Friday, January 29, 2016

Making a Splash: Sal and Joe's Incredible Hulk

Hey, hey, hey, Groove-ophiles! One of Ol' Groove's favorite Incredible Hulk era was the Len Wein/Sal Buscema/Joe Staton run of issues 194-203 and 205-209 (September 1975-June 1976, August-December 1976). Sal and Joe's art was a huge factor in how cool Incredible Hulk was during this time. Teen Groove loved how their styles meshed. In fact, Ol' Groove would dare to say that Joe was one of Sal's all-time best finishers evah! Check out the following splashes to see if you agree...


  1. Oddly, even though they looked great together, Sal said in an interview I read that he didn't like Joe's inking of him. I thought they were a fantastic team, combining the best strengths of both. I had been following Joe Staton over at Charlton and was overjoyed when he started working at Marvel.

  2. #200 was the first issue of Hulk I ever had, and that was probably the first time I'd seen Staton's art in any form - he would go on to become one of my favorites, as would Sal. Interesting to learn that Sal didn't like Staton's inks. Like keythd23, I think the combination is fantastic; to me, Staton was certainly one of Sal's better inkers.

  3. Although there's no denying the talent of the artist, this rendering of Hulk leaves me cold, and fails to capture (for me), something that I recognize as the "real" Hulk. I preferred Kirby and Trimpe versions. It's weird how you get stuck on a favorite artist who defines a character for you. For instance, I don't like any Conan depictions other than Barry Smith (and of course the Frazetta depictions).

  4. Sal's pencils could be very sparse because he was doing so much work. Staton seemed to emphasize the flatness of the art, compared to someone like Janson. who added a bit more depth and mood. It might've been better to have Sal ink Joe.

    It seems typically short-sighted of Marvel at the time to have not given Staton a full pencil and ink job somewhere after seeing the beautiful work he did at Charlton. He had to go to DC to get some regular penciling gigs. It seems like such a waste; he could do every genre from romance to science fiction to horror.



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