Le Incroyable Hulk, pardon my french

Today is Bill Bixby´s birthday whom many may know from My Favorite Martian ( which I knew as My Uncle from Mars since that was what it was called in the german version where it had a totally different title song ), The Courtship of Eddie´s Father or The Magician. For me he´s always been Doctor David Banner from The Hulk and as I have no real recollection of the other tv shows I wanted to do a Hulk - centric post.

Which as longtime readers may have already guessed is something that has to do with comic books. And in this case with french comic books.

If you have read my description of the blog in the blog header picture ( and I don´t expect many readers have as I received two questions this week in the comment section that could have been answered by just reading the post in question so nobody really reads anything on this blog ) you may notice that my mission statement there says that I write about the translated versions of comics but which I don´t do that often now.

Which is mostly due to a lack of the necessary resources. I´ve already mentioned that I " read " most of the Len Wein / Sal Buscema / Ernie Chan issues of THE INCREDIBLE HULK in GAMMA, the french version published by Artima in my post This Man This Monster Secret Cover Monday . But so far all I had to compare the issues to were the german issues of DIE SPINNE, where these stories appeared as a back up and which had some of the pages missing. That would have been a half hearted post at best but now that I have volume 6 of ESSENTIAL HULK ( which is the first one of this series you should buy because if you only buy one this should be it ) I can actually find out everything the french publisher left out. Now I don´t want people to misunderstand me, I´m not trying to bash the french edition as none of the foreign editions are perfect, least of all the german editions. But I thought this might be interesting for readers of the original versions who have never seen a foreign edition. And for reference sake since I haven´t seen this kind of post on the internet. I´m not going to comment on the translation as my french is not good enough for that but judging from the machine lettering and the empty space in the word balloons a lot was left out there too.

I tried to include all missing pages but I could not find them all.

GAMMA 19 - COLOSSES EN FURIE ( COLOSSUS FOAMING WITH RAGE )

12 Francs, 68 pages, thick non glossy paper, cardboard cover

All three issues of GAMMA I have come with ads for other comics but this is the only one where they are in color, the other ads are white and blue.

inside front cover ad for ARAK, L´ ESCADRON DES ETOILES ( All Star Squadron ), LE MANOIR DES FANTOMES and LES GEANTS DES SUPER - HEROS : ZATANNA ET BATMAN ( The Brave and The Bold 169 cover )

reprinting Incredible Hulk 214 to 217

issue 214 page 10 missing - this page ( and possibly another ) was also missing in the german version. When I read the ESSENTIAL I finally found out that Hulk was not as clumsy as I thought because in the german version he falls on his face after falling on his ass. The truth was that Jack of Hearts hit him again and then dodged the Hulk´s counter attack.

issue 215 cover, page 14 and 15 missing - 2 pages of the Hulk chasing after Thunderbolt Ross before the Hulk finally corners him. They probably cut this because it is not essential to the story but this way Ross comes off as an old fart who gets a heart attack from Hulk staring angrily at him

issue 216 cover, page 2 and 5 missing - with page 2 missing Hulk comes off as a bit of a wuss since he immediately goes through the trap door

page 5 is subplot with Doc Samson and the Leader for the following issues

issue 217 cover missing - besides the one on the cover all the original covers are missing, I´m only mentioning it for the statistic lovers

inside back cover ad for LA LIGE DE JUSTICE ( Justice League ), LES JEUNES TITANS ( New Teen Titans ), HULK : POWER MAN ET IRON FIST and LES VENGEURS ( Avengers ), back cover ad for LES MICRONAUTES

GAMMA 20 - LA PROIE DES PIRATES ( THE PIRATES´ BOUNTY )

8 Francs, 68 pages, regular paper, thinner cardboard cover

inside front cover ad for WARLORD, LA LÉGENDE DE STAR - LORD, L´ EPÉE DU DEMON and GUÉRILLA pour MISS HULK ( Savage She Hulk )

reprinting Incredible Hulk 218 to 221

issue 218 cover, page 16 missing - one page of the Doc Samson / Rhino fight. Not really important storywise since Doc Samson is a wuss anyway

issue 219 page 1 missing - now this is a really hard blow for art fans. How can you cut such a beautiful spash page ? These guys are the best.

issue 220 cover, page 1 missing - see comment above

issue 221 cover, page 1 missing - beautiful splash inks by Alfredo Alcala

inside back cover ad for LE MOTARD FANTOME ( Ghost Rider ), DRACULA LE VAMPIRE, LES MICRONAUTES and GAMMA 19 : COLOSSES EN FURIE

back cover ad for already published issues of the GAMMA series

GAMMA 21 - L´ ÉTRE RADIOACTIF ( THE RADIOACTIVE BEING )

8 Francs, 68 pages, regular paper, thinner cardboard cover

inside front cover ad for LA LÉGENDE DE STAR - LORD, DRACULA LE VAMPIRE, DEFENSEURS, CAPTAIN CAROTTE ET SON FABULEUX ZOO CLUB

reprinting Incredible Hulk 222 to 225

issue 222 pages 15 and 16 missing - almost the entire fight between the Hulk and Billy has been cut. In the french version the Hulk gets punched two times in close succession and then the grotto caves in

issue 223 cover missing

issue 224 cover, pages 2 and 3 missing - it seems the french cut everything that was not necessary to the story as this gives a bit of background information about what happened to the Leader before

issue 225 cover, page 12 and the last panel on page 17 missing - one page of Doc Samson and Hulk fighting the Humanoids. The final panel was probably cut because it has the cliffhanger for the next issue. Since I don´t have the next issue - or any info if there WAS a next issue - I don´t know how they resolved this. The page appeared like it is shown below.

inside back cover ad for LES MICRONAUTES, LE MOTARD FANTOME, WARLORD and LES JEUNES TITANS, back cover ad for Pope Jean Paul II

So that´s all that is to be said about these issues and I hope it wasn´t too boring since there may be a few more of these post coming in the future.

There are a few websites to thank without whom I could not have done this post. Some of the missing pages were provided by A.R.C.H.I.V.E. and THE INCREDIBLE HULK LIBRARY while most of the cover by Arédit Artima were found on the always reliable GRAND COMICS DATABASE website.

Link time : INTERNET 451 has a post on Ernie Chan, Brian Cronin at COMIC BOOK RESOURCES sheds some light on the rumor that Bill Bixby starred in a She Hulk pilot, JOHN BIERLY has some interviews with people who have worked with Bill Bixby and THE FLAMING NOSE TV BLOG did a long post on him last year with a lot of videos so I can skip that part. Now I have to put all the pictures of french comic covers I got while making this post in the folders but not without posting a few videos of my own.

Thanks to John Hurt, who celebrates his 76th birthday Today, I can put a Doctor Who clip onto the post. He has played a lot of different roles but to all future generations he will now forever be known as the War Doctor.



Today is just full of interesting birthdays and if I had known that Conan creator Robert E. Howard and porn star Ava Devine were born on this day this would have been a very different post. Anyway, Today is also the 61st birthday of John Wesley Shipp, best know to people of my generation as the Flash in the far to short lived 90s tv series. The younger audience knows him as Barry Allen´s Dad from the new Flash tv show and originally I wanted to post this video from the old show but the embedding has been disabled. So instead here is a video from COMIC MISCONCEPTIONS about the Green Arrow tv show that was supposed to spin out of the 90s Flash.



I wanted to include the Hulk in some kind of animated capacity so here are the Top Ten Animated Superhero TV Series which - for obvious reasons - does neither include Avengers Assemble nor Agents of S.M.A.S. H. but instead Avengers - Earth´s Mightiest Heroes which has the best portrayal of the Hulk on tv for a long time. Some of their candidates are a bit odd like the awful Teen Titans cartoon but there are some good ones in here.



The last birthday I´m going to mention is Sam Cooke so this is for Sam.



I wanted to include another cosplay video so I chose this one which is rather new. Man, every time I think I am ready to treat the subject of cosplaying professionally and objective Yaya goes and wears something like this and turns me back into a drooling, uncontrollably horny idiot.

Even if her part is rather short ( I never what she´s cosplaying as and have to check out her website to find out who Junko Enoshima is ) but stunning as always and there are a lot of other cosplayers - male and female - in the clip with great costumes especially the Steampunk guys. I have watched a few of these the last few days because while I don´t know if I am going to cosplay at Erlangen now is the time to get inspired.



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