As a child of the Marvel Age and the Silver Age of Comics the last few years have been difficult as we have lost so many of the people we so admired.
We have just lost Harlan Ellison, the writer on the edge of forever, on June 27, 2018. His association with Marvel during the Marvel Age
produced some unforgettable stories. Now is a good time to share them.
In 1971 Harlan wrote an outline for a two part Avengers/Hulk
tale. The story appeared in Avengers #88 and was continued Incredible Hulk #140. His outline for this tale was published in Marvelmania #4.
Here is the complete outline of that story.
It’s working! Screaming in
impotent rage, the Hulk struggles feebly in the grip of raw energy cascading
over him. And as Mr. Fantastic and Tony Stark look on with Professor X, gauging
the possibilities of finally saving Bruce Banner from the living coffin of
flesh wherein he has been trapped for so many years, we cut away to: The
Avengers, hot on the trail of a menace so great they cannot even speak his name
without fearing dread. They are stalking through swamp-land...shrouded in mist,
eerie, compelling... on a nameless atoll near Easter Island. Looking for a
decayed and ancient idol, an icon of a lost civilization: key to a subterranean
strong-hold of the decimator whose very existence on the planet is more deadly
than a thousand hydrogen bombs. They push onward and, finally, in the heart of
the steaming night swamp they stumble on it—a statue so grotesque and monstrous
it brings them to a halt. And we cut back to:
The
Hulk, pinned in a torrent of lightning. As the electricity takes its toll and
the Hulk sinks down senseless, the great crane-machines move in, to lift him
into the coma crypt. But as they lumber forward, as they wait for the instant
the electricity ceases its crackling work, the Hulk suddenly becomes
transparent, wavers in their sight, and... vanishes. Winks out of existence.
Cut to the underground eyrie of a bizarre new villain, Syklop; half-human,
half-creature of a long-dead race, he is the menace being even now stalked by
The Avengers. And as we first see him, first dwell on the eldritch horror of
his single bee-faceted ruby eye, his strangely structured body, we see the Hulk
suddenly appears in the crystal receiving portal of a weird machine.
Syklop runs through his background
and his purpose at this meaningful moment like a damned soul telling its beads
for the final, agonizing time: his race had lived in the bowels of the Earth
eons before even apes had walked the land. But they had fallen into disrepute
with the dark gods they had worshipped, and they had been put to eternal sleep.
For millennia they had dwelled in that starless night of empty dreams; until
Syklop had been called up from slumber by the dark gods, who had promised him
if he could tap a new source of power for their failing energy demands, they
would release his race—who would then with ease recapture the world for
themselves. And so, with the aid of ancient sciences and regimens even the most
advanced human scientists would call sorcery, Syklop has located a source of
power, limitless power, that if he can only tap, he can save his race from
eternal sleep and certain destruction. That power source: The Hulk.
Now,
with the Hulk stunned, lying semi-conscious in the portal of the great machine
he has used to disassemble the green giant’s atoms and reassemble them
here...Syklop knows his theory was correct: the only way to uncover the secret
of the Hulk’s incredible power is to compress the atoms of that green form so
the molecular structure can be better studied under the analyzers of another of
Syklop’s herculean machines.
But
to do this, the Hulk must be reduced in size and must be shrunk and compressed.
He transfers the Hulk to the other machine, and the shrinking ray begins to
bathe green behemoth in a ruby glow. Syklop knows he must be careful, and not
shrink the creature too much.
But even as he works his ancient science on
The Hulk, The Avengers crash into the subterranean laboratory. A fight ensues,
in which Syklop must struggle for his life against the massed power of The
Avengers assembled. While so doing he is unable to watch the progress of the
shrinkage of the Hulk, and in mere moments the Hulk has been reduced and
compressed so much, he becomes invisible, shrinks down and down and down until
he is hurled into a sub-atomic, sub molecular universe that exists in a mote of
Down, down, down until he emerges, gigantic in another world. And is shrunk
down more and more until he stands astraddle two continents, a Colossus of
Rhodes from another universe. The shrinking continues rapidly and the Hulk soon
becomes smaller than the average size of a creature in this sub-molecular
universe, but...
Cut
back to Syklop’s subterranean laboratory, where the horror representative of
that sleeping race of monsters manages to reach the machine used to assemble
and disassemble atoms. He turns the ray on The Avengers and they blink out of
existence-appearing suddenly... with their memories wiped clean of anything
even remotely connected to Syklop...on the downtown express platform of the IRT
7th Avenue Subway... turning and looking and confused at how they got there
as...Syklop dashes to close off the shrinking ray.
Realizing
he has sent his one hope of success to another universe, Syklop begins making
preparations to follow the Hulk to that infinitesimal space. But to do that he
has to revamp the ray so it will shrink him to a size larger than the size the
Hulk must have now become, and bring them both back at a pre-set time. It will
take time to make such changes, and while Syklop bends to his intricate
chore...
Now
he is dwarfed by the feather-topped trees, he is smaller than the diamond rocks
striated with onyx, he is tinier than the lumbering, lupine beast snuffling at
him through the underbrush. But he is still the Hulk. And as the saber-fanged
wild wolf-thing spies him and leaps at him, the Hulk grabs at one of the
protruding razor-sharp teeth, rips it loose from the creature’s mouth, and
impales the wolf-thing through the throat on its own tooth.
He
hears the shrieks of people in terror and gives one mighty leap that carries
him above the waving feather-fronds of the trees. Casting about in mid-leap, he
sees a city of pink and blue stone, and from that city comes the massed sound
of a populace under siege. He hurls himself through the air and lands with a
crash just outside the gates of the magical little city, where he sees a rabid
pack of saber-toothed wolves like the one he has just slain, attacking the
walls. And he sees that the people, who are small and green and quite beautiful
are ill equipped to stave them off. He identifies with them: they are his size,
they are his color, and he has no love for the wolves.
He wades into the beasts, using his behemoth
power to scatter them and frighten them. He grabs two of them by their tails
and ties the tails together; then, using the wolves as a Gaucho would use a
bola, he spins them overhead, around and around, finally hurling them far off
across the horizon. One after another he crushes the wolves, hitting one so
hard he drives him deep into the ground.
Finally, when they are dispersed, the gates of
the city open and the people stream out. They seem, at first, to be attacking
(to the dim brain of the Hulk), but they are so lovely, so friendly, he holds
his blows for a moment and they lift him to their shoulders, carry him into the
city, and there they make the Hulk their king!
The queen, Jarella, is obviously taken with
the Hulk and she orders the Pantheon of Sorcerers to devise a way by which the
Hulk can learn their language. Torla, the head sorcerer, a kind of Merlin-like
man, works a spell (that in this universe is science, not magic) that not only
gives the Hulk the gift of speech as they speak it, but somehow clears the
befogged brain of the behemoth, and for the first time in many months he can
think rationally, not as the rampaging killer he has been.
The Hulk calls the court in session and
confronts Visis with the charges, and the assassin turns evidence against his
master. Everyone expects the Hulk to kill Visis right there in the throne room.
But this is a new Hulk, one whose mind has been cleared by Torla’s
magic/science. And he merely orders Visis to gather his goods and his
supporters and leave. He is banished.
The Queen and the court cheer the Hulk for his
humanity, and they declare they want him to stay with them forever. The Hulk’s
heart is full, for the first time he knows love and joy and...
An enormous shadow falls across the glass dome
of thr throne room. Then a monstrous hand crashes through the glass and huge
fingers grab the Hulk in an unbreakable grip. He is lifted up, out of the
castle, into the sky. In the grip of Syklop!
As Jarella and Torla and his
subjects watch in horror, King Hulk is lifted away and up and up and up. Then,
in the clutch of that ghastly eldritch creature who stands like a mountain
above their land, they see Syklop laugh his terrifying laugh of triumph and...
They both grow so enormous they vanish from the sub-molecular universe.
Jarella
is bereft of her love, and the people have lost their king. But what of the
Hulk?
He
reappears in Syklop’s laboratory, but before the monster can sedate the Hulk,
the effects of Torla’s sorcery wear off, and the Hulk goes on a rampage, demolishing
the lab. Then, before Syklop can stop him, he batters his way through the very
walls of the underground lab, through the earth, and leaps into the sky.
Syklop’s
equipment in ruined. He must start over again, if he can. But even before he
can contemplate such an alternative, one of the Dark Gods appears to him, even
more terrifying in its shadowy outlines than Syklop himself. And the Dark God
intones, “You have failed”!
For
the first time in his existence, the Hulk is happy. He seems at home! These
green people love him, want him, need him as their King. And for the first time
a beautiful woman loves him, not Bruce Banner but him, the Hulk. Only Visis,
the pretender to the throne, hates him, and plots to have him killed.
One
night the men of Visis descend on the Hulk as he sits staring out at the
multi-colored star sky of this nameless little world in a dust mote. He is
attacked but easily manages to drive them off, in the process grabbing one of
the assassins who tells him it is Visis behind the plot.
The
Hulk calls the court in session and confronts Visis with the charges, and the
assassin turns evidence against his master. Everyone expects the Hulk to kill
Visis right there in the throne room. But this is a new Hulk, one whose mind
has been cleared by Torla’s magic/science. And he merely orders Visis to gather
his goods and his supporters and leave. He is banished. The Queen and the court
cheer the Hulk for his humanity, and they declare they want him to stay with
them forever. The Hulk’s heart is full, for the first time he knows love and
joy and... An enormous shadow falls across the glass dome of the throne room.
Then a monstrous hand crashes through the glass and huge fingers grab the Hulk
in an unbreakable grip. He is lifted up, out of the castle, into the sky. In
the grip of Syklop!
As
Jarella and Torla and his subjects watch in horror, King Hulk is lifted away
and up and up and up. Then, in the clutch of that ghastly eldritch creature who
stands like a mountain above their land, they see Syklop laugh his terrifying
laugh of triumph and... They both grow so enormous they vanish from the
sub-molecular universe.
Jarella
is bereft of her love, and the people have lost their king. But what of the
Hulk?
He
reappears in Syklop’s laboratory, but before the monster can sedate the Hulk,
the effects of Torla’s sorcery wear off, and the Hulk goes on a rampage,
demolishing the lab. Then, before Syklop can stop him, he batters his way
through the very walls of the underground lab, through the earth, and leaps
into the sky.
Syklop’s
equipment in ruined. He must start over again, if he can. But even before he
can contemplate such an alternative, one of the Dark Gods appears to him, even
more terrifying in its shadowy outlines than Syklop himself. And the Dark God
intones, “You have failed”!
Syklop’s
screams as the Dark God takes his revenge And what of the Hulk?
Leaping
through the sky, a dim memory of happiness still fading from his fogged brain,
he remembers a tiny green Queen and a time of joy. And he soars away into the
distance, trying to find a place he can never find again, not even
understanding that the world and the life he seeks are forever denied him,
locked in a mote of dust clinging to his garments.
Once
again he is the homeless, brutal Hulk.
Harlan was to contribute to the Avengers again, in issue #101, 1972.
The story begins with a chess match and the plot unfolds like one. One man becomes the focal point of all history and he inadvertently threatens the world. Leonard Tippit is given super-human powers by the Watcher to kill five people who would have been the parents of the children that will cause the end of life on Earth. The Avengers battle him and they are aided by the overseeing Watcher.
“Five Dooms to Save Tomorrow!”
In 1973 Marvel published two issues of a digest magazines under the title, Haunt of Horror. Harlan had a story entitled Nova published.
The artwork is by Walt Simonson.
OOPS! Marvel misprinted the last two pages and had to reprint them in the next issue, correctly!
Just a small postscript:
Harlan's characters were not forgotten and were used in some of the best Hulk stories of that era. Here is the splash to Incredible Hulk #172.
