Incredible Hulk: Tempest Fugit (Comics) | Review

The green giant faces a psychological thriller testing how much abuse Banner's fractured mind can endure when Peter David (Incredible Hulk: The End, Incredible Hulk: Future Imperfect) returns. What starts as an island adventure spirals into something far sinister, proving the Hulk's greatest enemy lurks inside his own head.

The five-issue arc published in 2005 plays like a fever dream on purpose. You watch the Jade Giant battle everything from giant squids to Fin Fang Foom while fragments of Banner's traumatic high school past surface through flashbacks that feel deliberately disorienting.

Nothing adds up as characters appear out of nowhere and events unfold without logical connection. The entire experience feels like watching someone else's nightmare play out in real time and that deliberate disorientation serves a purpose. Because that is exactly what is happening to Banner through this twisted journey.

The Hulk walks across the ocean floor battling sharks and giant creatures in brutal underwater combat before washing up on a strange island where two survivors named Gwen and Ripley greet him with suspicious familiarity that immediately sets off warning signals.

Banner immediately faces a bunch of bizarre encounters that make no logical sense and defy any explanation for their sudden appearance here. He battles his own Gray Hulk incarnation, confronts General Ross, takes on Fin Fang Foom, squares off against Wolverine wearing his original Department H uniform from decades past.

Even Kang the Conqueror appears without explanation or any logical connection to the events. The island itself feels wrong, dreamlike, as if reality keeps shifting beneath the Hulk's feet with no consistent rules governing what happens next or why these specific enemies appear.

The truth reveals itself slowly and deliberately through careful misdirection and deception. The island exists as Nightmare's playground, an experiment designed to blur dreams and reality with the Hulk serving as his prime test subject for crossing dimensional barriers permanently and escaping his realm's confinement for good.

Gwen turns out to be Daydream, Nightmare's own daughter stripped of her memories and manipulated into helping her father's twisted plan. She becomes both victim and accomplice in the villain's scheme to finally escape confinement and enter the waking world.

Nightmare uses September 11, 2001 as his moment of maximum power, feeding on worldwide fear and trauma to cross from the Dream Dimension into the waking world with unprecedented strength and influence over reality that allows him to reshape existence itself.

The villain even confesses to manipulating recent Hulk history and orchestrating key events from the shadows, leaving Banner questioning which memories are genuine and which were planted illusions. This revelation shakes the foundation of everything Banner believes about his recent past and destabilizes his sense of reality.

Parallel flashbacks show teenage Bruce with the Hulk persona already active in his mind years before the Gamma Bomb accident, guiding him toward darker impulses and revealing the monster existed long before radiation transformed his body into something monstrous.

The story reveals Bruce nearly bombed his own high school, stopped only at the last second by the rational part of his consciousness. This establishes Ross's early involvement in Banner's life and sets the path toward Gamma research and military collaboration.

David rewrites key Hulk lore here, including explaining how the Hulk breathes underwater through an oxygenated gland that functions independently of his lungs. He also brings Betty Ross back to life in a controversial move that divided fans after David himself killed her off during his legendary twelve-year run on the title.

The ending delivers a devastating gut punch that undermines everything that came before it. After the Hulk decapitates Nightmare and rides off believing he won the battle, Betty Ross washes ashore on the same island, greeted by Nightmare disguised as her father Ross.

Artist Lee Weeks (Daredevil: Dark Nights, Superman: Lois & Clark) delivers muscular, grounded pencils that give real weight to every punch and explosion. His ocean sequences feel genuinely oppressive and claustrophobic. The flashbacks carry an ethereal quality that separates past from present without being heavy-handed or confusing.

Tom Palmer's inks add polish without smoothing out the necessary grit and texture. The Hulk looks like a force of nature here rather than a cartoon character, capturing raw physicality while maintaining expressive facial work during Banner's quieter psychological moments.

David's script walks a tightrope between psychological depth and action spectacle with confidence earned from his legendary twelve-year run defining the character for a generation. The constant reality shifts could feel gimmicky in lesser hands but David uses confusion as a weapon in this narrative rather than weakness.

The story structure frustrates some readers who spend four long issues watching the Hulk fight random monsters with no clear logic whatsoever, only for the final issue to reveal everything through dialogue rather than organic discovery that rewards careful readers.

Tempest Fugit succeeds as a character study wrapped in monster mayhem, exploring how trauma shapes identity and how Banner's mind remains his most dangerous battleground even after all these years. The twist that Nightmare engineered everything reframes the entire arc as commentary on memory and unreliable perception.

Whether you enjoy this depends entirely on what you want from a Hulk story at its core. If you crave straightforward action where plots make immediate sense, this will deeply annoy you with deliberate misdirection and withheld answers until the final pages.

Weeks and Palmer deliver visuals with impressive weight and atmosphere that feels both timeless and cinematic. The trade paperback includes a standalone Jae Lee story titled "Dear Tricia" that adds unexpected emotional depth with shadowy abstract artwork that contrasts beautifully with the main arc's grounded style.

Tempest Fugit may not reach the heights of David's original run or match his best work but it proves the writer still understood what makes Banner and his alter ego compelling after years away from the book and demonstrates his mastery of the character remains intact.

Incredible Hulk: Tempest Fugit collects The Incredible Hulk #77-82, available in Incredible Hulk: Tempest Fugit trade paperback, available in physical format at local comic-book shops, bookstores and various online retailers. For digital reading, the story is available on Amazon Kindle, ComiXology and Marvel Unlimited platforms.