We have now seen this story many, many times (is there a single major character that hasn't ended up ruling a dystopian alternate future?), but it was relatively innovative at the time I think, and the kind of Killraven/Marvel 2099 take on comic-book cyberpunk that the future rebels sport here (those ponytails! That headgear!) is pleasing to me. Also I like that it was weird dumb luck (i.e., nuclear war) that killed all the heroes and the Hulk ended up in charge just because he is made of radiation or whatever--these days, it seems like a nuclear bomb is just a joke to be laughed off and only a super can even effect another super. Lame! ( )

The best Incredible Hulk story, period. This was the surprise book that showed that superheroes could break bad long before Breaking Bad was even an idea for a show. Thinking about how a character that was synonymous with being strong but dumb getting flipped was a strange idea. In this book the Hulk is smart but has turned evil. What that meant to the character has been felt in the series since this book was released. The writer is one of the definitive creators in the characters history. This proves shows why he is considered the number creator in the characters history. ( )

Collecting the two-issue stand-alone mini-series Hulk: Future Imperfect (#1's cover date: Dec. 1992; #2's cover date: Feb. 1993), The Incredible Hulk: Future Imperfect is a slim (94 pages), comic book-sized trade paperback with gorgeous art by George Perez (who inks his own pencils here) and a script that is by turns humorous and bleak by fan favorite (and sometimes Star Trek novelist) Peter David. David, who was then the writer on The Incredible Hulk comic book, subsequently incorporated the events of Future Imperfect into main-line continuity in The Incredible Hulk, by having Janis appear in the pages of that comic with tales of the Hulk's much-older self, The Maestro, still causing grief for any and all who cross his path.

The Hulk here is the Hulk that was then appearing in the pages of his own magazine: the amalgam of Robert Bruce Banner (usually called "Bruce" by his friends, not "Robert" or "Bob"), the "Hulk smash!" green-skinned Hulk , and the original, gray-skinned Hulk (which writer/artist Al Milgrom revived and which David continued to use when he took over the scripting chores, most memorably as an enforcer at a Las Vegas casino hotel called "Mister Fixit;" thankfully submerged in this amalgam Hulk's personality is the mindless green-skinned Hulk of the end of writer Bill Mantlo's run on the book or during John Byrne's frustratingly brief run [The Incredible Hulk Vol. 1, #295 [May 1984] or so to #313 [Nov. 1985]; Byrne's run was in Vol. 1, #314 [Dec. 1985] to #320 [June 1986]) that David introduced in the pages of The Incredible Hulk Vol. 1, #377 (Jan. 1991); if you have no love for the idea of an intelligent, studly green-skinned Hulk, Future Imperfect will likely not be your cuppa.

The great-granddaughter of long-time friend to Banner and Hulk, Rick Jones, uses Doctor Doom's time machine to travel back into "our" (i.e., the normative Marvel Universe) time to recruit, via Jones, the intelligent Hulk to combat his decades-older (and hairier) self, The Maestro, who, in the wake of couple of different global thermonuclear wars, has set himself up as a petty dictator of a rag-tag kingdom in what is apparently the former U.S. Southwest (where the Hulk was first born, in the pages of the first issue of The Incredible Hulk, cover date May 1962). "Our" Hulk is horrified and repulsed by what he has become in this alternate universe, and seeks to boot The Maestro off of his throne on general principles, as well as in the service of the big-budget psychodrama that the David-scripted Hulk battles usually were. Perez's art is in fine fettle here -- the battle scenes do not disappoint -- and it's clear that superhero comics at their best should be printed on the glossy paper of this collection, and not on the traditional newsprint (which was phased out in the late 1990s/early 2000s).

A stand-out sequence is the aged Rick Jones' souvenir room, filled with the detritus of all the superheroes (and supervillains) that The Maestro has killed, as his strength increased geometrically as a result of the residual radiation from mankind's nuclear wars. (A quibble: I don't believe for a moment that even the ultra-strong Maestro could shatter the Silver Surfer's surfboard, as is shown here, particularly if even he couldn't shatter Captain America's vibranium-adamantium shield.) Close inspection will reveal a gag (or three) and special guest appearances of relics or photos of some other comic book companies' characters, such as Mike Baron and Steve Rude's Nexus, and a jersey with an awfully familiar-looking "R" emblazoned on it.

While Future Imperfect doesn't get my vote as the best David-scripted Hulk story EVAH, it does rank pretty high in an impressive canon; if it doesn't reward multiple re-readings to the extent that some of his other work does (such as the beginning of his Pantheon saga, the wedding of Rick Jones, or the Mister Fixit-to-Doc Savagesque amalgam Hulk), it's still a fine, stand-alone work and a nice jumping off point for the end of David's first run on The Incredible Hulk. ( )