In the story, as Roger plotted it, the Hulk leaps after a rocket that has been launched spacewards. He grabs on. And a couple of heartbeats later Samson leaps in pursuit, also grabbing hold of the rocket, tho just barely, and lower down.

Shooter saw the finished pages, all set to go to the printer, and ordered them held back. He wanted the rocket scene redrawn and rewritten since, he said, Samson catching the rocket even tho he jumped AFTER the Hulk jumped, meant Samson was STRONGER than the Hulk.

Neither Roger nor I, nor anyone else in the Office that we asked, could make sense of this. There was no "strength comparison" shown or intended.

But Shooter had spoken. His interpretation of the scene -- tho no one else could see it -- was the ONLY interpretation. The page hard to be completely redrawn.

As it happened, doing that would have delayed the book enough to make it miss its slot at the printers, which would mean so missing its ship date, and in those days things like that still mattered. So Shooter had to content himself with rearranging the existing panels to make it seem that the Hull and Samson jumped at the same moment.

Which was accomplished by literally cutting up the original art, as I recall.

Great commission!

There are a couple of Doc Samson mini-series out there, Gundars. The first was written by Dan Slott, if I'm not mistaken. I had difficulty chopping my way through the eye-scarring, Image-wannabe art, but found it entertaining enough otherwise.

Doc Samson strikes me as one of those few-and-far-between Roy Thomas homages to the comics and pulps of his youth that actually sort of works. He has a certain funky old-style charm to him. Of course, it doesn't hurt that hurt that he was of the Herb Trimpe/John Severin era, which contained some of my all-time favorite Hulk stories. As a kid, I could take or leave the Hulk title itself most months, but I tried never to miss Marvel Super-Heroes, which was reprinting that run.

I do like the hard-charging, action-oriented nature of this commission's pose.

Amongst today's editors there seems to be a willingness to uncork any number of bottles and let the genies and dybbuks fly where they may. No taboos! Kill whomever you like. Resurrect same. If we establish something here that says that Doc Samson is stronger than the Hulk and always has been, what could be wrong with that?* He's a psychologist with issues of his own! That's interesting! Someone next month wants to explain that all away, let 'em! Two stories for the price of one! 12 issues sold instead of six, and an entire extra graphic novel! What could possibly be wrong with that?

Bring back Ben Parker as "Uncle Winter," a partially-cyberneticized assassin created by the government to hunt down and kill the thousands of Richard and Mary Parker androids and clones that have infiltrated the halls of international espionage at every level. The blood and machine oil of a hundred dead copies of his brother and his brother's wife on his hands, Uncle Winter targets Peter, himself evidently a clone of Richard, which would explain why his DNA was so gosh-darn receptive to the genetic-alteration-inducing venom of that irradiated spider...

Get two or three years out of that nonsense and then do a startling, hallucinogenic mind-trip crossover mini-series showing that Peter has been in a glass box for the past few months, tripping on spider-bites from genetically modified spiders with LSD venom. He's a prisoner of Craving, Sergei Kraganoff's wastrel, hippy-dippy grandson, who nevertheless wishes to do his part in the family legacy... "Uncle Winter" was all in Peter's head... 

He breaks free only to discover that MJ is now Craving's junkie girlfriend with no interest to getting clean. Crushed, Peter takes up with Beverly Switzer. Howard, now randomly switching back and forth between the forms of a flatulent warthog and a fast-talking meerkat, swears vengeance...** Howard makes a deal with Mephisto to give everyone of Peter's supporting cast multiverse-derived sets of infinity gems, allowing them to become a vast, intergalactic police force of multi-colored spider-powered crimefighters... Aunt May takes on Galactus and wins. She marries the Supreme Intelligence but sees Ronan the Accuser on the side. Thanos reveals to Peter that Mary Parker was an Eternal, his sister in fact. He is Peter's Uncle!! Just then, Thanos is shot dead by a burglar... Peter screams!!!

... And wakes to find he's in a glass box. He is set loose by his partially cyberneticized assassin uncle who has freed himself from his programming and calls himself "Codename: December!" He covertly aids Spider-Man in his war on crime while trying all the while to win back the heart of Aunt May. This year's big crossover event: "The May-December Romance!" At the wedding, we discover Codename: December is and always has been Ronan the Accuser in disguise! No, wait, Thanos! No, wait, Howard! No, wait, we'll do all three! Alternate timelines a-go-go!

Anything goes these days. Stewardship of these characters is unheard of. Every day at the keyboard is just another day in the candy store, gorging on sourballs and Milk Dudstm, and seeing whatever is vomitted back up published and republished in trade paperback form four months later. With Ultimatetm power has come unlimited irresponsibility.

* Just to be clear, the leaping to the rocket scene does not establish that to my mind, but an editor today likely wouldn't notice or care if a scene took place that did.

**Now that Marvel and Disney are one and the same, can Howard finally ditch the new look and pants?

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POINTLESS scenes of Doc doing "strong guy stuff"??