Essentially, this is standard Hulk stuff: Bruce Banner wants to stop his horrible transformation, General Ross wants to kill the Hulk, Betty Ross wants to save the man she loves,and all sorts of villains get into the mix. There is a bit more continuity than in some other TV cartoon fare (though not on the level of, say, Gargoyles). The animation is standard TV stuff.Keeping the commercial breaks in so obviously wasn’t necessary, I have to say.
Audio
The sound is pretty much run-of-the-mill, being almost exactly what you’d expect from a TV cartoon, no more, no less. The music is fine, and is big and loud from all speakers. This comes,however, at the expense of virtually all sound FX. There are a few (some nice moments with thunder), but even large explosions fail to have the surround impact they should have.
Video
There are a couple of speckles in the opening shots, but then the picture is in tip-top shape.The colours are as vibrant as one could wish, with the all-important greens and blacks as deep and solid as one could wish. There is no grain, either.
Special Features
The extras are a notch above some of the other recent cartoon anthology releases. The most fascinating one is the pilot episode from the 1960’s attempt to bring the Hulk to the small screen.The animation is beyond primitive, but uses Jack Kirby’s original drawings from the comic book,and so almost justifies the purchase of the disc by itself. “Inside the Hulk” is a viewing option where, every time the Hulk icon appears, you have the option of leaving the story to hear what comic writer Peter David has to say. He introduces himself very briefly in another minute extra,but there isn’t much to tell viewers that here is perhaps the most important writer to have worked on The Hulk. Anyway, there are also episode introductions by Stan Lee, and Stan Lee’s Soapbox,where he defends comic books as legitimate art. There are also some Disney trailers tossed into the mix. The menu is very elaborate, animated and scored, right down to the intro and transitions.
Closing Thoughts
In some ways, the extras outweigh the value of the feature itself. Certainly that cheerfully primitive pilot episode is well worth tracking down.
