eventually landing at a barbeque in Arizona, where the hungry brute avails himself of the chicken.
Meanwhile, reporter Clark Kent is at a midwestern college, interviewing a Professor Carson about his new breakthrough, a "triangulating seismograph" capable of predicting earthquakes. It's this machine that alerts Kent of something happening in Arizona, resulting in a big panel occupying two-thirds of a page, in which Superman stands atop a rock ledge, hands on his hips, to confront The Hulk, who is busily stuffing chicken into his mouth with his bare hands.
"So you're the big shot from back East, huh?" The Hulk says, as Superman floats down to him. "Well, I wouldn't say that--!" Superman replies. "Neither would I!" The Hulk says, throwing the first punch. Sick burn, Hulk!
After a brief scuffle, The Hulk throws Superman into space and, by the time the Man of Steel returns, The Hulk has moved on (I suppose it's worth noting that, in this story, the pair are much more evenly matched in terms of strength, as opposed to the first time they came to blows, way back in 1981's Marvel Treasury Edition #28).
Back at the Daily Planet office (where the computers seem to suggest this is actually taking place sometime in the earlier '90s, as retro as so much of the rest of the book may look), Lois sees that Clark is researching The Hulk, and worried he's going to get another superhero scoop on her after his breaking the Superman story, she beats him to editor Perry White, asking him to assign her a story on The Hulk.
Clark, now needing a new assignment to cover his investigation of The Hulk as Superman, pitches a profile on Dr. Bruce Banner. At the time, the fact that Banner actually is The Hulk isn't common knowledge, but Banner is associated with The Hulk and seems to be in the general vicinity of him most of the time.
They're not the only citizens of Metropolis heading to the American southwest, though. After Rick manages to track down The Hulk and toss some special tranquilizers down his mouth, Banner returns to the army base to meet with a corporate VIP that General Thaddeaus "Thunderbolt" Ross is hosting: Lex Luthor, who Rude draws as middle-aged, a little on the heavy side, and with notable red eyebrows and a fringe of red hair around the side and back of his bald head.
Luthor, a major army contractor, wants to recruit Banner for Lexcorp, which he is fairly obvious about, and, less so, The Hulk to battle Superman, and he has therefore come on something of a charm offensive...coupled with some espionage.
Luthor's plotting ultimately involves a robot duplicate of The Hulk, which naturally leads to the real Hulk and Superman coming to blows again, this time for a longer, more drawn-out fight than their earlier skirmish. And before the two can manage to make nice, as battling superheroes inevitably do, Luthor turns Banner's massive Gamma Gun on them both.
Stern spends plenty of real estate on getting the two casts together in various configurations throughout, not just the title characters fighting, but their secret identities chatting, their love interests sharing a car ride and being imperiled together, Luthor and Ross talking about The Hulk and military might, and so on (Like Lois, using the sex appeal Rude gives her to try to get Rick's attention for an interview about the Hulk, for example).
While I'm certainly not as familiar with The Hulk as I am Superman (particularly this earlier, original iteration of the character), I have to imagine that with Stern and Rude doing so right by the characters, they also did right by their respective fans.
This was, of course, one of the last few crossovers DC and Marvel would manage before they quit cooperating on stories again, so I'm glad that their collaboration lasted long enough to give it to us this particular crossover.
Next: 2000's Batman/Daredevil: King of New York #1
*Oh, and The Ren & Stimpy Show #1 and #6.
