Peter B. Gillis Big Comics Readthrough

What if the Hulk Went Berserk? #45 (1984) Pencils: Ron Wilson Inks: Ian Akin, Brian Garvey This issue came about chiefly because Ron Wilson wanted to draw the Hulk smashing stuff up. Thankfully, there's a little more to it than that. The divergence here is that Banner failed to save Rick Jones from exposure to the Gamma bomb. Jones slowly dies from radiation poisoning, while telepathically linked to the Hulk. This trauma drives Hulk into a killing rage, even murdering some of the heroes who try to stop him. This makes for a very dark, rather unpleasant, action heavy story that I haven't really gelled with. What if Uncle Ben Had Lived? #46 (1984) Pencils: Ron Frenz Finishes: Sam De La Rosa On the face of it, May biting the burglar's bullet rather than Ben seems an arbitrary change. Yet as Gillis pointed out, Peter Parker's only surrogate father figure in the early stories was J Jonah Jameson. Gillis paints Ben as a much wilier cookie then his dear departed. Ben finds Pet...

Iron Man Annual #5 (1982)  Co-plot: Ralph Macchio Pencils: Jerry Bingham Inks: Dan Green Don McGregor was a big influence and mentor to Peter Gillis in his early Marvel days. This likable, if overly familiar romp, is essentially a straight sequel to McGregor's classic Black Panther run, with Iron Man playing a peripheral role from the outset.  T'Challa is apparently killed and usurped by a revived Killmonger, resulting in a climatic battle for the crown over a precipice. Stop me if you've heard this one before, from the pages of Jungle Action which was later revisited in the first movie. It reads like a nostalgic highlights reel of McGregor's original. Stark gets the B plot, rescuing Rhodey who's tied up next to a bomb like in some old movie serial. Turns out the Mandarin was behind it all, for Iron Man reasons. On the whole it's fun fan fiction, with effective art. Green's inks really bring out the best in Bingham. Iron Man Annual #6 (1983) Pencils: Luke M...