In honor of the impending San Diego Comic-Con, which Dawn and I will be down in the thick of by the time you read this, I thought I’d take a moment for a recommendation. Believe it or not, it’s for a Hulk comic.

That’s the wraparound cover for Issue 16, and if you’re getting body horror vibes or even flashbacks to John Carpenter’s The Thing, congratulations because there’s no false advertising here. Writer Al Ewing stated he wanted to take the Hulk character back to the borderline(?) horror comics of his origins, and with the assistance of penciler Joe Bennett, boy howdy does he ever.

I do most of my comics reading through a Marvel Unlimited subscription these days, meaning I’m usually about six months behind the curve since that’s how long of a lag time Marvel decided on (unless you buy the print issue or pay an unlock fee… and hell, son, I’m already paying a subscription so who needs that noise?). But I’d been hearing the hype, and so far about a dozen issues in it hasn’t disappointed.  Well, except that each issue makes me want to read the next, so when I reached the end of the currently available run, that was disappointing.

If you’re not a fan of the old school horror vibe this may not be your bag, but if you liked you some Tales From The Crypt and its ilk, or especially if you were a fan of Alan Moore and Steve Bissette’s classic run on Swamp Thing in the 1980s, you’ll dig this. In fact this reminded me a lot of that Swamp Thing, perhaps a tad less psychedelic but certainly fascinating and disturbing. And I don’t think it’s coincidence that both series are obsessed in their own way with “The Green.” To go into more detail would be spoilery, so I’ll just declare: read it and see.