Anyone who’s read comic books knows: comic books are weird. Teenagers bitten by radioactive bugs get spider-powers instead of radiation poisoning. Aliens invade the planet every other Sunday. And a man who gets hit by a gamma bomb becomes the Incredible Hulk instead of disintegrating like a sensible person.
Still, it’s one thing for comic book readers to realize the inherent ridiculousness of comics, and quite another for the comic book characters themselves to recognize how absurd their world is. Yet that’s exactly what happens when the Hulk’s sidekick Rick Jones discovers his girlfriend Marlo Chandler has been murdered, prompting Rick to have a very… unexpected response.
The story, written by legendary Hulk writer Peter David, stretches back to the time when the Hulk transformed into a grey, smarter form called “Joe Fixit.” “Joe” took total control of Banner’s body and got to be the Hulk 24/7. Deciding to build a life of his own, he got a job as a Las Vegas casino enforcer and even got a girlfriend – statuesque redhead Marlo Chandler. While this new status quo didn’t last, Marlo came back into Bruce’s life when she began dating and got engaged to Hulk’s friend Rick Jones. After some awkward moments between Bruce’s wife Betty, Marlo fit in well with the group and even became good friends with Betty.
Sadly, these good times seemed to end when a woman claiming to be Rick Jones’ mother showed up and stabbed Marlo to death. The murder shocked Betty and Bruce (who had merged into the smart “Professor Hulk” version of himself at this point). Rick, however, had a very different reaction. Instead of going into shock or grieving for his lost fiancé, Rick ran to Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum and asked the good doctor to… bring Marlo back to life.
That’s right, having spent so much time with superheroes, aliens, and sorcerers, Rick was convinced that Strange could simply resurrect Marlo with a spell. Strange tried to point out that when a person dies, they stay dead – only to have Rick counter that by stating he had died and come back to life (when Thanos snapped him out of existence during The Infinity Gauntlet saga). Rick then asked Doctor Strange if Strange had ever died and come back, forcing Strange to admit that he had. Finally, Rick asked Wong (Strange’s manservant in the comics but a fellow sorcerer in the MCU) if he had come back from the dead, causing Wong to admit that he had also been resurrected.
Stating how ridiculous it was to believe death is permanent when everyone in the room had died and come back to life, Rick claimed this meant Marlo should be able to be resurrected as well. Strange, however, insisted only mystical deaths could be undone by his powers. Undaunted, Rick went to Reed Richards and then Hank Pym who also told him that death could not be undone (Considering that Reed would later successfully bring his best friend Ben Grimm back from the afterlife and Hank would attempt to resurrect his dead ex-wife Janet Van Dyne and build an artificial heaven for his friend Bill Foster, their statements seem rather hypocritical in hindsight).
Had this been the real world, Rick would have needed the services of a grief counselor to come to terms with his delusions. However, realizing that Rick was right and that resurrections do happen regularly in comics, writer Peter David chose to go in a different direction. The Hulk’s enemy The Leader approached Rick and offered to resurrect Marlo with a machine of his own – which he did in the next issue. Granted, the resurrection didn’t go perfectly at first – Marlo returned as a vegetable, forcing Rick to provide round-the-clock care for her and fight to keep her out of an institution. However, her mind eventually returned and she made a full recovery, going on to marry Rick and live her life in other comic book titles.
It’s an uplifting, yet somewhat metafictional take on comic book resurrection as David shows he’s not interested in giving the reader a “realistic” take on death since he knows that practically all main characters in comic books come back from the dead sooner or later. To be sure, Rick’s feelings of anger and desperation over Marlo’s death are very true-to-life, but the fact that he lives in a fictional world (and is aware of this on some level) makes a return from the dead not only possible but probable. Some readers may not find this particularly fair as death is much grimmer in the real world – but then again, miracles and magic are why fans read comics like The Incredible Hulk in the first place.
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