Books of 2024: Week 39 - The Incredible Hulk: Stalker from the Stars

Cody has fun with a '70s Marvel novel. 

THE INCREDIBLE HULK: STALKER FROM THE STARS by Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, and Joseph Silva

Not only were Len Wein and Marv Wolfman both writers on the The Amazing Spider-Man comic book series, but they also worked together on the The Incredible Hulk comic book series – so it makes sense that, after Wein and Wolfman had written the Spider-Man novel Mayhem in Manhattan, they were assigned to write a Hulk novel. This time they were joined on the writing team by Joseph Silva, which is believed to have been a pseudonym for prolific author (and Marvel Comics contributor) Ron Goulart. The result of their team effort, Stalker from the Stars, reads like a mixture of a Hulk smash-’em-up action story and a ‘70s horror tale – and that’s a mixture I really enjoyed, being a fan of both superheroes and horror.

The story finds young rocker Rick Jones heading to the small town of Crater Falls in the hopes of meeting up with a Doctor Rudolf Stern, an expert in gamma radiation that Jones hopes will be able to help his pal Bruce Banner, who transforms into a green rage monster known as the Hulk anytime he gets angry, ever since getting caught in the blast of a gamma bomb... a bomb he was in range of because he was trying to get Jones out of the blast radius. That’s why Jones is dedicated to helping him with his Hulk problem.

Jones never meets with Stern; the guy is never seen alive again after wandering into the forest at the edge of the town. What he does discover, while staying in a local boardinghouse, is that the Crater Falls residents rise from their beds every night and wander out into the countryside, shambling like zombies, as if they’re under some kind of mind control spell. That’s because they are under a mind control spell. An alien being called Sh’mballah, which resembles an octopus but has strong mental powers, is drawing the Crater Falls locals to the spot where its ship crash-landed long ago so they can dug him up and set him loose.

While Jones is dealing with weirdness in Crater Falls, Bruce Banner and the Hulk are being pursued by the military, headed up by General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, and by Clay Quartermain, an agent in the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization (at this time, S.H.I.E.L.D. was an acronym for Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage and Law-Enforcement Division).  Eventually, Banner / Hulk and the military will make their way to Crater Falls as well, paving the way for a destructive battle between Hulk and the octopus-like alien... but it gets even better than that.

Sh’mballah’s mental powers are so extreme, that destroying the octopus body isn’t even enough to kill the creature. It just sends its consciousness into the corpse of Dr. Stern, turning him into a member of the living dead that glows with gamma radiation and threatens to wipe out the whole town of Crater Falls with a gamma explosion!

Hulk, a tentacled alien, mind-controlled zombies, a walking corpse... that’s a magical recipe as far as I’m concerned. Stalker from the Stars is a blast.