The following was originally posted on Newsarama.com:

The Hulk begins his return home to Earth today—the first installments of Marvel’s World War Hulk event begin hitting shelves this week. The past year and a half has been a tumultuous time for the big jade behemoth after the Illuminati, a secret sect of Marvel’s most powerful and influential heroes, decided to “fix” the Earth’s “Hulk Problem” by tricking him into getting onboard a spacecraft and shooting him off into deep space. Little did they know that the errant craft would travel off its mark—landing on the planet Sakaar—a segregated and war torn world that barely supports a number of other monstrous races and refugees from all over the galaxy. Not a guy to take things mildly, the Hulk takes charge of his imprisonment on this strange world and liberates others like himself who are stranded on Sakaar and they make a pledge to one another to honor their struggles together—‘Warbound’.

After unifying the differing cultures of Sakaar with his ‘Warbound’, the Hulk transforms from hated monster to revered King—creating salvation for a crippled world and giving his monstrous brethren a second chance at happiness in their new utopian civilization. Of course, just as everyone gets comfortable—calamity strikes. The craft that carried the Hulk to Sakaar explodes—its nuclear powered core detonates, killing millions including the Hulk’s new queen, Caeira, who was also pregnant with the Hulk’s child. Fueled by the rekindled blind hatred for his former friends on Earth—the Hulk gathers his ‘Warbound’ and they make their way to Earth in a gigantic stone spaceship. He means to extract the pound of flesh that is due to him.

Newsarama had an opportunity to sit down and talk with Greg Pak in retrospect about Planet Hulk; about some of the creative decisions behind the 14 part storyline; and to try to get him to reveal some secrets that may foreshadow upcoming events in the next chapter of his epic story involving the Incredible Hulk.

Newsarama: Let’s start back at the beginning - how did the idea for Planet Hulk come about?

Greg Pak: One fine afternoon a couple of years ago, Marvel Executive Editor Axel Alonso walked me down the hall of the House of Ideas to hear Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada speak eight magic words: Hulk. Alien planet. Gladiator ring. Monsters. Battle-axe. And I was hooked.

The basic idea was that it was time for the Hulk to smash, and a savage alien planet felt like the perfect place to do so. Joe and the other Marvel editors threw a few plot points at me and let me go to town. Editor Mark Paniccia has been my partner in crime every step of the way, helping me think through all of my insane plans and hone the epic tale that became Planet Hulk. It’s been the most fun I’ve ever had writing comics thus far.

NRAMA: What was the biggest challenge you had writing the Hulk, and conversely, what came to you easily?

GP: The scenario of epic heroic science fiction was something I was immediately and entirely comfortable tackling. And the fundamental themes of the price of anger and hero-versus-monster made complete sense to me. This is the kind of classic, epic hero story I grew up reading and loving—it was a huge kick in the pants to have the chance to work on this kind of project with the Hulk.

Probably the biggest challenge was nailing down the Hulk’s speech pattern. In the end, I found myself thinking about Clint Eastwood in his Spaghetti Western days. The less he says, the more powerful and compelling a character he becomes—and the more you pay attention when he does speak.

NRAMA: Psychology has always played a role in the many incarnations of the Hulk. It seems like the Hulk and Banner are “playing nice” in that Banner seems to be letting Hulk run the show and it seems like Hulk, through his experiences on Sakaar, is getting a better understanding of Banner—could you elaborate on this? Could this be the makings of a better more “gestalt” Banner/Hulk union?

GP: I’ll just say that the glimpses we got of Banner in Incredible Hulk #103 indicate a surprising new direction for the Hulk/Banner relationship—and that will absolutely be followed up and elaborated on in the pages of World War Hulk.

NRAMA: Your Hulk is not savage; he’s definitely not Joe Fixit; and he’s not ‘the Professor’; he does bear a little similarity to ‘the Maestro’ in that he’s succeeded in creating a kingdom, he’s cunning, and he’s not afraid to use a little force to get the job done—just who is this incarnation of the Hulk?

GP: Fans have invented the term “Gravage Hulk” for the incarnation that combines the craftiness of the Gray Hulk with the unpredictability and power of the Savage Hulk. This is the version of the Hulk that Peter David left us after his brief return to the title—and it was a perfect match for Planet Hulk. This was an emotional epic—the Hulk’s entire worldview changed during the course of the story; we needed a character who could learn and grow from his experiences. The Gravage Hulk was smart enough to genuinely struggle with the big theme of hero-or-monster but savage enough so that audiences would never quite know which way he’d go.

NRAMA: There seemed to be an indication of an underlying allegorical political statement about some current events taking place in the real world within the Planet Hulk storyline—at one point during the story it seems that the oppression of the Red King was an accepted societal norm—and some of the loyalists seem to cling to belief system of the ‘Old Regime’ even after the Green King came into power. This could be drawn to a comparison to the U.S. liberating Iraq from the tyranny of a ruler like Saddam Hussein. Was that intentional?

GP: I’m a huge fan of the new Battlestar Galactica, which is layered with political allegory that can be interpreted in many different ways, from multiple perspectives. I’ll leave it to readers and critics to draw their own conclusions about the allegories in Planet Hulk.

NRAMA: As far as the Hulk being a ‘tragic’ character in the Marvel Universe, you seem to be adding to heavily to that end of the character’s mythos—do you think that tragedy is the sole theme that makes the Hulk a successful character? Will the Hulk will ever get to know happiness beyond any fleeting moments?

GP: The key theme driving just about every great Hulk story is rage. And, as every great religion, myth, ethical system, and piece of literature tells us, rage, no matter how justified, has a price.

NRAMA: Are you ever going to further explicate how the Hulk had reached an alien culture and their prophetic folklore/oral tradition/religion?

GP: I’ll just say that that aspect of the story isn’t over—the characters, world, and prophecies of Planet Hulk will play a big role in our ultra-secret follow up to Planet Hulk and World War Hulk.

NRAMA: “A world for monsters, ruled by a monster.”—This seems to sum up the totality of the Planet Hulk experience. Was the primary function of the Hulk’s compatriots, a rather motley crew, to solidify this concept creatively?

GP: It was definitely a conscious choice to surround the Hulk with monsters. Part of the big idea was that as the Hulk came to bond with his fellow gladiators; he could see them as heroes rather than monsters, and maybe begin to see himself the same way. For some reason, I’m always sympathetic towards those characters everyone else calls monsters. In many ways, that’s the essence of Marvel’s classic characters, from Spidey to the X-Men to Ben Grimm—they’ve all been labeled monsters. Their determination to do the right thing anyway, time and time again, is what makes them heroes. That’s a classic kind of story—very similar to American Westerns and Japanese samurai movies, actually, in which the gunslinger/swordsman hero is hated and feared by the very townspeople he ends up saving.

NRAMA: Several elements have been added in the background of the story with Hulk’s crew, would you like to give any kind of clues or drop some hints that might foreshadow their developments alongside the Hulk during his return to Earth?

GP: Korg is one of the Kronans (the so-called “Stone Men from Saturn”), they were Thor’s very first antagonists way back in Journey Into Mystery #83. The Brood is one of the Warriors-Prime sent by the Brood Queen to fight the X-Men back during the classic Claremont era. Whether these historic links will pay off in World War Hulk remains to be seen...

But the two most important things to remember about all of the Hulk’s companions is that first, in the slave pits of Sakaar, they became Warbound to each other and the Hulk. Through blood and fire, they have sworn the oath that cannot be broken and will stand by each other and the Hulk to the very end. Second, each and every member of the Warbound is as full as rage and grief as the Hulk. When the Illuminati’s shuttle exploded, it destroyed the new world they were creating, shattered their dreams of a place to call their own, incinerated a million people, including all of their friends and loved ones. They’re utterly convinced of the righteousness of their cause—the puny humans have never known such wrath.

NRAMA: Speaking of one of those warbound for a moment - should readers worry about the Hulk bringing a Brood to Earth? In certain instances, the biology of species tends to mutate—is there a potential danger in the mating of Miek and the Brood, possibly a deadlier, mutated species?

GP: I can’t say too much for fear of spoilers. But fans of the Brood and Miek absolutely won’t want to miss the Heroes for Hire tie-ins to World War Hulk.

And of course there’s the old adage, which I think is attributable to Cary Grant; that no one really wants to hear about how great your love life is, but everyone perks up when you’re start talking about unmitigated romantic disaster...

NRAMA: With the destruction of the craft that transported Hulk to Sakaar—did the Hulk absorb another healthy dose of radiation?

GP: Yes, indeed. When he hits the planet for World War Hulk, he’ll be angrier and stronger than the Marvel heroes have ever seen him.

NRAMA: You’ve created a lasting piece of substance for the mythos of this character. Were there any points in the plot or story elements that were removed before the finished product hit the shelf? If you could make a “director’s cut” of Planet Hulk—is there any footage that hit the floor of the editing room that you’d like to include? Or is what came out the ‘definitive’ Planet Hulk?

GP: One of the bonuses of telling a story that takes place in outer space is that there are fewer chances for the plot to be waylaid because of what’s happening on Planet Earth. We were able to tell the exact story we planned from the beginning, which was fantastic.

Now in retrospect, and if we had all the resources in the world, it might have been cool to have a backup story running throughout the entire series taking place among Hulk allies on Earth, a bit like the “Planet Cho” backup story from Incredible Hulk #100. We had great circulation numbers throughout Planet Hulk—we actually gained readers pretty consistently throughout the run. But if we’d had an element in the story that related directly to Earth, we might have been able to pull on more readers earlier, and lay even deeper tracks for Hulk’s eventual return. Then again, I can’t complain at all about the way it’s panned out—sometimes less is more, and the slow burn and little hints we’ve dropped along the way about the Hulk’s return has set the stage pretty nicely for the insane smash-fest which is World War Hulk.

June 13th is the release of the Planet Hulk hardcover; it’s also the release date for World War Hulk #1—for more information on this and some of Greg’s other projects visit his personal website: http://www.pakbuzz.com.

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